"Have you thought about what life-weariness means? That life-weariness emerges just when everything finite is taken away from a person although he is still allowed to retain life, that then everything around him becomes desolate and empty and repugnant, time becomes so indescribably long, indeed, that to him it is as if he were dead – yes, self-denial calls this dying to the world – and the truth teaches that a person must die to finitude (to its pleasure, its preoccupations, its projects, its diversions), must go through this death to life, must taste (as it is said, to taste death) and realize how empty is that with which busyness fills up life, how trivial is that which is the lust of the eye and the craving of the carnal heart. Alas, the natural man understands the matter exactly the opposite way. He thinks that the eternal is the empty. Certainly there is no drive so strong in a human being as that with which he clings to life – when death comes, we all pray that we may be allowed to live, but self-denial’s dying to the world is just as bitter as death. And in the house of the Lord you get to know the truth that you must die to the world, and if God has found (which, of course, is unavoidable) that you have learned this, then in all eternity no escape will help you. Therefore take care when you go to the house of the Lord."