The heart will linger in the place where its most cherished possessions are to be found. Fundamentally, this is a spiritual connection that is not reducible to any particular experience, devotion, exercise, or activity—although it may subsist and express itself in any of them. What Saint John calls the inner anointing (1 Jn 2:27) trains us by a double-sided dynamism, secretly attaching us to God and simultaneously detaching us from the false self, as this is mirrored to us by an unbelieving ambience. Saint John says that this anointing teaches us everything; this is not so much an imparting of theological information as a deep affective bonding that retrains our instincts and gives us a nose to distinguish what is of God and what is not.
Michael Casey
Fully Human, Fully Divine, p. 310
