Yet sometimes the mind which advances to that true disposition of purity and has already begun to be rooted in it, conceiving all of these at one and… - John Cassian

Our third conflict is against covetousness which we can describe as the love of money; a foreign warfare, and one outside of our nature. ... For the rest of the incitements to sin planted in human nature seem to have their commencement as it were congenital with us, and somehow being deeply rooted in our flesh, and almost cœval with our birth, anticipate our powers of discerning good and evil, and although in very early days they attack a man, yet they are overcome with a long struggle. But this disease coming upon us at a later period, and approaching the soul from without, as it can be the more easily guarded against and resisted, so, if it is disregarded and once allowed to gain an entrance into the heart, is the more dangerous to every one, and with the greater difficulty expelled. For it becomes "a root of all evils" [1 Timothy 6:10] and gives rise to a multiplicity of incitements to sin.

The holy person ... when, raised up from the earth, he contemplates all present and earthly realities as mere smoke and an empty shadow and disdains them as soon to disappear;
when, with ecstatic mind, he not only ardently desires future realities but even sees them with clarity;
when he is effectively fed by spiritual theoria;
when he sees unlocked to himself the heavenly sacraments in all their brightness;
when he sends prayers purely and swiftly to God;
and when, inflamed with spiritual ardor, he passes over to invisible and eternal realities with such utter eagerness of soul that he cannot bring himself to believe that he is in the flesh.

It is possible that those who are in no way pressed down with the weight of money may be condemned with the covetous in disposition and intent. For it was the opportunity of possessing which was wanting in their case, and not the will for it.