The man who has struggled bravely with the passions of the body, has fought ably against unclean spirits, and has expelled from his soul the conceptual images they provoke, should pray for a pure heart to be given him and for a spirit of integrity to be renewed within him (cf. Ps. 51:10). In other words, he should pray that by grace he may be completely emptied of evil thoughts and filled with divine thoughts, so that he may become a spiritual world of God, splendid and vast, wrought from moral, natural and theological forms of contemplation.

A passion is a contranatural movement of the soul or an irrational love, or an blindfold hatred toward any material thing, or because of it: for example, for food, or for women, or for riches, or for worldly glory, or any other sensible thing; or for the sake of such things, as in a senseless hatred for someone on account of the things mentioned above.

...one's movement towards the divine reaches its end only when one reaches God... 'The true Sabbaths are the rest laid up for the people of God' (Heb. 4:9). God can 'bear these sabbaths' (cf. Is. 1:13) because they are true. And the one 'in which the world is crucified' (Gal. 6:14) reaches these sabbaths of rest because he has clearly turned away from worldly things and returned to his own spiritual resting place. The one who arrives there will no longer be moved from his place, for there he finds quiet and tranquility.

As we have borne the image of the earthy, let us also bear the image of the heavenly

Just as the thought of fire does not warm the body, so faith without love does not actualize the light of spiritual knowledge in the soul.

Whoever sees in himself the traces of hatred toward any man on account of any kind of sin is completely foreign to the love of God. For love toward God does not at all tolerate hatred for man.

Humility and ascetic hardship free a man from all sin, for the one cuts out the passions of the soul, the other those of the body. This is what the blessed David indicates when he prays to God, saying, "Look on my humility and my toil, and forgive all my sins" (Ps. 25:18).