O, my true God and Lord! For the soul worn out by the loneliness caused by Your absence, it is a great comfort to know that You are truly present everywhere. Yet when the intensity of love rises and the great torrents of this suffering overwhelm, what good is it, my God? After all, reason is disturbed and the ability to recognize this truth is hidden, so the soul cannot sense or understand it.
It only knows that it is distant from You, and it allows no remedy. A heart that loves very much does not accept any advice or comfort. Only from the One who has wounded it.
With what compassion and with what grace, with what delight and with what tenderness and with such magnificent displays of love do You heal these wounds caused by the arrows of the same love! O, my God and Rest from all my troubles, how foolish I am! How could there be human means to heal what has been afflicted by the divine fire?
(Teresa of Jesus, The Soul's Cry to God, 16,1.2;
working translation by Vojtěch Kohut OCD)
