We do not even begin to pray unless we are first touched by 'the inner wound of love', which impels us to seek ever more direct and personal experience of Christ, comparable to the relation of married love; once touched by our lover, we can no longer be content with what is mediated of his love in the Church, through 'angels and prophets', but desire to transcend even the freedom and rationality proper to mankind and receive the direct supernatural enlightenment of the Word. Origen gives voice to the longing which has never been quenched in any religious tradition, the passion, not for 'intellectual' ecstasy or even for a mystical absorption, but for direct, palpable assurance and experience of the sweetness of a God who enters into intimacy with his creatures.

« Tenderness is the art of personifying, of sharing feelings, and thus endlessly discovering similarities. Creating stories means constantly bringing things to life, giving an existence to all the tiny pieces of the world that are represented by human experiences […]. Tenderness personalizes everything to which it relates, making it possible to give it a voice, to give it the space and the time to come into existence, and to be expressed. It is thanks to tenderness that the teapot starts to talk.

Batter my heart, three-person’d God, for you As yet but knock, breathe, shine, and seek to mend; That I may rise and stand, o’erthrow me, and bend Your force to break, blow, burn, and make me new. I, like an usurp’d town to another due, Labor to admit you, but oh, to no end; Reason, your viceroy in me, me should defend, But is captiv’d, and proves weak or untrue. Yet dearly I love you, and would be lov’d fain, But am betroth’d unto your enemy; Divorce me, untie or break that knot again, Take me to you, imprison me, for I, Except you enthrall me, never shall be free, Nor ever chaste, except you ravish me.

“It is not necessary to teach others, to cure them or to improve them; it is only necessary to live among them, sharing the human condition and being present to them in love.”