As a drop of water poured into wine loses itself, and takes the colour and savour of wine; or as a bar of iron, heated red-hot, become like fire itself, forgetting its own nature; or as the air, radiant with sun-beams, seems not so much to be illuminated but to be light itself; so in the saints all human affections melt away by some unspeakable transmutation into the will of God… The human substance will endure, but in another beauty, a higher power, a greater glory.
Saint Bernard of Clairvaux