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On the Mystical Life: The Ethical Discourses, Volumes 1–3 is unavailable, but you can change that!

St. Symeon the New Theologian was abbot of the monastery of St Mamas in Constantinople at the turn of the eleventh century. He was also perhaps the most remarkable and certainly the most forceful advocate of the mystical experience of God in the history of the Byzantine Church. Though they were on occasion suppressed by ecclesiastical authorities wary of his fierce enthusiasm, as well as his...

nobles, and expensive perfumes, nor of candles, lamps, and a crowd of people. These things do not make the feast radiant, nor are they the true feast, but are symbols of the feast. Beloved, what does it profit me, not just to speak of lighting candles and lamps in the church, but even if I were able to acquire such lights as the sun which shines from heaven, or instead of many lamps were to affix stars to the ceiling of the church and make it a new sky and a thing unheard of upon the earth, and again,
Volume 1, Page 174