“The Holy Spirit cries in us with a loud voice and without words, ‘Love the love which loves you everlastingly.’ His crying is an inward contact with our spirit. This voice is more terrifying than the storm. The flashes which it darts forth open the sky to us and show us the light of eternal truth. The heat of its contact and of its love is so great that it well-nigh consumes us altogether. In its contact with our spirit it cries without interruption, ‘Pay your debt; love the love which has loved you from all eternity.’ Hence there arises a great inward impatience and also an unlimited resignation. For the more we love, the more we desire to love; and the more we pay of that which love demands, the greater becomes our debt to love. Love is not silent, but cries continually, ‘Love thou love.’ This conflict is unknown to alien senses. To love and to enjoy, that is to labour and to suffer. God lives in us by His grace. He teaches us, He counsels us, He commands us to love. We live in Him above all grace and above our own works, by suffering and enjoying. In us dwell love, knowledge, contemplation, and possession, and, above them, enjoyment. Our work is to love God; our enjoyment is to receive the embrace of love. “Between love and enjoyment there is a distinction, even as between God and His grace. We are spirits when we hold fast by love, but when He robs us of our spirit, and re-makes us by His own spirit, then we are enjoyment. The Spirit of God breathes us out towards love and good works, and it breathes us in to rest and enjoyment; and that is eternal life, just as we breathe out the air which is in us and breathe in fresh air; and in that consists our mortal life and nature. And although our spirit should be ravished and its powers fail in enjoyment and in blessedness, it is always renewed in grace, in charity, and in virtues. And so what I love is to enter into a restful enjoyment, to go forth in good works, and to remain always united to the Spirit of God. Just as we open the eyes of the body, see, and shut them again, so quickly that we hardly notice what we have done, even so we die in God, we live out of God, and we remain always one with Him.”