On this road towards the perfection of love considered absolutely or under all relations, finally action, in one way or another, superabounds from contemplation – open contemplation or masked contemplation, whose sapiential savour passes secretly through inspirations which concern more especially the active life, and through the exercise of the corresponding Gifts of the Holy Spirit; finally, whether it leads an active life or a contemplative life, and whether in one state of life as in the other it has the grace of an open contemplation, the soul raised to the mystical state habitually participates in a contemplative influx, it refreshes itself in one manner or another in the sources of contemplation, whether it drinks there long draughts or whether the living water reaches it drop by drop and through intermediaries. It is the road of mad, boundless love.
Jacques Maritain (1882–1973)