The Mystagogy of St Maximos

   This, indeed is why the blessed old man believed that every Christian should be exhorted--and he never failed to do this---to frequent God's holy church and never to abandon the holy synaxis accomplished therein because of the holy angels who remain there  and who take note each time people who enter and present themselves to God, and they make supplications for them; likewise because of the grace of the Holy Spirit which is always invisibly present, but in a special way at the time of the holy synaxis. This grace transforms and changes each person who is found there and in fact remolds him in proportion to what is more divine in him and  leads him to what is revealed through the mysteries which are celebrated, even if he does not himself feel this because he is still among those who are children in Christ, unable to see either into the depths of the reality or the grace operating in it, which is revealed through each of the divine symbols of salvation being accomplished , and which proceeds according to the order and progression from preliminaries  to the end of everything.

from Chapter 24

St Maximos the Confessor, Century on Various Texts

A pure heart is one which offers the mind to God free of all image and form, and ready to be imprinted only with his own archetypes, by which God Himself is made manifest.

Text 82

From St Dionysios' Mystical Theology

We therefore maintain that the universal and transcendent Cause of all things is neither without being nor without life, nor without reason or intelligence; nor is it a body, nor has it form or shape, quality, quantity or weight; nor has it any localized, visible or tangible existence; it is not sensible or perceptible; nor is it subject to any disorder or inordination nor influenced by any earthly passion; neither is it rendered impotent through the effects of material causes and events; it needs no light; it suffers no change, corruption, division, privation or flux; none of these things can either be identified with or attributed unto it.

The Heresy of Pusillanimity

But the men of whom I speak, and whom I call heretics, are those who say there is no one in our times and in our midst who is able to keep the Gospel commandments and become like the holy Fathers.

Now those who say this is impossible have not fallen into one heresy, but rather into all of them, if I may say so, since this one surpasses and covers all of them in impiety and abundance of blasphemy.

He who makes this claim subverts the divine Scriptures. I think (that by making this claim) this vain person states the Holy Gospel is recited in vain, that the writings of Basil the Great and of our other priests and holy fathers are irrelevant or have been frivolously written.

If, then, it is impossible for us to carry out in action and observe without fail all things that God says, and all the saints after first practicing them have left in writing for our instruction why did at that time trouble to write them down and why do we read them in Church?

St Symeon the New Theologian
from Discourse 29

The Body of Christ - St Symeon the New Theologian

If it is true that the saints become genuinely the members of Christ Who is God of all, and if, as we said, they have as their duty remaining attached and united to His Body so the He may be their Head and they--all the saints from the beginning of the world to the Last Day--may be his members, and the many become one Body of Christ, as it were a single Man, then it follows that some, for example, fulfill the role of His hands, working even now to accomplish His all-holy will, making worthy the unworthy and preserving them for Him.

Others are the shoulders, bearing the burdens of others, or even carrying the lost sheep whom they find wandering in the crags and wild places abandoned by God. These, too, accomplish His will.

Others fulfill the role of the breast, pouring out God's righteousness to those who hunger and thirst for it, providing them with the bread which nourishes the powers of heaven.

Others still are the belly. They embrace everyone with love. They carry the Spirit of salvation in there bowels and posses the capacity to bear His ineffable and hidden mysteries.

Others, again, take the function of the thighs since they carry in themselves the fecundity of the concepts adequate to God of mystical theology. They engender the Spirit of Wisdom upon the earth, i.e., the fruit of the Spirit and His seed in the hearts of men, through the word of their teaching.

Finally, there are those who act as the legs and feet. These last reveal courage and endurance in temptations, after the manner of Job, and their stability in the good is in no way shaken or weakened, but instead they bear up under the burden of the Spirit's gifts.

On Prayer by St Makarios of Egypt

The crown of every good endeavour and the highest of achievements is diligence in prayer. Through it, God guiding us and lending a helping hand, we come to acquire the other virtues.

It is in prayer that the saints experience communion in the hidden energy of God's holiness and inner union with it, and their intellect (nous) itself is brought through unutterable love into the presence of the Lord.

"Thou has given gladness to my heart," wrote the Psalmist. And the Lord Himself said that "the kingdom of heaven is within you."

And what does the kingdom being within mean, except that the heavenly gladness of the Spirit is clearly stamped on the virtuous soul? For already in this life, the active communion with the Spirit, the virtuous soul receives a foretaste and a prelude of the eternal light of Christ's kingdom.

More from St Mark

The man who loves God benefits from both praise and blame:

If commended for his good actions he grows more zealous, and if reproved for his sins he is brought to repentance.

Our outward life should be in accord with our inward progress, and our prayers to God with our life.

