St Maximus the Confessor — Four Centuries of Chapters on Love
1. Love is a good disposition of the soul, by which it prefers nothing that exists to the knowledge of God; but no one can reach such a state filled with love who strives after anything earthly.
2. Love is born of dispassion; dispassion of hope in God; hope of patience and long-suffering; and these last of self-restraint in everything; self-restraint of the fear of God; and fear of faith in God.
3. He who believes in the Lord fears the torments of hell. He who fears the torments abstains from the passions. He who abstains from the passions bears trials patiently. He who endures trials gains hope in the Lord. Hope in the Lord frees the mind from every earthly passion. And a mind free from everything is filled with love for God.
4. He who loves God prefers the knowledge of God to His creatures and strives after it without ceasing.
5. If everything exists from God and for God, then God is better than all the beings He has made; therefore he who leaves God and is carried away by vain things shows that he prefers to God what exists from God.
6. He whose mind gives itself to God with love counts everything visible as nothing; even his own body will be foreign to him.
7. If the soul is better than the body, and God its Creator is incomparably better than the world, then he who counts the body better than the soul and the world made by God better than God differs in nothing from idolaters.
8. He who tears his mind away from love of the Lord and from the thought of the Lord and loves something of the senses prefers the body to the soul and to God the Creator that which exists from Him.
9. If the purpose of the mind is enlightenment by knowledge, and this light is born of the love of God, then it is well said that there is nothing greater than divine love.
10. When through love the mind is raised up to God, then it does not feel itself at all, nor anything that exists around it. Lit by the endless divine light, the mind does not perceive a single creature, as the bodily eye does not see the stars in the light of the sun.
11. All the virtues lead the mind to the love of God, but the most important is pure prayer. Winged by prayer, it is with God and stands above everything that exists.
12. When through love the mind is filled with the knowledge of God, rises above being and feels God’s infinity, then, like the divine Isaiah, who in amazement confessed his own nothingness, it will sincerely say the words of that prophet: “Woe is me! for I am undone; because I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips: for mine eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts” (Isa. 6:5).
13. It is impossible for one who loves God not to love every person as himself, though he does not approve of the passions of those who are not yet cleansed. But when he sees their turning and correction, he is filled with the greatest and unutterable joy.
14. Unclean is the passionate soul, filled with lustful and loathsome desires.
15. He who sees in his heart a trace of hatred toward some person because of a certain fall of his is wholly a stranger to the love of God. For the love of God can in no way be joined with hatred of a person.
16. “If ye love me,” says the Lord, “keep my commandments” (John 14:15). “This is my commandment, that ye love one another” (John 15:12). So he who does not love his neighbour does not keep the commandments; and he who does not keep the commandments cannot love the Lord.
17. Blessed is the person who can love everyone alike.
18. Blessed is the person who does not become attached to anything corruptible and passing.
19. Blessed is the mind which, passing beyond created things, delights unceasingly in divine beauty.
20. He who in caring for the body comes to sensuality and speaks ill of his neighbour because of something passing serves the creature more than the Creator.
21. He who keeps his body from pleasures and from the illnesses that come of them has in it a fellow worker in the service of what is better.
22. He who flees the sensuality of this world sets himself above every earthly trial.
23. He who loves God certainly loves his neighbour too; such a person cannot keep his own property but disposes of it in a way pleasing to God, helping everyone who asks.
24. He who gives alms, imitating God, makes no distinction between the evil and the good, the righteous and the unrighteous, in their bodily need, but gives to all alike according to need; though he prefers the good to the vicious for the good direction of his will.
25. God, being by nature good and dispassionate, loves all people alike as His own creation. But the good He glorifies as like Himself in character, while the wicked He has mercy on out of His compassion, punishes him in this world and turns him about. In the same way the prudent, dispassionate person loves everyone alike: the good for his nature and for the good direction of his will, and the wicked both for his nature and out of compassion for him: he pities him as one senseless and in darkness.
26. Love is shown not only by the giving away of property, but still more by the preaching of the word of God and by bodily help.
