If it is a matter of transforming the human being into love, bringing him to have the manners of God, one cannot be astonished at the destructions which are entailed… [Contemplation] leaves us nothing of our own, not even the walls of the container. Everything is surrendered, everything is lost. The creature, made from nothing… must be reabsorbed into nothingness, know and live it. It dies that it may begin to live in God’s way – it dies again to act in God’s way, to enter into the work of the Saviour.
Jacques Maritain (1882–1973)