St Symeon the New Theologian - The person who participates in the Holy Spirit is freed...

The person who participates in the Holy Spirit is freed from impassioned desires and sensual pleasures, but he is not divorced from his natural bodily needs.

In virtue of his deliverance from the bonds of impassioned desire and his union with immortal tenderness and glory, he strives unflaggingly to attain the heights, to dwell there with God, and not to lose even for a moment his vision of God and his insatiable delight.

But because he is fastened to the body and to corruption, he is dragged down and pulled along by them, and is turned towards earthly things.


His distress at this must be as great, I imagine, as that of a sinner's soul when it is separated from the body.

St Symeon the New Theologian