27. He who has truly torn himself away from earthly things and serves his neighbour without hypocrisy is quickly freed from every passion and becomes a partaker of divine love and of the vision of God.
28. He who has gained the love of God is like the divine Jeremiah, who “was not grieved, following the Lord his God” (Jer. 17:16), but bears manfully every toil, insult and humiliation and plans evil against no one.
29. When someone insults or humiliates you, beware of thoughts of anger, lest by reason of the insult they separate you from love and hatred take hold of you.
30. When heaviness overcomes you because of insult and reproach, then know that you have received the greatest profit from all this, since through humiliation the love of honour has been driven out of you.
31. As the thought of fire does not warm the body, so faith does not bring forth in the soul the light of knowledge without love.
32. As the light of the sun draws the healthy eye, so the knowledge of God of itself carries away the pure mind by means of love.
33. Pure is the mind which has come out of ignorance and is enlightened by the divine light.
34. Pure is the heart which is free from the passions and unceasingly gladdened by divine love.
35. Passion should be condemned as an unnatural movement of the soul.
36. Dispassion is the peaceful state of the soul, in which it cannot do evil.
37. He who by his diligence has reaped the fruit of love will not depart from it even if he tastes a thousand evils. Of this we are assured by Stephen, the disciple of Christ, and those like him, and by Christ the Lord Himself, who prayed to the Father for His murderers and asked Him to forgive them, for they knew not what they did (Luke 23:24).
38. If love suffers long and is kind (1 Cor. 13:4), then it is clear that love is foreign to the angry and the evil-minded. But he to whom love is foreign is foreign to God, for “God is love” (1 John 4:8).
39. Do not say that you are the temple of God, says the divine Jeremiah (7:4). Neither say that faith alone in the Lord Jesus Christ will save you, since this is impossible unless you gain love for the Lord, proved by works. As for bare faith, “the devils also believe, and tremble” (James 2:19).
40. The work of love is: diligent service to one’s neighbour, long-suffering, patience and the sensible use of things.
41. He who loves God offends no one and takes offence at no one because of what is passing: he grieves another and is himself grieved only out of care for salvation, with which the blessed Paul was grieved and grieved the Corinthians (2 Cor. 2:4).
42. He who loves God lives on earth like an angel: he fasts and keeps vigil, sings and prays, and always thinks good of every person.
43. If everyone strives to attain what he desires, then with what diligence should we strive to attain God, who by His very nature is good and desirable? For God is boundlessly good and desirable beyond every beautiful and longed-for thing.
44. Do not corrupt the body with foul deeds, do not defile the soul with evil thoughts — and the divine peace will come down upon you and will bring you love.
45. Wear down the body with fasting and vigil, exercise yourself without sloth in psalmody and prayer — and the light of dispassion will come down upon you and will bring you love.
46. He who has become worthy of the knowledge of God and has gained love — that knowledge of his will never be seized by the spirit of love of honour; but he who has not reached this will easily be seized by it. But if such a person, whatever he does, thinks of God and does everything for Him, then with God’s help he will easily overcome this sickness.
47. He who has not yet gained the knowledge of God inspired by love thinks much about what he does that is pleasing to God. But he who has reached this repeats in his heart the words of the patriarch Abraham, which he said when he became worthy of the manifestation of God: “Behold now, I have taken upon me to speak unto the Lord, which am but dust and ashes” (Gen. 18:27).
48. He who fears God has a constant companion — humility — and at its prompting he rises to the love of God and to thankfulness. God reminds him that he formerly lived according to the demands of the world, reminds him of his various sins committed in his youth and of how the Lord delivered him from all this and turned him from a life full of passions to a life in the Lord. With fear he receives love too and with deep humility gives thanks to the Lord, the Benefactor and Governor of our life.
49. Do not defile the mind with lustful and angry thoughts, lest, having fallen away from pure prayer, you come under the spirit of despondency.
