SYMEON THE NEW THEOLOGIAN
(949–1022)
O grandeur of ineffable glory! O excess of love! The One who embraces all things makes his home within a mortal corruptible human being, the One by whose indwelling power all things are governed, and a man becomes as a woman heavy with child. O astonishing miracle and incomprehensible deeds and mysteries of the incomprehensible God! A human being carries God consciously within himself as light, carries him who has brought all things into being and created them, including the one who carries him now. He carries God within as a treasure inexpressible, unspeakable, without quality, quantity, or form, immaterial, shapeless, yet with form in beauty inexplicable, altogether simple, like light; he carries the One who transcends all light…. Who can adequately explain the joy of such a person? Will he not be more blessed and more glorious than any emperor? He is wealthier than anyone or any number of visible worlds. And in what shall such a one ever be lacking? Truly, in no way shall he lack anything.
