St. Gregory of Nyssa: "The purifying fire"

"IF a man distinguish in himself what is peculiarly human from that which is irrational, and if he be on the watch for a life of greater urbanity for himself, in this present life he will purify himself of any evil contracted, overcoming the irrational by reason. If he have inclined to the irrational pressure of the passions, using for the passions the cooperating hide of things irrational, he may afterward in a quite different manner be very much interested in what is better, when, after his departure out of the body, he gains knowledge of the difference between virtue and vice and finds that he is not able to partake of divinity until he has been purged of the filthy contagion in his soul by the purifying fire."

~St. Gregory of Nyssa: Excerpt from Sermon on the Dead. (A.D. 382)

11th century mosaic of St. Gregory of Nyssa.
Saint Sophia Cathedral in Kiev, Ukraine.