The answer
This is truly describes how the person feels who communes with God, the source of true joy. St. Augustine says, “whoever possesses God is happy.”504 Also, “To strive after God, then, is to desire happiness; to reach God is happiness itself.”505
St. Jacob of Sarug says, “The soul is enriched by God when it loves Him; it eats and drinks from Him when it follows Him … For when Moses spent a long time with Him, he shone exceedingly; he drank of Him so that he shone like the sun. The soul eats from God and is sated from Him, until the body itself lives without care (Matt. 6:26–34). Moses lived forty days without food or drink and did not hunger.”506 “Eating bread weighs one down and makes one lazy; but knowledge gives the soul wings with which to fly.”507
Fr. Tadros Yacoub Malaty
Notes
504 St. Augustine of Hippo, The Happy Life 2.11 (FOTC 5:59).
505 St. Augustine of Hippo, The Way of Life of the Catholic Church 11.18 (FOTC 56:17).
506 See Behnam Sony, Man in the Teaching of St Jacob of Sarug (1995): pp. 69–70.
507 See Behnam Sony, Man in the Teaching of St Jacob of Sarug (1995): p. 53.