The fire of love for the people whom God loves consumes you just as the fire of God's love does – and it is the same love. It burns you with a hunger for supernatural happiness, first for those you know, then for those you have scarcely heard of, and finally for all. This fire consumes you with a desire that does not immediately lead to action, but to God. And in the swift, peaceful, burning current of this desire, you are carried to prayer rather than to action… (…)
Saint Teresa of Avila, pray to our God that He may fill the world with fiery rivers of salvation…
(Thomas Merton /1915–1968/, diary entry from October 15, 1948)
