At the beginning of the spiritual journey there is hard work to be done within ourselves, which depends on the resoluteness with which we use our will and the strength of our resolutions; determination, but the more we go forward on the path to God, the more we shall learn by experience that we reach a point beyond which we know we can attain nothing. There even comes a moment when we seem to have done all we can. And yet we must continue on our way, continue to grow, continue to draw closer to God, for we must never come to a standstill. There is, then, a time in the spiritual life when we cannot do otherwise than become contemplatives, if we have to draw nearer to God. There is a kind of refining of our hearts and our minds: a perfecting of our actions, which only the Spirit of God can bring about.
René Voillaume LBJ (1905–2003)