im more frequently than she
receives Him. It is not because she is worthy that she possesses Him:
the soul never, under any circumstances, feels worthy: it is love
alone which enables her to possess Him, and this love that she
knows how to shed to Him is His own gift to her.

So the soul cries to Him, O mystery of love, was ever such sweet
graciousness as lives in thee: such exquisite felicity of giving and
receiving, in which the giver and receiver in mysterious rapture of
generosity are oned! And this mystery of love is not in paucity of
ways, but in marvellous variety of ways and of degrees--the ways of
friendship, the brother and the sister, the mother and the child, the
youth and the maiden, and Thyself and we.

Love makes the soul ponder on His tastes, His will, His nature. Does
He prefer even in heaven to possess Himself to Himself in His First
Person? or are there parts of heaven where He is ever willing to be
possessed in His fulness: where He is eternally beheld in His Three
Persons by such as can endure Him? The soul believes it, and this is
the goal she strives for both now and hereafter.

Yet there is That of Him which is for ever Alone, which will never
be known or shared by the greatest of the Angels. The soul
comprehends that He will have it so because of that Solitary which
sits within herself, she who is made after His likeness.

XIII

For many years before coming to Union with God, I found that it
had become impossible to say more than a little prayer of some five
or six words, and these were said very slowly: at times I was
astonished at my inability, and ashamed that these pitiful shreds
were all that I could offer, and always the same thing too; I tried to
vary it--I could not. When I tried to say some fine sentence, when I
tried even to ask for something, I could not; it all disappeared in a
feeling of such sweet love for God, and I merely said again the same
old words of every day. I loved. I could do nothing more than say so,
and then stay there on my knees for a little while, very near Him,
fascinated, adoring. But God is not vexed with a soul when she
cannot say much. Is an earthly father vexed when his child, standing
there before him, forgets the words upon its lips, forgets to ask,
because it loves him so? Far from it.

This prayer is the commencement, the foretaste, of Contemplation.
A distinguishing mark between this prayer and Contemplation is that
in even the lowest degree of Co