Meditation in lieu of commentary

I know things about you, therefore, that no other person knows.  You committed many more sins than people imagine; you preformed many more miracles than people believe.  In order to mount to heaven, you see the floor of the Inferno to give you your momentum.  "The further down you gain your momentum," you often used to tell me, "the higher you shall be able to reach.  The militant Christian's greatest worth is not his virtue, but his struggle to transform into virtue the impudence, dishonor, unfaithfulness, and malice within him.  One day Lucifer will be the most glorious archangel standing next to God; not Michael, Gabriel, or Raphael--but Lucifer, after he has finally transubstantiated his terrible darkness into light."

--Nikos Kazantzakis, St. Francis

And I wondered greatly at this revelation, and considered our faith, wondering as follows:  our faith is grounded in God's word, and it is part of our faith that we should believe that God's word will be kept in all things; and one point of our faith is that many shall be damned--like the angels who fell out of heaven from pride, who are now fiends, and men on earth who die outside the faith of Holy Church, that is, those who are heathens, and also any man who has received Christianity and lives an unChristian life and so dies excluded from the love of God.  Holy Church teaches me to believe that all these shall be condemned everlastingly to hell.  And given all that, I thought it impossible that all manner of things should be well, as our Lord revealed at this time.  And I received no other answer in showing from our Lord than this:  'What is impossible to you is not impossible to me.  I shall keep my word in all things and I shall make all things well.'

Thus I was taught by the grace of God that I should steadfastly remain in the faith, as I had previously understood, and at the same time that I should firmly believe that all things should be well as our Lord God revealed on the same occasion.  For this is the great deed that our Lord shall do, the deed by which he will keep his word in all things and shall make all well that is not well.  And how the deed shall be done there is no creature under Christ that knows or shall know until it is done, so far as I understood our Lord's meaning at this time.

--Julian of Norwich