50. The mind loses its hope in God when it becomes a companion of evil and unclean thoughts.
51. The senseless man, enslaved to the passions and overcome by anger, in the time of turmoil hastens to flee thoughtlessly from the brethren. But when sensuality takes hold of him, then, repenting, he returns again and talks with them. The prudent man acts otherwise in both cases. When he is angry, he cuts off the causes of disturbance and is freed from anger against the brethren; and when sensuality presses upon him, he keeps from desires and from idle talk.
52. In the time of hindrances do not leave your monastery, but bear manfully the revolt of thoughts, especially of those that stir up despondency and sadness, since by this way, tried by trials with a good intention, you will gain firm hope in the Lord. But if you leave the monastery, you will be untried, faint-hearted and unsteady.
53. If you do not want to lose the love of God, then do not fall asleep angry with your brother, and do not let him fall asleep offended with you. “But first be reconciled to thy brother, and then come” (Matt. 5:24) with a pure conscience, and offer the sacrifice of Christ’s love in your prayers before sleep.
54. If, in the words of the divine apostle, without love even one who has all the other gifts of the Holy Spirit gains no profit, then with what diligence it befits us to gain love (1 Cor. 13:3)!
55. If love “worketh no ill to his neighbour” (Rom. 13:10), then he who envies his brother, who is grieved at his fame or stains his name with an evil word, who maliciously slanders him — does he not make himself a stranger to love and guilty of eternal punishment?
56. If love is “the fulfilling of the law” (1 Cor. 13:10), then he who remembers evil against his neighbour, who plans evil against him, who curses him and rejoices at his fall — is he not a breaker of the law and does he not deserve eternal torment?
57. If “he that speaketh evil of his brother, and judgeth his brother, speaketh evil of the law, and judgeth the law” (James 4:11), and the law of Christ is love (John 13:34), then does not the one who speaks evil separate himself from the love of Christ and become himself the cause of his own eternal torment?
58. Do not lend your ear to the tongue of the evil-speaker, nor to the tongue of one who loves evil talk, who with pleasure speaks or hears a word against his neighbour; so that you may not be separated from the love of God and become a stranger to eternal life.
59. Do not listen to one who reproaches your father, and do not encourage one who insults him; lest for what you have done the Lord be angry with you and wipe you from the face of the earth.
60. Shut the lips of the slanderer to your hearing, so as not to sin doubly along with him: so as not to become a partaker of this destructive passion and, by not resisting it, not to speak ill of your neighbour.
61. “But I say unto you,” says the Lord, “Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you” (Matt. 5:44). Why did the Lord give this commandment? So as to free you from hatred, from offence, from anger and from remembrance of wrongs, and to make you worthy to gain that perfect, great love which cannot be borne by one who does not love all people equally, like the Lord, who loves all alike and “will have all men to be saved, and to come unto the knowledge of the truth” (1 Tim. 2:4).
62. “But I say unto you, That ye resist not evil: but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also. And if any man will sue thee at the law, and take away thy coat, let him have thy cloke also. And whosoever shall compel thee to go a mile, go with him twain” (Matt. 5:39–41). Why? So that the Lord may keep you free from anger, from turmoil and from irritation, and that by your freedom from anger He may teach the other one good too and lead you both by His love, for God is good.
63. Of whatever things we once strove after, of those we carry within us passionate representations. Why then are things themselves hateful to one who has defeated passionate representations? Because, compared with the things themselves, the fight with the memories of things is as much harder as it is easier to sin in the mind than to sin in deed.
64. Among the passions a distinction is made between the bodily and those of the soul. The bodily take their cause from the body, while those of the soul take it from one’s inward state. But love and self-restraint cut off both: love those of the soul, and self-restraint the bodily.
65. Some passions belong to the incensive part of the soul, others to the desiring part. Both are born by means of the senses and when the soul is left without love and self-restraint.
66. The passions of the incensive part of the soul are harder to overcome than those of the desiring part; therefore for their healing the Lord gave us the strongest commandment — love.