St Mark the Ascetic
No Righteousness by Works
Text 165

Indistinct Images in a Mirror

Compared with the righteousness of the age to be, all earthly righteousness fulfills the role of a mirror:

It contains the image of archetypal realities, not the realities themselves as they subsist in their true and universal nature.

And compared with knowledge there, all spiritual knowledge in this world is an indistinct image:

It contains a reflection of the truth but not the truth itself as it is destined to be revealed.

St Maximos the Confessor
Second Century of Various Texts
Text 47

The Nous or Intellect

The stars are hidden when the sun rises, and thoughts are hidden when the intellect returns to its own realm.

Elias the Presbyter
Gnomic Anthology

Text 91

The Light of the Body is the Eye

“The light of the body is the eye: if therefore your eye be single,

your whole body shall be full of light.

But it your eye be evil,

your whole body shall be full of darkness.

If therefore the light that is in you be darkness,

how great is that darkness!”

(Matthew 6:22-23)

The single eye is the love unfeigned.

For when the body is enlightened by it, it sets forth through the medium of the outer members only things which are perfectly correspondent with the inner thoughts.

But the evil eye is the pretended love, which is also called hypocrisy, by which the whole body of the man is made darkness.

We have to consider that deeds meet only for darkness may be within the man, while through the outer members he may produce words that seem to be of the light: for there are those who are in reality wolves, though they may be covered with sheep’s clothing. Such are they who wash only the outside of the cup and platter, and do not understand that, unless the inside of these things is cleansed, the outside itself cannot be made pure.

Wherefore, in manifest confutation of such persons, the Saviour says: If the light that is in you be darkness, how great is that darkness! That is to say, if the love which seems to you to be light is really a work meet for darkness, by reason of some hypocrisy concealed in you, what must be your patent transgressions!

St. Gregory Thaumaturgus

Wisdom from St Maximos

For those still concerned mainly with bodily forms of virtue, the Logos of God becomes hay and straw, sustaining the passible aspects of their soul and guiding it to the service of the virtues.

For those who have advanced to true contemplation of divine things, the Logos is bread, sustaining the intellective aspects of their souls and guiding them to godlike perfection. That is why we find the patriarchs on their journeys providing themselves with bread and their asses with fodder (Gen. 24:25; 42:25,27).

For the same reason, the Levite in the Book of Judges said to the old man who questioned him in the street of Gibeah: "There is bread for us and fodder for our asses, and for your servants there is no lack of anything" (Judges 19:19).

Second Century on Love

Text 66

Whatever a Man Loves...

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.

St Maximos the Confessor
Second Century on Love, Text 7

Website on the Holy Mountain

Site on the Holy Mountain

This site has a good deal of excellent information on the Holy Mountain.

The Wisdom of Solomon

Love justice, ye rulers of the earth; set your mind upon the Lord, as is your duty, and seek him in simplicity of heart; for he is found by those who trust him without question, and makes himself known to those who never doubt him.

Dishonest thinking cuts men off from God, and if fools will take liberties with his power, he shows them up for what they are.

Wisdom will not enter a shifty soul, nor make her home in a body that is mortgaged to sin.

This holy spirit of discipline will have nothing to do with falsehood; she cannot stay in the presence of unreason, and will throw up her case at the approach of injustice.

Wisdom is spirit devoted to man's good, and she will not hold a blasphemer blameless for his words, because God is a witness of his inmost being, who sees clear into his heart and hears every word he says.

For the spirit of the Lord fills the whole earth, and that which holds all things together is well aware of what men say. Hence no man can utter injustice and not be found out, nor will justice overlook him when she passes sentence.

The devices of a godless man will be brought to account, and a report of his words will come before the Lord as proof of his iniquity; no muttered syllable escapes that vigilant ear.

Beware, then, of futile grumbling, and avoid all bitter words; for even a secret whisper will not go unheeded, and a lying tongue is a man's destruction.

Do not stray from the path of life and so court death; do not draw disaster on yourselves by your own actions. For God did not make death, and takes no pleasure in the destruction of any living thing; he created all things that they might have being.

The creative forces of the world make for life; there is no deadly poison in them.

Death is not king on earth, for justice is immortal; but godless men by their words and deeds have asked death for his company. Thinking him their friend, they have made a pact with him because they are fit members of his party; and so they have wasted away.

Christ the Stone

Christ is the Stone, the glorious Stone, the uncut Stone, rejected by the builders who were too blind to see his Ineffable Glory, so they cast him away.

He is the Stone laid in Zion, the Cornerstone of the Eternal and Imperishable Kingdom of God.

