11 Sayings of St. Maximus the Confessor on Love

11 Sayings of St. Maximus the Confessor on Love

1. 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.

Four Hundred Texts on Love 1.13,
The Philokalia: The Complete Text (Vol. 2)

2. The person who loves God values knowledge of God more than anything created by God, and pursues such knowledge ardently and ceaselessly.

Four Hundred Texts on Love 1.4

3. Sometimes men are tested by pleasure, sometimes by distress or by physical suffering. By means of His prescriptions, the Physician of Soul administers the remedy according to the cause of the passions lying hidden in the soul.

Four Hundred Texts on Love 2.44

4. 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.

Four Hundred Texts on Love 1.29

11 Sayings of St. Maximus the Confessor on Love

5. If we detect any trace of hatred 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.

Four Hundred Texts on Love 1.15

6. Do not say that you are the temple of the Lord, writes Jeremiah (cf. Jer. 7:4); nor should you say that faith alone in our Lord Jesus Christ can save you, for this is impossible unless you also acquire a love for Him through your works. As for faith by itself, the devils also believe and tremble (Jas. 2:19).

Four Hundred Texts on Love 1.39

7. 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.

Four Hundred Texts on Love 1.44

8. 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. Just as the light of the sun attracts a healthy eye, so through love knowledge of God naturally draws to itself the pure intellect.

Four Hundred Texts on Love 1.31-32

9. He who has genuinely renounced worldly things, and lovingly and sincerely serves his neighbor, is soon set free from every passion and made a partaker of God’s love and knowledge.

Four Hundred Texts on Love 1.27

10. In times of peaceful relationships do not recall what was said by a brother when there was bad feeling between you, even if offensive things were said to your face, or to another person about you and you subsequently heard of them. Otherwise, you will harbor thoughts of rancor and revert to your destructive hatred of your brother.

Four Hundred Texts on Love 4.34

11. When a man’s intellect is constantly with God, his desire grows beyond all measure into an intense longing for God, and his incisiveness is completely transformed into divine love. For by continual participation in the divine radiance, his intellect becomes totally filled with light; and when it has reintegrated its passable aspect, it redirects this aspect towards God, as we have said, filling it with an incomprehensible and intense longing for Him and with unceasing love, thus drawing it entirely away from worldly things to the divine.

Four Hundred Texts on Love 2.48,

11 Sayings of St. Maximus the Confessor on Love