‘If the intellectual being is moved intellectually in a way appropriate to itself, it certainly perceives. If it perceives, it certainly loves what it perceives. If it loves, it certainly experience ecstasy over what is loved. If it experience ecstasy, it presses on eagerly, and if it presses on eagerly it intensifies its motion; if its motion is intensified, it does not come to rest until it is embraced wholly by the object of its desire. It no longer wants anything from itself, for it knows itself to be wholly embraced, and intentionally and by choice it wholly receives the lifegiving delimitation. When it is wholly embraced it no longer wishes to be embraced at all by itself but is suffused by that wich embraces it. In the same way air is illuminated by light and iron is wholly inflamed by fire, as the case with other things of this sort.’
St. Maximus the Confesser – Ambiguum 7 On the beginning and end of rational creatures