Thus, by virtue of his soul’s purity, he is found worthy to be resurrected with Christ spiritually, and receives the strength to look without passion on the exterior beauty of visible things and to praise through them the Creator of all. Contemplating in these visible things God’s power and providence, His goodness and wisdom, as St Paul says (cf. Rom 1:20-21), and perceiving the mysteries hidden in the divine Scriptures, his intellect is given the grace to ascend with Christ through the contemplation of intelligible realities, that is, through the knowledge of intelligible powers.
Perceiving, after tears of understanding and joy, the invisible through the visible (cf. Rom. 1:20) and the eternal through the transitory, he realizes that if this ephemeral world, which is said to be a place of exile and punishment for those who have transgressed the commandments of God, is so beautiful, how much more beautiful must be the eternal, inconceivable blessings ‘that God has prepared for those who love Him’ (1 Cor. 2:9).
And if these blessings are beyond our conception, how much more so must be the God who created all things from nothing.
St Peter of Damaskos
