It is necessary to die, but nobody wants to;
you don’t want to,
but you are going to, willy-nilly.
A hard necessity that is,
not to want something which cannot be avoided.
If it could be managed, we would much rather not die;
we would like to become like the angels
by some other means than death.

We want to reach the kingdom of God,
but we don’t want to travel by way of death.
And yet there stands Necessity saying:
“This way, please.”

Do you hesitate to go this way,
when this is the way that God came to you? 
~St. Augustine of Hippo (354-430), “Exposition II, Sermon I on Psalm 30” in Expositions on the Book of Psalms,

January’s naked and merciless dark
yields to light.

Our God leads us through, pointing the way.

We too easily forget
we are not asked to bear more
than God has already endured on our behalf:
our bare and tender feet follow the path of His bloody footprints.