The Holy Spirit is Food and Drink and Clothing
Just as the darkness does not go away unless the light is present, so the disease of the soul is not banished unless he who takes away our infirmities comes and unites himself with us. He is called health when he comes because he chases away every disease and infirmity of the soul and gives us back our health. And he is called light, who transcends all light, because he illumines us; and life, who is beyond all life, because he vivifies us.
Shining around us all, and encircling and cherishing us with the glory of his divinity, he is called raiment, and so we say that we clothe ourselves with him who is intangible in every way and who cannot be grasped. Uniting himself without mingling with our soul, and making it all as light, he is said to indwell us and, uncircumscribed, become circumscribed. O the miracle! It is thus that he who transcends all things is said to become all things for us: bread, shelter, and the water of which he said to the Samaritan woman of old that he who would drink of it would never thirst. So, if you are still thirsty, you have not yet drunk of that water, for he who said this does not lie.
I once heard someone say: “From the time the Master who loves mankind gave me to drink of this water to satiety, if it ever happened that I forgot and, as one who had not drunk, asked again that he give me to drink, that same water which I had drunk before would leap within my heart and spring up like a stream in the form of light, and I would see it immediately. Pulsing within me, it would speak in a way and say to me: ‘Do you not see that I am with you inside? And where would you ask that I be given you, or where else should I appear? Do you not know that I am always with those to whom I have given myself once for all to drink of me, and that I become in them a spring that does not die?’”
Symeon the New Theologian, from On the Mystical Life
Symeon the New Theologian (949-1022) was a Byzantine monk and poet. He was only one of three saints to be given the title of theologian (along with John the Apostle and Gregory Nazianzus). He was regarded as one who spoke and taught from personal experience of the vision of God. Symeon frequently talked about the importance of directly experiencing the grace of God. His better known works include Hymns of Divine Love, Discourses, and On the Mystical Life, from which the above excerpt is taken.