St. Maximos the Confessor (7th century) writes the following:
I do not think that the end of this present life is rightly called "death". More accurately, it is deliverance from death, separation from corruption, liberation from slavery. It is cessation of turbulence, destruction of wars, dispelling of darkness, rest from suffering, calming of turmoil, eclipsing of shame, escape from passions and—to sum up—the termination of all evils. The saints who have achieved these things through voluntary mortification live as strangers and pilgrims in this life (cf. Hebrews 11:13), fighting bravely against the world and the body and the assaults stemming from them. (Various Texts on Theology, The Divine Economy, and Virtue and Vice, 5:76, Philokalia)
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