To be a contemplative is to be a watch in the night for the approach of Mystery. And it is a readiness to be transformed in an engagement with that Mystery.
~ Fr. Iain Matthew in DARK NIGHT OF THE SOUL, newly translated by Mirabai Starr
God is directly present in the person who has the pure heart of a child and who laughs and cries and dances and sings in divine ecstasy.
How great is the difference between the secret friend and the child. For the friend makes only loving, living, but reasoned ascents toward God, but the child presses on to lose his or her own life upon the summits in that simplicity which does not know itself. When we transcend ourselves and become in our ascent toward God so simple that the bare, supreme love can lay hold on us, then we cease, and we and all our self will die in God. In death we become the hidden children of God and find a new life within us.
