Set your affection on things above, not on things on the earth.
Read Chapter 3
Gregory of Nyssa
AD 394
So … if reason instead assumes sway over such emotions, each of them is transmuted to a form of virtue. For anger produces courage, terror caution, fear obedience, hatred aversion from vice, the power of love the desire for what is truly beautiful. High spirit in our character raises our thought above the passions and keeps it from bondage to what is base. Indeed, even the great apostle praises such a form of mental elevation when he bids us constantly to “think those things that are above.” So we find that every such motion, when elevated by loftiness of mind, is conformed to the beauty of the divine image.
It was not idly or without purpose that I anticipated the event and instructed your loving assembly in all these matters, but I did so that you might be carried on by the wings of hope and enjoy the pleasure before you enjoyed the actual benefit. I did it, too, that you might adopt a purpose worthy of the rite, and as blessed Paul has exhorted, you might “mind the things that are above” and change your thoughts from earth to heaven, from visible things to those that are unseen. And we see the objects of bodily sight more clearly with the eyes of the spirit.
This is not your life, he says, it is some other one. He is now urgent to remove them, and insists upon showing that they are seated above, and are dead; from both considerations establishing the position, that they are not to seek the things which are here. For whether ye be dead, you ought not to seek them; or Whether ye be above, you ought not to seek them. Does Christ appear? Neither does your life. It is in God, above. What then? When shall we live? When Christ shall be manifested, who is your life; then seek ye glory, then life, then enjoyment.
But such as entertain wicked thoughts in their minds are bringing upon themselves death and captivity; and especially is this the case with those who set their affections on this world.
