Category: St Maximos the Confessor

He who loves falsehood is handed over to be harrowed by it, so that by suffering he may come to know what it is he willingly pursued, and may learn by experience that he mistakenly embraced death instead of life.

~St Maximos the Confessor

Jacob’s well (John 4:5-15) is Scripture. The water is the spiritual knowledge found in Scripture. The depth of the well is the meaning, only to be attained with great difficulty, of the obscure sayings in Scripture. The bucket is learning gained from the written text of the word of God, which the Lord did not possess because He is the Logos Himself; and so He does not give believers the knowledge that comes from learning and study, but grants to those found worthy the ever-flowing waters of wisdom that spill from the fountain of spiritual grace and never run dry. For the bucket–that is to say, learning–can only grasp a very small amount of knowledge and leaves behind all that it cannot lay hold of, however it tries. But the knowledge which is received through grace, without study, contains all the wisdom that man can attain, springing forth in different ways according to his needs.

~St Maximos the Confessor

The soul has three powers: the intelligence, the incensive power and desire. With our intelligence we direct our search; with our desire we long for that supernal goodness which is the object of our search; and with our incensive power we fight to attain our object. With these powers those who love God cleave to the divine principle of virtue and spiritual knowledge. Searching with the first power, desiring with the second, and fighting by means of the third, they receive incorruptible nourishment, enriching the intellect with the spiritual knowledge of created beings.

~St Maximos the Confessor

Since man is composed of body and soul, he is moved by two laws, that of the flesh and that of the Spirit (Romans 7:23). The law of the flesh operates by virtue of the senses; the law of the Spirit operates by virtue of the intellect. The first law, operating by virtue of the senses, automatically binds one closely to matter; the second law, operating by virtue of the intellect, brings about direct union with God.

~St Maximos the Confessor

Suppose there is someone who does not doubt in his heart (Mark 11:23)–that is to say, who does not dispute in his intellect–and through such doubt sever that immediate union with God which has been brought about by faith, but who is dispassionate or, rather, has already become god through union with God by faith: then it is quite natural that if such a person says to a mountain, ‘Go to another place’, it will go (Matthew 17:20). The mountain here indicates the will and the law of the flesh, which is ponderous and hard to shift, and in fact, so far as our natural powers are concerned, is totally immovable and unshakable.

~St Maximos the Confessor

The capacity for unintelligence is rooted so deeply in human nature through the senses that the majority think that man is nothing more than flesh, which possesses sense faculties so that he can enjoy this present life.

The Lord said, ‘First seek the kingdom of God and His righteousness’ (Matthew 6:33), that is, seek the knowledge of truth before all things, and therefore seek training in appropriate methods of attaining it. In saying this, He showed clearly that believers must seek only divine knowledge and the virtue which adorns it with corresponding actions.

~St Maximos the Confessor

 

***There is a new podcast on Ancient Faith Radio entitled, The Patristics Podcast which is very good, and I encourage anyone interested in the writing of the early church fathers to give it a try at:

http://www.ancientfaith.com/podcasts/patristicspodcast

 

Faith is a relational power or a relationship which brings about the immediate, perfect and supranatural union of the believer with the God in whom he believes.

~St Maximos the Confessor

Again, he who does not limit his perception of the nature of visible things to what his senses alone can observe, but wisely with his intellect searches after the essence which lies within every creature, also finds God; for from the manifest magnificence of created beings he learns who is the Cause of their being.

~St Maximos the Confessor

The devil is both God’s enemy and His avenger (Psalm 8:2). He is God’s enemy when he seems in his hatred for God somehow to have acquired a destructive love for us men, persuading us by means of sensual pleasure to assent to the passions within our control, and to value what is transitory more than what is eternal….He is God’s avenger when–now that we have become subject to him through sin–he lays bare his hatred for us and demands our punishment.

For nothing pleases the devil more than punishing us….he does this not with the intention of fulfilling God’s command, but out of the desire to feed his own passion of hatred towards us, so that the soul, sinking down enervated by the weight of such painful calamities, may cut itself off from the power of divine hope, regarding the onslaught of these calamities not as a divine admonition but as a cause for disbelief in God.

~St Maximos the Confessor

From created beings we come to know their Cause; from the differences between created beings we learn about the indwelling Wisdom of creation; and from the natural activity of created beings we discern the indwelling Life of creation, the power which gives created beings their life–the Holy Spirit.

~St Maximos the Confessor