LOVE_FlipBook

167 Love believes all things something much purer, more tender, spiritual, and in- terior than all that is familiar to the intellect from the natural life of the spirit. Also raised above temporality, it is a true beginning of eternal life in us. It is not a mere acceptance of the message of faith that has been heard, nor a mere turning of oneself to God, who is known only from hearsay, rather it is an interior being touched and an experience of God that has the power to detach the soul from all created things, and to raise her, simultane- ously plunging her into a love that does not know its ob- ject. We will not attempt to determine here whether this dark, loving knowledge, in which the soul is touched in her innermost depth by God—from “mouth to mouth,” from substance to substance—can still be reckoned as faith. This dark, loving knowledge is the surrender of the soul through the will (as her mouth) to the loving approach of the still-concealed God: love, which is not feeling, but rather a readiness for action and sacrifice, an insertion of one’s own will into the divine will in order to be led by it alone. SAINT TERESA BENEDICTA OF THE CROSS, EDITH STEIN, († 1942) was a German philosopher and a convert from Judaism who became a Carmelite nun and was put to death at Auschwitz.