Feast Day: January 21st
The Life of Saint Maximus: Three candles appeared over the Grave of Saint Maximus and burned Miraculously. This was a sign that Saint Maximus was a beacon of Orthodoxy during his lifetime, and continues to shine forth as an example of virtue for all…
+
Prayers
Troparion: Champion of Orthodoxy, teacher of purity and of True Worship, enlightener of the universe and adornment of Hierarchs: all-wise father Maximus, your teachings have gleamed with light upon all things. Intercede before Christ God to save our Souls.
Kontakion: Let us the faithful fittingly praise the lover of the Trinity, the great Maximus who taught the God-inspired Faith, that Christ is to be Glorified in His two natures, Wills, and energies; and let us cry to him: “Rejoice, herald of the faith.”
“In our age, we need, more than any time before, the teaching of three Fathers: Saint Gregory Palamas, Saint Maximus the Confessor, and Saint Symeon the New Theologian.” – Saint Sophrony of Essex
+
“It is You (Christ) who must set me ablaze and transmute me into fire that we may be welded together and made one.”
“God is the true goal of all longing, all desire and all love.”
“Do not compare yourself with weaker men but rather apply yourself to fulfilling the commandment of love. For by comparing yourself with the weak you will fall into the pit of conceit, but by applying yourself to the Commandment of love you will reach the height of humility.”
“A Monk is a man who has freed his intellect from attachment to material things and by means of self-control, love, Psalmody and Prayer cleaves to God.”
“It is said that the highest state of Prayer is reached when the intellect goes beyond the flesh and the world, and while Praying is utterly free from matter and form. He who maintains this state has truly attained unceasing Prayer.”
“Prayer gives thanks for blessings received and asks for failures to be forgiven and for power to strengthen us for the future; for without God’s help the Soul can indeed do nothing.”
“He who loves God lives the Angelic life on Earth, fasting and keeping Vigils, Praying and singing Psalms and always thinking good of every man.”
“A pure Soul is one freed from passions and constantly delighted by Divine Love.”
“All the virtues co-operate with the intellect to produce this intense longing for God, pure Prayer above all. For by soaring towards God through this Prayer the intellect rises above the realm of created beings.”
“It is said that the highest state of Prayer is reached when the intellect goes beyond the flesh and the world, and while Praying is utterly free from matter and form. He who maintains this state has truly attained unceasing Prayer.”
“The person who loves God values knowledge of God more than anything created by God, and pursues such knowledge ardently and ceaselessly.”
“Let us place all our hope in Him alone. And let us cast all our care on Him alone, He will deliver us from every trouble, and all our life He will support us. Let us love every man sincerely, but put our hope in none; because insofar as the Lord keeps us, all friends also respect us and no enemy can do anything to us. But when the Lord deserts us, then every friend deserts too and every enemy grows strong against us. Even more, he that relies on himself will fall a mighty fall, while he that fears the Lord will be exalted.”
“The mind of Christ which the Saints receive according to the saying, “We have the mind of Christ”, comes along not by any loss of our mental power, nor as a supplementary mind to ours, nor as essentially and personally passing over into our mind, but rather as illuminating the power of our mind with its own quality and bringing the same energy to it. For to have the mind of Christ is, in my opinion, to think in His way and of Him in all situations.”
“When, in the intensity of its love for God the intellect goes out of itself, then, it has no sense of itself or of any created thing. For when, it is illumined by the infinite Light of God, it becomes insensible to everything made by Him, just as the eye becomes insensible to the stars when the sun rises.”
“A sure warrant for looking forward with hope to Deification of human nature is provided by the Incarnation of God, which makes man God to the same degree as God Himself became man… Let us become the image of the One Whole God, bearing nothing Earthly in ourselves, so that we may consort with God and become gods, receiving from God our existence as gods. For it is clear that He Who became man without sin will Divinize human nature without changing it into the Divine Nature, and will raise it up for His Own sake to the same degree as He lowered Himself for man’s sake.”
+
“Food is not evil, but gluttony is. Childbearing is not evil, but fornication is. Money is not evil, but avarice is. Glory is not evil, but vainglory is. Indeed, there is no evil in existing things, but only in their misuse.”
“In every trial and in all warfare use Prayer as your invincible weapon, and by the Grace of Christ you will be victorious.”
“Let yourself die while striving, rather than living in laziness. For those who die while trying to keep the Commandments are just as much Martyrs as those who died for Christ’s sake.”
