All God’s gifts to us are beyond all beauty and are the origin of all our goodness, but there is nothing that can set our hearts on fire or move them to the love of goodness itself as much as the gift of divine understanding. It is the firstborn child of God’s grace and the first of the great gifts he gives to the soul. It starts by disconnecting us from our current obsessive desires and gives us, instead of our longing for corruptible things, a deepening love for the ineffable riches of divine comprehensions. From that point onward, the mind catches fire in a blaze of transcendence, so as to become a concelebrant in the liturgy of the angels.
–Saint Diadochus of Photike (c. 400 – c. 486)
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