Love Is the Being of God, the Life of God, the Essence of God

From November 6, 2005:

"A genuine knowledge of persons is possible only in the oneness of the union of persons.  Love in this highest kind of fulfillment, therefore, includes knowledge.  It is simultaneously a receiving and a free act.  It thus also includes the will and it is the fulfilllment of desire.  But love in its highest perfection is fully actual only in God; in the mutual love of the Divine Persons, in the mutual self-giving of Divine Being.  Love is the being of God, the life of God, the essence of God.  It is fully adequate and proportionate to each of the Divine Persons as well as to their unity.

In the finite image that which is one in the divine archetype appears divided.  Here love, knowledge, and will do not coincide, despite the fact that love contains something of the nature of knowledge and something of the nature of will.  For love cannot be completely "blind," and love is free.  As was previously stated (in following Duns Scotus), there is nothing that is freer than love, for love commands not only some individual personal urge or impulse, but the personal self in its totality."

- St. Edith Stein, Finite and Eternal Being, translated by Kurt F. Reinhardt, from The Collected Works of Edith Stein, Vol. IX, ICS Publications, 2002, pp. 453-454.