Maggie's Farm

From Because Beset with Weakness by Michael J. Buckley, SJ:

 Weakness relates us profoundly with other people. It allows us to feel with them the human condition, the human struggle and darkness and anguish which call out for salvation. For to be a human being is to take a certain amount of suffering into life. It is hard to get at this consideration, since so much in Western civilization attempts to disguise it or affects to despise it. One of the most debilitating aspects of American society is that we do not authentically admit the cost in a struggle and almost never allow real fear to surface. Yet most of us must struggle to make a living, must wonder about our future and about our sense of personal value in a market economy, must deal with the half-articulated and half-understood problems of our children, must fear what our death will be like—what it will mean to die; we must deal with the temptation to believe that life is without meaning, that actions are inconsequential and selfish, and that other people are to be used...