Just when we are thoroughly bruised, filled with bitterness, exhausted to death, and when we no longer know what someone might love us for, He is very near to us, more inwardly present in our souls than in times when He ignites it with His love. Moments of beggary may come, even of inner numbness, when we can no longer ask for anything, but when the soul is before Him like a beggar, too dejected to say anything. And then new flames arise, of which we do not know how or from where they come. And through these alternating states, which you and I and every finite soul longing for the infinite experience, His blessed and mysterious work, which we do not see, is fulfilled in us.
(Card. Charles Journet /1891–1975/, correspondence)
