“Let no one deceive you, brother: without holiness, as the apostle says, no one can see God (cf. Heb. 12:14).
For the Lord, who is more than holy and beyond all purity, will not appear to an impure person.
Just as he who loves father or mother, daughter or son (cf. Matt. 10:37) more than the Lord is unworthy of Him, so is he who loves anything transient and material.
Even more unworthy is the person who chooses foul and fetid sin to preference to love for the Lord; for God rejects whoever does not repudiate all filthiness: ‘Corruption does not inherit incorruption’ (1 Cor. 15:50). ”
St. Theognostos, On the Practice of the Virtues, Contemplation and the Priesthood
