God having once drawn His faithful servants to Him, and taken their salvation under His protection, He does not quit them until He has guided them to their journey's end, and lodged them safe in heaven; having received great services from His saints, He usually gives them towards the close of their days some foretastes of the felicity of the future life, in order the better to dispose them to sigh for that infinite beatitude which awaits them in paradise, to disgust them with all terrestrial things, and to make them banish from their hearts every unworthy desire: so that, seeing they can neither sing nor hear the divine praises in this world according to their liking, they enter into extraordinary desires of being delivered from the fetters of this life, to go into a place where God is perfectly and supremely loved and those desires, taking possession of their hearts, become to powerful and so pressing in the breasts of those sacred lovers, that they render their souls all languishing and sick of love, until this holy passion rises to such a degree that they sweetly die of it.
--St. Francis de Sales, Consoling Thoughts
