Just as one who suffers from a burning fever is sickened by and rejects any food of drink that you may offer him even if it were very delicious, because he is on fire with a fever and is really burning up from it, so those who are burning with holy and venerable longing for the heavenly Spirit are wounded in their soul with love for the love of God. They burn with a divine and heavenly fire which the Lord came on this earth to enkindle. How He wishes that is be quickly accomplished! They are enflamed with a heavenly longing for Christ so hat everything that is of this world, considered as outstanding and precious, is reputed base and despised on account of the fire of their love for Christ who binds them, burns them, and enflames them with a passion for God and for the heavenly good things that lead to love. From such a love nothing of the earth or underworld will separate them, as the Apostle Paul testified: "Who will separate us from the love of Christ?" (Rom 8:35), and all that follows.
+St. Macarius the Great, from Fifty Spiritual Homilies, Homily 9
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