The way to attain love is to love. A less excellent love leads to a greater love, and a greater love in turn leads to the highest love, as well as to… - John of St. Samson

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The way to attain love is to love. A less excellent love leads to a greater love, and a greater love in turn leads to the highest love, as well as to the most excellent and ultimate fruits of active love. Each of these degrees has its own theory and practice. All of them, especially the last degrees, possess a simple, exalted, and singular contemplation of the divine Object, which constantly exerts a powerful influence on the soul and ravishes it with delight.

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About John of St. Samson

The Venerable John of St. Samson (1571–1636), also known as Jean du Moulin or Jean de Saint-Samson, was a French Carmelite and mystic of the Catholic Church. A leader of the Touraine Reform of the Carmelite Order, which stressed prayer, silence and solitude, John was blind from the age of three after contracting smallpox and receiving poor medical treatment for the disease. He insisted very strongly on the mystical devotion of the Carmelites. He has been referred to as the "French John of the Cross" by students of Christian mysticism.

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Additional quotes by John of St. Samson

Simplicity is the loving inclination of the soul elevated by God, Who efficaciously drawn it into His own heart. There He reduces all its faculties to unity of spirit, that it may live there, in a n abstract, simple and essential condition, without sensible desire to reason or think of order or disorder. It is continually lost in the eternity of God.

Such is the effect of love's flood rushing into its lovers. It sweeps them away, ravishes them, and swamps them in its waves. These people become love itself — its spirit, its divinity — insofar as it is possible for any creature in this life.

We have been created in order to return to God through love, through his own love. In us it must be ardent, pure and unceasingly active, so that we expend all our energies and are consumed by it. Actually, we shall never be able to do or give anything that can sufficiently recompense him who is infinite Love. Before him every creature is deceitful, and in comparison with him, man is nothing. p. 140

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