The sacraments are direct encounters with God in Christ. In them God touches us directly, he himself, unmediated. This is the mystical life in its concentrated form, flashing out in all its intolerable brightness for one vitalizing minute. But we can only take this brightness in the measure we are there for it. Conversely, the more we expose what we are, however small that may be, the more there becomes of us. It can only be in utter mystery. What happens at communion? Confession? No human mind can comprehend the encounter because it is of its essence too personally God. ~Sr Ruth Burrows, OCD, Guidelines for Mystical Prayer