Like doctors, when treating various physical ailments, do not prescribe one medicine to everyone, so does God, in treating our spiritual ailments, apply more than one suitable type of ministration. But He does cure every soul with medicines that are specifically beneficial to it. Let us thank Him for curing us, even though the medicine did inflict suffering upon us.
Saint Maxim the Confessor
If you are holding a grudge against someone, pray for him so that the prayer — in banishing your sorrow from the inflicted hurt — halts any rancor developing within you. If you are friendly and loving, you will completely drive out this passion from your soul. When another person is angry with you, be gentle and humble with him, fraternize in a friendly spirit, thereby helping him to rid himself of malice.
Saint Maxim the Confessor
Like doctors, when treating various physical ailments, do not prescribe one medicine to everyone, so does God, in treating our spiritual ailments, apply more than one suitable type of ministration. But He does cure every soul with medicines that are specifically beneficial to it. Let us thank Him for curing us, even though the medicine did inflict suffering upon us.
Saint Maxim the Confessor
He who conquers the source of passions , egoism, with God’s help, would easily conquer the other passions: anger, sadness, rancor and others. He who is conquered by egoism, becomes ulcerated with other passions, even if he did not want this.
Saint Maxim the Confessor
Fear of God is twofold: one is born from the threat of punishment. This engenders sequentially in us: abstinence, patience, hope in God and absence of passions, from which love is born. The other fear is joined with love itself and brings about a feeling of veneration, so that this love does not exceed itself in boldness and start neglecting God. In this way, one type of fear is virtuous and the other — impure. Fear that arises from sinning and the expectations of suffering is impure. Having its beginnings from the acknowledgment of sinning, it will not last forever but disappear with the dissolution of sin through repentance. But virtuous fear, free of dreaded agitation caused by sins, will not leave and always remain in the soul because it’s mysteriously bound with God, manifesting a natural reverence before His greatness.
Saint Maxim the Confessor
You must love every human being with all your heart while placing your trust in God only, and serving Him with all your might. Because while He is protecting us, our friends will favor us and our enemies will be powerless to do us harm. When He forsakes us, all our friends will leave us and our enemies will take charge over us. While friends of Christ genuinely love everybody, they are not loved by all. Worldly friends do not love everybody and are not loved by everyone. Friends of Christ retain their love to the end, while worldly friends for a while — before something occurs between them that creates a conflict over some worldly matter.
Saint Maxim the Confessor
When the mind begins to flourish in its love for God, the blaspheming spirit commences to tempt it, instilling such thoughts that no human being could think of but only the devil — their father. And he does this from his jealousy of the God-loving Man, who in accepting such thoughts as his own, he would become despondent and cease having the boldness to turn to God with prayer. But the cunning one obtains no gain from his wiles, because he makes us more resolute, because in warring against him, we become more experienced and more sincere in our love toward God.
Saint Maxim the Confessor
