Strong Love

"If our love is perfect, it has this quality of leading us to forget our own pleasure in order to please Him whom we love; it has the power to make us accept our trials with joy and take the bitter with the sweet, knowing that to be His Majesty's will (St Teresa of Jesus, Foundations 5) Evidently, a love like this cannot be the fruit of our own human nature, which has a repugnance for suffering; it cannot be acquired, for it greatly surpasses the capacity of our nature, so poor and weak. God alone can infuse it little by little into souls who allow Him to guide them by the narrow way of interior purification. Yes, in aridity, in solitude of heart, in the privation of all light and consolation, the Holy Spirit enkindles in them this flame of charity, a flame which invades them increasingly as it finds them well disposed, that is, purified of everything contrary to love. When all resistances have been overcome, all dross eliminated, the flame of love will blaze up irresistibly and give to the soul the strength of a giant."
--from Divine Intimacy, pp. 1088-1089