67. Every passion belongs either to the incensive, or to the desiring, or to the reasoning part of the soul, as for instance forgetfulness and ignorance; but despondency seizes the soul with all its force. Suddenly and swiftly it sets almost all the passions in motion. Therefore it is heavier than all the other passions. But the good Lord, giving us a medicine against it, says: “In your patience possess ye your souls” (Luke 21:18).
68. Never strike any of the brethren, especially without cause, lest he, unable to bear the trial, run away. Then you will nowhere escape the pangs of conscience, which during prayer will always bring you sorrow and will separate your mind from hope in God.
69. Do not receive the one who stirs in you the temptation of some suspicion against any person whatever, for he who, out of something that happened willingly or unwillingly, sets you badly against some person “has not known the way of peace” (Rom. 3:17), which by means of love leads those who love it to the knowledge of God.
70. He has not yet gained perfect love who deals with people according to their characters: loving one and hating another for this or that reason; or loving one and the same person sometimes and sometimes hating him for the same reason.
71. Perfect love does not divide the single nature of people according to their various qualities, but loves everyone alike. It loves the good as a friend and the wicked as an enemy. It does good to him, is long-suffering, bears the harm he causes, does not repay evil, even helps him when the occasion calls for it, so that, if possible, it may make him too its friend. And if it does not succeed in this, it still does not give up its good disposition toward him and always shows the fruit of love equally toward all people; so our Lord Jesus Christ too, having shown us His love, suffered for the whole human race and granted to all alike the hope of resurrection. Though each person makes himself worthy either of blessedness or of hell.
72. He who does not count as equally nothing glory and lowliness, riches and poverty, pleasure and sorrow, has not yet attained perfect love. Perfect love counts as nothing not only all this but even this earthly life and death.
73. Listen to what he says who has attained perfect love: “Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? As it is written, For thy sake we are killed all the day long; we are accounted as sheep for the slaughter. Nay, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him that loved us. For I am persuaded, 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 creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Rom. 8:35–39).
74. Listen to what is said about love for one’s neighbour: “I say the truth in Christ, I lie not, my conscience also bearing me witness in the Holy Ghost, that I have great heaviness and continual sorrow in my heart. For I could wish that myself were accursed from Christ for my brethren, my kinsmen according to the flesh: who are Israelites” — and so on (Rom. 9:1–4). The same was said by Moses and by other saints.
75. He who does not put to death the love of honour and sensuality, and the love of money born of them, will not cut off the causes that kindle anger. And he who does not cut off all this will not attain perfect love either.
76. Humility and hardship (bodily straitness) free a person from every sin, since the first cuts off the passions of the soul and the second the bodily ones. So blessed David laboured, as is seen from his prayer to God: “Look upon mine affliction and my trouble, and forgive all my sins” (Ps. 24:18).
77. By means of the commandments the Lord grants dispassion to those who keep them, and by means of the divine doctrines the light of knowledge.
78. Every doctrine speaks either of God, or of His visible and invisible creations, or of the meaning and judgement revealed in them.
79. Almsgiving heals the incensive part of the soul; fasting quenches sensuality; prayer cleanses the mind and prepares it to know the truth, for the Lord gave us the commandments according to the powers of the soul.
80. “Learn of me,” says the Lord, “for I am meek and lowly in heart” (Matt. 11:29). Meekness keeps the incensive part from being disturbed, while humility frees the mind from pride and love of honour.
81. The fear of God is of two kinds: the first is born of the dread of punishment, from which there are born in us in turn self-restraint, hope in God and dispassion, and from this, love. The second is bound up with love itself and gives birth in the soul to reverence, so that the soul, made bold by love, may not come to a disregard of God.
82. The first kind of fear perfect love “casteth out” (1 John 4:18) of the soul, and he who has gained it no longer has the fear of torment; while the second, as has been said, always accompanies the soul. To the first correspond these words of Scripture: “The fear of the Lord teaches wisdom, and humility goes before glory” (Prov. 15:33); “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge” (Prov. 1:7); to the second: “The fear of the Lord is pure, enduring for ever and ever” (Ps. 18:9), “and there is no want to them that fear him” (Ps. 33:9).
