Excerpt – Thomas Kempis
Taken from The Imitation of Christ
Take, therefore, your cross and follow Jesus, and you shall go to life everlasting. He has gone before you, bearing His Cross, and died for you upon that Cross so that you should in like manner bear with Him the cross of penance and tribulation, and that you should be ready in like manner for His love to suffer death, if need be, as He has done for you. If you die with Him you will live with Him; if you are His companion with Him in pain, you will be His companion in glory.Behold, then, how in the Cross all things stand; and how, in dying to the world, lies all our health; and that there is no other way to life and true inward peace but the way of the Cross, and the way of daily submission of the body to the spirit. Go wherever you will, and reap whatever you desire, and you will never find, above you or beneath you, within you or without you, a more high, a more excellent, a more sure way to Christ than the way of the Holy Cross.Kempis, Thomas, The Imitation of Chris, Double Day Religion, 2009. p 64
Let us be in remember as we dwell on John chapter 12, that Jesus was coming to the end of his mission of the Cross. Let us remember that we need to follow Jesus to the Cross, to die to ourselves daily, in order to fully follow Him.