From his throne in Heaven Christ watched as humanity slid into corruption. He knew that men had no claim at all to be saved, and yet He saw the value, the potential left in us, and He refused to stand by. I have come to cast fire on the earth, and how I wish it were blazing already. Cold and dark, miserable and doomed was world He found, but lit up by truth and burning with love was the world when He left it. But like every genuine heroic act, this was not to be accomplished by a snap of the fingers. No, He would have to undergo "a baptism", which is to say, a wrenching experience - like being plunged into a river - so as to make all things new, not Himself but the world for whom He labored. This "baptism" was His Passion, where He would be submerged under the flood of insults, covered with the sins of mankind, and bathed in his own precious Blood. They surround me like a flood all day long; they close in upon me together (Ps. 88.17) So He endured the cross, despising its shame voluntarily. Why did He undergo this great act of heroism when He was supremely happy from all eternity? Only out of love, pure selfless love. Christ is the consummate Hero; He towers above all the mythical heroes and yet He is also gentle- so approachable, so humble. His divine personality causes us to marvel without ceasing. This is what we must do in our meditative prayer: get to know and love this Person, our Hero!

Still, the wonders of the Christian teaching on salvation contain a surprising twist. We are also called to cooperate in salvation, to share in the heroic work of apostles. Thus the author of the letter to the Hebrews exhorts us to look to those who have gone before us - the great cloud of witnesses. What courage we can draw from them who, by the grace of God, were made strong and brave and wise beyond any natural bound. Weak and sinful though they were, they kept their eyes fixed on Jesus, the leader and prefecture of faith. Then they were enabled to run the race, to fight the good fight. They overcome savage princes, masses of ignorance and indifference, heat and hunger, resisting often to the point of shedding blood. To be a saint one must practice heroic virtues. The letter to the Hebrews encourages us to persevere, because the work of a hero is not easy. How often we feel like poor Jeremiah! As He sank into the mud, in the dark, ignored by all, and ready to die, those promises of the Lord must have seemed like cruel lies. Everybody knows what it is like to be stuck like Jeremiah: in a habit of sin, or a cycle of addiction. Stuck in a depression, or a relationship that defies fixing, in poverty or inability to believe. Indeed, every one of us is presently stuck in some difficulty which requires us, at every moment, to cry out to our Hero. Come, Lord, make haste to help me! I sink in deep mire, where there is no foothold; I have come into deep waters, and the flood sweeps over me. (Ps. 69.2)

The help of the Lord never seems to come fast enough, yet it comes, and it comes with abundance. Part your Heavens, O Lord, and come down; touch the mountains, so that they smoke. (Ps. 144.5) I have waited, waited for the Lord, and He stooped toward me. The Lord always hears the cry of the poor and always answers. Sometimes, however, we are calling out to be preserved from the job of the hero. In other words, we are calling from our Cross, for the Heavenly Father to rescue us, instead of calling for grace to persevere in the work of a Christian, which is a hero's work. See God's hand in all things - in humiliations, in losses, in sorrows and afflictions - every cistern that we fall into can - if we are courageous - be turned into a mountain, a Calvary, on which we do the work of saving, we who are so in need of a Savior ourselves.