Thoroughly Pervaded with His Power

When the soul is drawn into the immediate presence of God and is thoroughly pervaded with His power, it becomes like fire, and in this state of glory takes on the appearance of a new higher spirit, a higher nature. When pure fire penetrates a pure metal with its heat, the metal loses its massiveness and hardness, and at the same time gives forth light and warmth, without forfeiting it own essence. In some such way the substantial fire of the divinity penetrates the soul with a heat it irradiates, owing to which the soul loses, not its own nature, but its natural lowliness and ponderousness and is drawn up to God, to receive light and warmth resembling the divine heat.

—Matthias Scheeben, Nature and Grace (1861)