Foreword to Elpidios the Presbyter
In addition to my treatise on the ascetic life I am also sending you. Father Elpidios, this treatise on love divided, on the analogy of the four Gospels, into four centuries of chapters. It may not fulfill your expectations, but it is the best that I can do. Moreover, you should know. Father, that these chapters are not the products of my own mind. On the contrary, I have gone through the writings of the holy fathers and collected from them passages relevant to my sub- ject, condensing much material into short paragraphs and in this way making it easy to remember and to assimilate. In sending these chapters to you I beg you to read them with sympathy and to seek out only what is profitable in them, overlooking the inelegant language. I also ask you to pray for my unworthy self, bereft as I am of all spiritual blessing. I have this request too: do not be annoyed by what I have written, for I have merely carried out what I was commanded to do. I say this because we who plague people with words are many nowadays, while those who teach or are taught by actions are very few.
Please give careful attention to each chapter. For I suspect that not all the chapters are easy for everyone to understand. Many of them will need to be studied closely by most readers even if what they say seems to be very simple. If anything in these chapters should prove useful to the soul, it will be revealed to the reader by the grace of God, provided that he reads, not out of curiosity, but in the fear and love of God. If a man reads this or any other work not to gain spiritual benefit but to track down matter with which to abuse the author, so that in his conceit he can show himself to be the more learned, nothing profitable will ever be revealed to him in anything. St Maximos the Confessor
First Century 1 – 10
In addition to my treatise on the ascetic life I am also sending you. Father Elpidios, this treatise on love divided, on the analogy of the four Gospels, into four centuries of chapters. It may not fulfill your expectations, but it is the best that I can do. Moreover, you should know. Father, that these chapters are not the products of my own mind. On the contrary, I have gone through the writings of the holy fathers and collected from them passages relevant to my sub- ject, condensing much material into short paragraphs and in this way making it easy to remember and to assimilate. In sending these chapters to you I beg you to read them with sympathy and to seek out only what is profitable in them, overlooking the inelegant language. I also ask you to pray for my unworthy self, bereft as I am of all spiritual blessing. I have this request too: do not be annoyed by what I have written, for I have merely carried out what I was commanded to do. I say this because we who plague people with words are many nowadays, while those who teach or are taught by actions are very few.
Please give careful attention to each chapter. For I suspect that not all the chapters are easy for everyone to understand. Many of them will need to be studied closely by most readers even if what they say seems to be very simple. If anything in these chapters should prove useful to the soul, it will be revealed to the reader by the grace of God, provided that he reads, not out of curiosity, but in the fear and love of God. If a man reads this or any other work not to gain spiritual benefit but to track down matter with which to abuse the author, so that in his conceit he can show himself to be the more learned, nothing profitable will ever be revealed to him in anything. St Maximos the Confessor
First Century 1 – 10
- Love is a holy state of the soul, disposing it to value knowledge of God above all created things. We cannot attain lasting possession of such love while we are still attached to anything worldly.
- Dispassion engenders love, hope in God engenders dispassion, and patience and forbearance engender hope in God; these in turn are the product of complete self-control, which itself springs from fear of God. Fear of God is the result of faith in God.
- If you have faith in the Lord you will fear punishment, and this fear will lead you to control the passions. Once you control the passions you will accept affliction patiently, and through such acceptance you will acquire hope in God. Hope in God separates the intellect from every worldly attachment, and when the intellect is detached in this way it will acquire love for God.
- The person who loves God values knowledge of God more than anything created by God, and pursues such knowledge ardently and ceaselessly.
- If everything that exists was made by God and for God, and God is superior to the things made by Him, he who abandons what is superior and devotes himself to what is inferior shows that he values things made by God more than God Himself.
- 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.
- Since the soul is more noble than the body and God incomparably more noble than the world created by Him, he who values the body more than the soul and the world created by God more than the Creator Himself is simply a worshipper of idols.
- If you distract your intellect from its love for God and concentrate it, not on God, but on some sensible object, you thereby show that you value the body more than the soul and the things made by God more than God Himself.
- Since the light of spiritual knowledge is the intellect's life, and since this light is engendered by love for God, it is rightly said that nothing is greater than divine love (cf I Cor. 13:13).
- 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.
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