The denudation of the faculties that is demanded for this transforming union is effected in the intellect through faith, in the memory through hope, and in the will through love.
It has already been shown how faith gives the intellect a sure but dark knowledge. It shows God as inaccessible light, as the incomprehensibly Infinite One in face of whom all natural faculties fail totally. The intellect is brought back to its total nothingness in precisely this manner: it recognizes its own powerlessness and God’s greatness.
Hope puts the memory into emptiness since it occupies it with something that one does not possess. “For how does one hope for what is already seen?” (Rom 8:24). It teaches us to hope for everything from God and not from ourselves or any other creature; to expect to receive from him the bliss that will have no end and therefore to renounce in this life every pleasure and possession.
Love finally frees the will from all things since it obliges the will to love God above all. This becomes possible only when the desire for everything created is given up.
Saint Edith Stein
Chapter 4, Spirit and Faith
Stein, E 2002, The Science of the Cross, The Collected Works of Edith Stein, Book 6, translated from the German by Koeppel, J, ICS Publications, Washington D.C.
Featured image: Abhiram Prakash captured this sunset in February 2018 at Hampi in Karnataka state, India. Image credit: Abhiram Prakash / Pexels
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