Let him live and grant me life. Let him reign and I be his handmaiden, for my soul desires no other freedom. How could one be free who is distant from the Most High? What greater or more wretched bondage could exist than when the soul breaks free from the hands of its Creator? Blessed are those who see that they are so caught and immobilized by the firm bonds and chains of God's mercy, that they are not strong enough to free themselves. “Love is as strong as death, and its jealousy as fierce as the grave.”
(Teresa of Jesus, The Exclamation of the Soul to God, 17,3;
working translation by Vojtěch Kohut OCD)
