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When someone is aflame with love for God, he can no longer bear to see those things visible to our sensible eyes. For now that he has received other eyes, the eyes of faith, at all times he intellectually perceives the things of heaven, and it is upon them that he fixes his intellect. While he walks on earth, it is as if he lives in heaven... Whoever is concerned to pursue the path of virtue and wants to ascend from earth to heaven abandons all that is materially visible, and with all his powers devotes himself to the struggle that his path involves. Until he manages to ascend to the very height of heaven, he neither pauses nor is he seduced by anything he sees [on his way]. -St. John Chrysostom (On Genesis)
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We love everything brilliant on earth: gold, silver, precious stones, crystal, bright clothing--why then do we not love the future glory to which the Lord calls us? Why do we not aspire to shine like the sun? "Then shalll the righteous shine forth as the sun in the kingdom of their Father." It is because we have perverted the nature of our soul by sin, and have attached ourselves to earth instead of to heaven, to corruptible things instead of to incorruptible ones; because we love earthly, transitory, perishable, and seductive splendour. But why is there such a love for everything bright in us? Because our soul was created for heavenly light, and was originally all light, all radiance; thus light is inborn in it, the feeling and desire for light are inborn in it. Direct this aspiration to seeking for heavenly light! -St. John of Kronstadt
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