Just as the gardener who does not weed his garden chokes his vegetables, so the intellect that does not purify its thoughts is wasting its efforts.
Search the Scriptures and you will find the commandments; do what they say and you will be freed from your passions.
When you have been given faith, self-control is demanded from you; when self-control has become habitual, it gives birth to patient endurance, a disposition that gladly accepts suffering.
~St Thalassios the Libyan
Rage leads to shame,
anger begetting ignominy—
a fire that ends in embers.
What more must we endure?
I want to thrash and scream,
and make my displeasure known
to the universe.
The cold dark emptiness
dampens my cries,
absorbs my wails,
and ignores me.
Too many tears
like so much rain,
is tedious,
and erodes the slopes
within me.
A fire now rages—
hot and angry,
consuming everything,
engulfing homes,
and devouring my heart.
After a flood,
a fire feels good,
until it doesn’t.
A comforting warmth,
which burns,
intensifies, and destroys—
then covers us in a smoky
shroud of misery,
and shame.
What more must we endure,
yet again?
But to what end are all these tears,
and all this rage?
After all of this—
embarrassment and
humiliation.
Emotions to no purpose.
Even so
the earth endures—
green grass will emerge
through charred ruins.
And the beautiful rose
Nature itself gives no small token of the knowledge of providence planted naturally within us whenever it urges us instinctively towards God through prayer in times of sudden crises, and makes us seek salvation from Him. For when we are suddenly overtaken by violent events, before thinking of anything else we involuntarily call upon God. Is is as if providence itself, without any conscious thought on our part, were drawing us to itself, outstripping the speed of our noetic faculty and showing us that divine help is stronger than anything else. Nature would not lead us purposelessly to what does not naturally exist. It is clear to everyone that whatever is a natural consequence of something demonstrates its own authenticity with the force of truth.
~St Maximos the Confessor
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, 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 (Hebrews 11:13), fighting bravely against the world and the body and the assaults stemming from them. And, having stifled the deceit which both of these engender because of the close connection existing between the senses and sensible objects, they keep the dignity of this soul unenslaved.
Using the mellow thought of pleasure as if it were a sword, the passion of gluttony makes many virtues childless. By means of dissipation it kills the seeds of self-restraint; through greed it corrupts the equity of justice; with self-love it severs the natural bond of compassion. In short, the passion of gluttony destroys all virtue’s offspring.
~St Maximos the Confessor
God did not order the sabbath, the new moons and the feasts to be honored because He wanted men to honor the days themselves: this would have been tantamount to decreeing by the Law that men should worship creation rather than the Creator (Romans 1:25), and should regard the days as holy in themselves and therefore to be venerated. On the contrary, He indicated that He Himself was to be honored symbolically through the days. For He is the sabbath, as the soul’s repose after its exertions in the flesh, and as the cessation of its sufferings in the cause of righteousness. He is the Passover, as the liberator of those held in the bitter slavery of sin. He is the Pentecost, as the origin and consummation of all created beings, and as the principle through which all things by nature exist. Thus the Law destroys those who apprehend it in a literal or outward way, leading them to worship creation rather than the Creator, and to regard as holy in themselves things that were brought into existence for man’s sake; for they remain ignorant of Him on whose account they were created.
~St Maximos the Confessor
Everyone who has fallen away from divine love is ruled through sensual pleasure by the carnal law. With such a law, he cannot keep a single divine commandment, nor does he wish to: preferring a life of pleasure to a life ruled by virtue and lived in the Spirit of God, he embraces ignorance instead of knowledge.
To treat one’s neighbor as oneself is to be concerned simply with his existence. This pertains to the natural law. To love one’s neighbor as oneself is to care, in a way that accords with virtue, for his well-being. This is prescribed by the written law (Leviticus 19:18 & Mark 12:33). To love one’s neighbor more than oneself is a prerogative of the law of grace.
~St Maximos the Confessor
The patient endurance of the saints exhausts the evil power that attacks them, since it makes them glory in sufferings undergone for the sake of truth. It teaches those too much concerned with a life in the flesh to deepen themselves through such sufferings instead of pursuing ease and comfort; and it makes the flesh’s natural weakness in the endurance of suffering a foundation for overwhelming spiritual power. For the natural weakness of the saints is precisely such a foundation, since the Lord has made their weakness stronger than the proud devil.
The written law, by preventing wrongdoing through fear, accustoms one to do what is right. In time such custom produces a disposition filled with the love of righteousness, and this in turn produces a settled state of goodness, obliterating the memory of past sins.
~St Maximos the Confessor
Just as soul and body combine to produce a human being, so practice of the virtues and contemplation together constitute a unique spiritual wisdom, and the Old and New Testaments together form a single mystery. Goodness by nature belongs to God alone, from whom all things capable by nature of receiving light and goodness are enlightened and blessed with goodness by participation.
~St Maximos the Confessor
Prayerful Life 