“Stop defiling your flesh with shameful deeds and polluting your Soul with wicked thoughts; then the Peace of God will descend upon you and bring you love.”
“He heals with individual treatment each of those who are trying to make progress.”
“He who believes fears; he who fears is humble; he who is humble becomes gentle and renders inactive those impulses of incensiveness and desire which are contrary to nature. A person who is gentle keeps the Commandments; he who keeps the Commandments is purified; he who is purified is illumined; he who is illumined is made a consort of the Divine Bridegroom and Logos in the shrine of the Mysteries.”
“Every genuine confession humbles the Soul. When it takes the form of thanksgiving, it teaches the Soul that it has been delivered by the Grace of God.”
“When the body sins through material things, it has the bodily virtues to teach it self-restraint. Similarly, when the intellect sins through impassioned conceptual images, it has the virtues of the Soul to instruct it, so that by seeing things in a pure and dispassionate way, it too may learn self-restraint.”
“The demon of unchastity is powerful and violently attacks those who struggle against passion, particularly if they are lax about matters of diet and often meet women. With the lubricity of sensual pleasure he imperceptibly steals into the intellect and thereafter persecutes the hesychast by means of the memory, setting his body on fire and presenting various forms to his intellect. In this way he evokes his assent to sin. If you do not want these forms to linger in you, turn again to fasting, labor, vigils and blessed stillness with intense Prayer.”
“When passions dominate the intellect, they separate it from God, binding it to material things and preoccupying it with them. But when love of God dominates the intellect, it frees it from its bonds, persuading it to rise above not only sensible things but even this transitory life.”
“Humility and suffering free a man from all sin; for the first cuts out Spiritual passions, and the latter bodily.”
“A Soul filled with thoughts of sensual desire and hatred is unpurified!”
“We carry about with us impassioned images of the things we have experienced. If we can overcome these images we shall be indifferent to the things which they represent. For fighting against the thoughts of things is much harder than fighting against the things themselves, just as to sin in the mind is easier than to sin through outward action.”
“When a sparrow tied by the leg tries to fly, it is held back by the string and pulled down to the Earth. Similarly, when the intellect that has not yet attained dispassion flies up towards Heavenly knowledge, it is held back by the passions and pulled down to the Earth!'”
“If God suffers in the flesh when He is made Man, should we not rejoice when we suffer, for we have God to share our sufferings? This shared suffering confers the Kingdom on us. For he spoke truly who said, If we suffer with Him, then we shall also be glorified with Him” (Roman 8:17)”
“When faced with the eruption of the passions, you should courageously close your senses and totally reject the images and memories of sensible things, and in every way restrict the intellect’s natural tendency to investigate things in the external world. Then, with God’s help, you will abase and overcome the cunning tyrannical power which rises up against you.”
“When desire grows strong, the intellect in sleep imagines things that give sensual pleasure; and when the incensive power grows strong, it imagines things that cause fear. For the impure demons, finding an ally in our negligence, strengthen and excite the passions. But Holy Angels, by inducing us to perform works of virtue, make them weaker.”
“Whatever a man loves he inevitably clings to, and in order not to lose it he rejects everything that keeps him from it. So he who loves God cultivates pure Prayer, driving out every passion that keeps him from it.”
“Sometimes men are tested by pleasure, sometimes by distress or by physical suffering. By means of His prescriptions the Physician of Souls administers the remedy according to the cause of the passions lying hidden in the Soul.”
“Some passions are bodily, others spiritual. Bodily passions have their sources in the body, while spiritual ones come from external things. But love and temperance cut out both the one and the other: Love cuts out spiritual passions, and temperance bodily ones.”
“As long as I remain imperfect and refractory, neither obeying God by practising the Commandments nor becoming perfect in Spiritual knowledge, Christ from my point of view also appears imperfect and refractory because of me. For I diminish and cripple Him by not growing in Spirit with Him, since I am ‘the body of Christ and one of its members’ (I Cor. 12:27).”
“If you keep your body free from disease and sensual pleasure it will help you to serve what is more noble.”
“Impurity of body consists in the actual committing of sin.”
“When the body is urged by the senses to indulge its own desires and pleasures, the corrupted intellect readily succumbs and assents to its impassioned fantasies and impulses. But the regenerated intellect exercises self-control and withholds itself from them. Moreover, as a true philosopher it studies how to rectify such impulses!”
