The union of love [which is Christian mysticism], which attains the [divine] beloved as he is in himself, is the source of a connaturality, of an affinity, that makes the soul feel as if by instinct what belongs to the beloved. Thus the gifts of the Holy Spirit operating in the soul start with the connaturality of love. As regards the object known, this knowledge is none other than knowledge from faith; what it introduces is a new mode of knowing, which goes beyond the ordinary, human mode. This knowledge is without concepts because it is supra-conceptual; that is why we designate it as a fulfilling silence, a blessed night.
Georges Cardinal Cottier (1922–2016)