Hypocrisy according to St Maximos

Hypocrisy is the pretense of friendship, or hatred hidden in the form of friendship, or enmity operating under the guise of affection, or envy simulating the character of love, or a style of life adorned with the fiction but not the reality of virtue, or the pretense of righteousness maintained in external appearance, or deceit with the outer form of truth. Hypocrisy is the trade of those who emulate the serpent with their twistings and twinings.

St Maximos the Confessor
Third Century on Love

Text 67

Do Not Hate!

If we detect any trace of hatred in our hearts against any man whatsoever for committing any faults, we are utterly estranged from love for God, since love for God absolutely precludes us from hating any man.

June 16/29

OUR HOLY AND WONDERWORKING FATHER TIKHON, BISHOP OF AMATHIS IN CYPRUS
AND ST COLMAN MC ROI, ABBOT

Troparion of St Tikhon, Tone 3

God called thee to the sacred priesthood / as a worthy servant of the Holy Trinity. / Thou didst shine with the grace of godliness / and strengthen the Church by many miracles. / O righteous Tikhon, pray to Christ our God to grant us His great mercy.

Troparion of St Colman Mc Roi, Tone 6

Disciple of St Columcille, / thou didst return to his native land and found a monastery at Dublin. / As thou now standest before Christ with the Angels, / pray, O Colman, that those who hymn thee may obtain His great mercy.

Kontakion of St Tikhon, Tone 3

Thou wast resplendent in asceticism, O beloved of God, / and didst receive power from the Holy Spirit / to destroy idolatry, put demons to flight, / to save souls and to heal the sick. / We honour thee, O blessed Tikhon.

The Mystery of the Incarnation

The great mystery of the Incarnation remains a mystery eternally.

Not only is what is not yet seen greater then what has been revealed--for it is revealed merely to the extent that those saved by it can grasp it--but also what is revealed still remains entirely hidden and is by no means known as it really is.

What I have said should not appear paradoxical. For God is beyond being and transcends all beyond-beingness; and so, when He wished to come down to the level of being, He became being in a manner which transcends being.

Thus, too, although transcending man, yet out of love for man He truly became man by taking on the substance of men; but the manner in which He became man always remains unrevealed, for He was made man in a way which transcends man.

St Maximos the Confessor

St Nikolai of Zhicha - New Coth and Old Garments

"No man putteth a piece of new cloth on an old garment," which is to say that a wise man does not, but an ignorant man may.

This action symbolizes the usual, unchristian method of correcting a bad man by making superficial corrections; or reforming an old sinner merely by reading him a new lecture on morals; or giving a morsel to a prodigal son instead of turning him back to his father's house.

By these palliative measures, yea, by this mending of a big old evil with a little piece of something new, one makes the evil worse. This is a reproach to all superficial attempts to correct human society by mending it piecemeal, instead of by a fundamental and thorough renewal through Christ.

Second Century on Theology--St Maximos the Confessor

Before his visible advent in the flesh, the Logos of God dwelt among the patriarchs and prophets in a spiritual manner, prefiguring the mysteries of His advent.

After his incarnation, He is present in a similar way not only to those who are still beginners, nourishing them spiritually and leading them towards maturity of the divine perfection, but also to the perfect, secretly pre-delineating in them the features of His future advent, as if in an icon.

Degrees of Reality--The Hierarchical Nature of the Cosmos

The doctrine of the degrees of reality, of the hierarchical and symbolic nature of the cosmos, is the key to all arcane symbolism.

Today's Saints

HOLY PROPHET AMOS
ST LAZARUS, KING OF SERBIA

Troparion of the Prophet Amos, Tone 1

God the Word hath revealed thee, O Prophet Amos, / as a seer of things sublime. / He hath been pleased with thy life and labours, / for thou didst rebuke the ungodly and die as a martyr. / Wherefore thou wast found worthy of eternal life; / we beseech thee to intercede for us all.

Troparion of St Lazarus of Serbia, Tone 3

Thou didst desire the beauty of God's glory / and please Him on this earth. / Thou didst faithfully double the talent that was entrusted to thee. / Thou didst suffer as a martyr and receive thy reward from Christ. / O Lazarus, entreat Him to save our souls.

Kontakion of the Prophet Amos, Tone 4

Thou didst purify thy burning heart in the Spirit, / O glorious Prophet Amos. / Thou didst receive the gift of prophecy from heaven / and didst proclaim throughout the world: / This is our God and there is none beside Him.

Kontakion of St Lazarus of Serbia, Tone 8

Thou art praised by thy flock as an excellent champion, / as a courageous martyr, O divinely-wise Lazarus. / As thou hast boldness before Christ the Saviour, / entreat Him to grant humility to those who praise thee, / that we may cry: Rejoice, O wondrous Lazarus.