“Trials are sent to some so as to take away past sins, to others so as to eradicate sins now being committed, and to yet others so as to forestall sins which may be committed in the future. These are distinct from the trials that arise in order to test men in the way that Job was tested.”
“The demons either tempt us themselves or arm against us those who have no fear of the Lord. They tempt us themselves when we withdraw from human society, as they, tempted Our Lord in the desert. They tempt us through other people when we spend our time in the company of others, as they tempted Our Lord through the Pharisees. But whichever line of attack they choose, let us repel them by keeping our gaze fixed on the Lord’s example!”
“Those who seek Spiritual knowledge with much labor, but do not succeed in finding it, fail either through lack of faith or perhaps because in their stupidity and jealousy they have it in mind to attack those who possess knowledge, just as the people of old once attacked Moses. We can rightly apply to them the passage in Scripture which says that when some men tried to force their way up the mountain, the Amorites dwelling in that mountain came out and wounded them (cf. Deut. 1:43-44). For inevitably those who put on a show of holiness for the sake of self-display not only fail to achieve anything through their false piety, but also are wounded by their conscience.”
“It is through our fulfilling of the Commandments that the Lord makes us dispassionate; and it is through His divine teachings that He gives us the light of Spiritual knowledge.”
“The task of virtue is to contend against hardship and suffering. The prize for victory, given to those who stand their ground, is the Soul’s dispassion. In this state the Soul is united with God through love, and in inward resolution it is separated from the body and the world. Those who stand their ground find that the Soul’s strength lies in the body’s affliction.”
“At first a simple thought about evil makes it into the mind, and if it is kept in the mind, then a passionate motion arises from it, and if you do not extirpate the passion, then it inclines the mind to agreement, and when this happens, it leads the mind to the commission of a sinful deed. [Guard your thoughts], for if you do not sin in thought, you will never sin in deed.”
“The demons attack the person who has attained the summits of Prayer in order to prevent his conceptual images of sensible things from being free from passion; they attack the gnostic so that he will dally with impassioned thoughts; and they attack the person who has not advanced beyond the practice of the virtues so as to persuade him to sin through his actions. They contend with all men by every possible means in order to separate them from God.”
“Some passions pertain to the Soul’s incensive power, and others to its desiring aspect. Both kinds are aroused through the senses. They are aroused when the Soul lacks love and self-control.”
“Almost every sin is committed for the sake of sensual pleasure; and sensual pleasure is overcome by hardship and distress arising either voluntarily from repentance, or else involuntarily as a result of some salutary and providential reversal. “For if we would judge ourselves, we should not be judged; but when we are judged, we are chastened by the Lord, so that we should not be condemned with the world.” (1 Cor. 11:31-32)”
“When the intellect begins to advance in love for God, the demon of blasphemy starts to tempt it, suggesting thoughts such as no man but only the devil, their father, could invent. He does this out of envy, so that the man of God, in his despair at thinking such thoughts, no longer dares to soar up to God in his accustomed Prayer. But the demon does not further his own ends by this means. On the contrary, he makes us more steadfast. For through his attacks and our retaliation we grow more experienced and genuine in our love for God. May his sword enter into his own heart and may his bows be broken (cf. Ps. 37:15).”
+
“Blessed is he who can love all men equally.”
“Cleanse your mind from anger, remembrance of evil, and shameful thoughts, and then you will find out how Christ dwells in you.”
“When you are insulted by someone or humiliated, guard against angry thoughts, lest they arouse a feeling of irritation, and so cut you off from love and place you in the realm of hatred!”
“”But I say to you,” the Lord says, “love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, Pray for those who persecute you.” Why did He Command these things? So that he might free you from hatred, sadness, anger and grudges, and might grant you the greatest possession of all, perfect love, which is impossible to possess except by the one who loves all equally in imitation of God.”
“If we detect any trace of hated in our hearts against any man whatsoever for committing any fault, we are utterly estranged from love for God, since love for God absolutely precludes us from hating any man.”
“The person who loves God cannot help loving every man as himself, even though he is grieved by the passions of those who are not yet purified. But when they amend their lives, his delight is indescribable and knows no bounds.”
“When your intellect is concentrated on the love of God you will pay little attention to visible things and will regard even your own body as something alien.”
“Stop pleasing yourself and you will not hate your brother; stop loving yourself and you will love God.”
