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Christianity, Books, Religion & Spirituality

Passions of the Soul

Rowan Williams

“For Gregory, desire never leaves us, simply because there cannot be anything that finally satisfies us. We are so constituted that we are always in need of fulfilment, never attaining it in the sense of possessing what we most deeply need. If we are growing in spiritual maturity and discernment, what we desire is always to go on growing and to go on desiring. The mistake is to want to stop wanting – to desire to be satisfied so that I shall not have to desire any more, because I now have what before I lacked. I identify something, some object, which I believe will bring me a sense of greater completion: this will bring the fulfilment I lack, and when I have acquired it or mastered it, I don’t need any longer to orient myself towards it.”

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