...wherein the image of the Beloved is outlined in such a manner, and so completely pictured, when there is union of love, that it is true to say that the Beloved lies in the lover and the lover in the Beloved; and such manner of likeness does love make in the transformation of the two that are in love that it may be said that each is in the other and both are one....Thus each lives in the other, and the one is the other, and both are one through the transformation of love. It is this that St. Paul meant when he said: "I live, yet not I, but Christ liveth in me." For in saying ‘I live, yet not I,’ he meant that, although he lived, his life was not his own, because he was transformed in Christ and his life was divine rather than human.
St. John of the Cross, The Spiritual Canticle, Stanza 12, 7
