15. "Deus ignia consumens." Our God, wrote St. Paul, is a consuming Fire, that is "a fire of love" which destroys, which "transforms into itself everything that it touches." The delights of the divine enkindling are renewed in our depths by an unremitting activity; the enkindling of love in a mutual and eternal satisfaction. It is a renewal that takes place at every moment in the bond of love. Certain souls have chosen this refuge to rest there eternally, and this is the silence in which, somehow, they have lost themselves. Freed from their prison, they sail on the ocean of divinity without any creature being an obstacle or hindrance to them.
16. For these souls, the mystical death of which St. Paul spoke yesterday becomes so simple and sweet. They think much less of the work of destruction and detachment that remains for them to do than of plunging into the furnace of love burning within them which is none other than the Holy Spirit, the same Love which in the Trinity is the bond between the Father and His Word. They "enter into Him by living faith, and there, in simplicity and peace" they are "carried away by Him" beyond all things, beyond sensible pleasures, "into the sacred darkness and are transformed int the divine image. They live, in St. John's expression, "in communion with the Three Adorable Persons, "sharing" their life, and this is the "contemplative life"; this contemplation leads to possession. Now this simple possession is eternal life savored in the unfathomable abode. It is there, beyond reason, that the profound tranquility of the divine immutability awaits us.
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