83. “Mortify therefore your members which are upon the earth: fornication, uncleanness, inordinate affection, evil concupiscence, and covetousness,” and so on (Col. 3:5). The apostle called the mind of the flesh earthly: by fornication he means the sin committed in deed; by uncleanness, the desire for fornication; by inordinate affection, passionate thoughts; by evil concupiscence, the habitual acceptance of sensual thoughts; by covetousness, the things that rouse and strengthen passion. The divine apostle calls us to put to death all this as part of the mind of the flesh.
84. At first memory brings a simple thought into the mind, and if it lingers there, then from it passion is set in motion; and if you do not put the passion to death, it inclines the mind to desire; and when this too has happened, then the sin is accomplished in deed as well. Therefore the wise apostle, when writing to Christians converted from paganism, first counsels the cutting off of the sin committed in deed, and then returns to the same order and comes to the causes of sin. And the cause that gives birth to passion and strengthens it is, as was said above, covetousness, which, in my opinion, means here gluttony, the mother and nurse of sin; for covetousness, both in regard to property and in regard to food, is an evil, just as self-restraint is a good not only in regard to food but in regard to things as well.
85. As a bird tied by the foot returns to earth as soon as it begins to fly, since the cord holds it back, so the mind which has not attained dispassion, though it strives toward the knowledge of heavenly things, is drawn back to earth, being bound to the passions.
86. When the mind is wholly cleansed of the passions, then it moves without hindrance toward the contemplation of truth; its aim is to know the Holy Trinity.
87. The pure mind, grasping things, strives toward their spiritual contemplation; but when through negligence it is defiled, then it merely pictures things to itself, and perceives anything human according to foul and evil thoughts.
88. If during prayer no earthly thought ever hinders your mind, then know that you are not outside dispassion.
89. When the soul feels itself healthy, then pure and untroubled dreams will begin.
90. As the feeling eye is drawn by the beauty of visible things, so the pure mind is drawn by the knowledge of the invisible. By the invisible I mean the bodiless.
91. It is a great thing not to strive after things, but it is far greater not to be held by the passion of representations of them, since the evil spirits war against us through the representations of things with greater fury than through the things themselves.
92. He who has advanced in virtue and been enriched with knowledge, as one who beholds things in their true essence, always does and says everything with sound judgement and by no means turns aside from this road. It follows from this that by our prudent or senseless attitude to things we are either good or evil.
93. The sign of perfect dispassion is when both in waking and in sleep the representations of things meet the heart simply.
94. By the keeping of the commandments the mind is freed from the passions; by the spiritual contemplation of visible things, from passionate thoughts about things; by the knowledge of the invisible it renounces the contemplation of visible things; and finally, by the knowledge of the Holy Trinity, even the knowledge of invisible things themselves.
95. As the sun by its rising lights the world and makes known both itself and the things it lights, so the Sun of truth (the Lord), shining out in a pure mind, makes known both Himself and everything made by Him and existing through Him.
96. We know God not by His essence, but by His great creations and by His providence for them. In them, as in a mirror, we see the infinite goodness, wisdom and power of God.
97. The mind is pure either in blameless reflection on human matters, or in the natural knowledge of visible things, or in the knowledge of the invisible, or in the light of the Holy Trinity.
98. In contemplating visible things the mind examines either their natural qualities, or that which is glorified through them, or it seeks their very cause.
99. But when it exercises itself in the knowledge of invisible things, the mind tries to understand their natural qualities, the cause of their existence and what comes from them, and what God’s providence and judgement concerning them are.
100. When the mind is in the Lord, then, kindled with love, it first tries to know God as essence, but finds consolation not in the knowledge of what is in God, since this is impossible and cannot be contained by any created being, but is at rest in the knowledge of what surrounds God, for example: eternity, beginninglessness, uncircumscribedness, goodness, wisdom, the power of almightiness, of all-providence and of all-justice. In God only this is knowable to all, that He is without beginning; and the very knowledge of His unknowability is a wisdom surpassing the mind, as the mighty fathers of theology, Gregory and Dionysius, have said.
