That God loves us is certain; that we have contact with Him by faith is a certain truth; but supernatural penetration in God can be effected without leaving us any light, any feeling, any experience whatever of the riches that we have drawn from it.
Nevertheless, the commerce of friendship with God by faith enriches us surely. God is Love, communicating Himself eternally. Just as one cannot plunge his bare hands into water without getting them wet, or into a fire without burning them, likewise one cannot have contact with God by faith without receiving from His infinite riches. The poor sick woman who tried to reach Jesus through the dense crowd, in the streets of Capharnaum, said within herself, "If I can touch but the hem of His garment, I shall be cured." She finally succeeds and, with a touch that thrills her Master, she draws from Him the healing cure (Mark 5:25-34). Every contact with God by faith is likewise efficacious. Independently of the particular graces that it might ask and obtain, it takes from God an increase of supernatural life, a deepening of charity. Love seeks in mental prayer a sustenance, a development, and the perfect union that will satisfy all its desires.
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Source: Fr. Marie-Eugène, I Want to See God, trans. by M. Verda Clare (Notre Dame, IN: Christian Classics, 1953), 59-60.
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