in which we see the mystical marriage of the soul (and the Church) with God. The lover who pursues the beloved is the soul seeking its God. The beloved rises and escapes, God does the same: the more the soul knows Him, the more He escapes, and the more it loves Him. The more God satisfies it with His presence, the more it thirsts for a presence which is more total, and rushes headlong in pursuit. The more it is filled with God, the more it discovers Him transcendent. Thus the soul is penetrated with the divine presence, but sinks ever deeper into the inexhaustible essence, inaccessible in as much as it is essence. Thus this pursuit becomes unending, and in this infinite dilation of the soul where love unceasingly overflows and renews itself from beginning to beginning, we see the Christian notion of beatitude. If one knew the very nature of God, one would be God. The union of the creature with the Creator is this limitless flight where the soul, the more it is fulfilled, fortunately perceives this distance increasingly shortened but always infinite between itself and the divine essence, a distance which allows and calls forth love. God calls us and we are included in this call which reveals Him and conceals Him at the same time; and we cannot reach Him unless it be in this relationship which, to exist, demands that in His essence God remains forever out of reach