“Do not lightly discard Spiritual love: for men there is no other road to Salvation.”
“If you totally fulfil the Command to love your neighbour, you will feel no bitterness or resentment against him whatever he does. If this is not the case, then the reason why you fight against your brother is clearly because you seek after transitory things and prefer them to the Commandment of love.”
“He who loves God will certainly love his neighbour as well.”
+
“Christianity is an entirely new way of being human.”
“A pure heart is perhaps one which has no natural propulsion towards anything in any manner whatsoever. When in its extreme simplicity such a heart has become like a writing-tablet beautifully smoothed and polished, God comes to dwell in it and writes there His own laws.”
“Just as the thought of fire does not warm the body, so faith without love does not actualize the light of Spiritual knowledge in the Soul.”
“Human beings are not isolated from the rest of creation. They are bound by their very nature to the whole of creation.”
“He, who forsakes all worldly desires, sets himself above all worldly distress.”
“When the body dies, it is wholly separated from the things of this world. Similarly, when the intellect dies while in that supreme state of Prayer, it is separated from all conceptual images of this world. If it does not die such a death, it cannot be with God and live with Him.”
“The person who truly wishes to be healed is he who does not refuse treatment. This treatment consists of the pain and distress brought on by various misfortunes. He who refuses them does not realize what they accomplish in this world or what he will gain from them when he departs this life.”
“Let us be satisfied simply with what sustains our present life, not with what pampers it.”
“Since God is absolute Existence, absolute Goodness and absolute Wisdom, or rather, to put it more exactly, since God is beyond all such things, there is nothing whatsoever that is opposite to Him. Creatures, on the other hand, all exist through participation and Grace, while those endowed with intelligence and intellect also have a capacity for goodness and wisdom. Hence they do have opposites. As the opposite to existence they have non-existence, and as the opposite to the capacity for goodness and wisdom they have evil and ignorance. Whether or not they are to exist eternally lies Within the power of their Maker. But whether or not intelligent creatures are to participate in His goodness and wisdom depends on their own will!”
“A wise man, whether teaching or learning, only wishes to learn or teach those things which are useful.”
“Just as the physical eye is attracted to the beauty of things visible, so the purified intellect is attracted to the knowledge of things invisible. By things invisible I mean things incorporeal.”
“Try to learn why God created; for that is true knowledge. But do not try to learn how He created or why He did so comparatively recently; for that does not come within the compass of your intellect. Of Divine realities some may be apprehended by men and others may not. Unbridled speculation, as one of the Saints has said, can drive one headlong over the precipice.”
“When God, Who is absolute fullness, brought creatures into existence, it was not done to fulfill any need but so that His creatures should be happy to share His likeness, and so that He Himself might rejoice in the joy of His creatures as they draw inexhaustibly upon the Inexhaustible.”
“The achievements of the worldly are failures for Monks; and the achievements of Monks are failures for the worldly. When the Monk is exposed to what the world sees as success – wealth, fame, power, pleasure, good health and many children, he is destroyed. And when a worldly man finds himself in the state desired by Monks – poverty, humility, weakness, self restraint, mortification and suchlike, he considers it a disaster.”
“A man whose intellect has been formed by the knowledge that comes by dint of the virtues through the Divine Spirit is said to experience Divine things; for he has acquired such knowledge not by nature, thanks simply to his existence, but by Grace, thanks to his participation in it. When a man has not received knowledge by Grace, even though he calls a particular thing Spiritual, he does not know its true character from experience, for mere learning does not produce a state of Spiritual knowledge.”
“The Mystery of the Incarnation of the Logos is the key to all the arcane symbolism and typology in the Scriptures, and in addition gives us knowledge of created things, both visible and intelligible. He who apprehends the Mystery of the Cross and the Burial apprehends the inward essences of created things; while he who is initiated into the inexpressible power of the Resurrection apprehends the purpose for which God first established everything.”
“Listen to the words of those who have been granted perfect love: “What can separate us from the love of Christ? Can affliction, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or the sword? ‘As it is written, For Thy sake we are put to death all the day long; we are regarded as sheep for slaughtering’ (Ps. 44:22). But in all these things we are more than conquerors through Him that loved us. For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other created thing, can separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus Our Lord” (Rom. 8:35-39). Those who speak and act thus with regard to divine love are all Saints!”
Icons
+
