A message to the yahoo forum by Fr Michael: 

Remember St. Athanasius' startling dictum:  "God became man so that man might become God."   Paul reminds us that we are a "new creation" (2 Cor. 5:17), even as the Second Letter of Peter claims that we are "sharers in the Divine Nature" (1:4).  We really must regain some of this boldness!   For the more fainthearted, theology reassures us that we are "adopted" children; that we are "God by participation", and not "God by nature."   Still, the experience is cataclysmic and overwhelming:   the caterpillar becoming a butterfly, according to St. Teresa of Jesus, or the log becoming fire, according to St. John of the Cross.