(pp. 23-27)

It is not very difficult to love those who love us, be patient with those we admire or forgive those who think the way we do. Yet it is difficult to hold back our anger when we believe someone we dislike has wronged us or, “even if we believe in God, not to despise men who do not impress us with any visible marks of greatens.”

Yet, unless we forgive and ask to be forgiven by all, it is pointless to ask God to forgive us, Staniloae tells us.

“To ask pardon of ourselves implies coming down from our pedestal of apparent superiority…”

 It is especially excruciating when we humble ourselves to, and ask forgiveness from, those we look down upon or despise. Yet this is the liberating humility we are asked to possess. It is this humility that frees us from the “stories” we construct about ourselves, the pressure of keeping them up in public to gain acceptance and admiration, the tyranny of constantly judging others and, hence, our isolation. Forgiveness, Staniloae concludes, “implies that we recognize our dependence on others.”

In the previous chapter he showed that it is only through loving others that we become free. In this chapter, he demonstrates that it is only through forgiving and asking forgiveness from others that we will be renewed.

We should be constantly penitent to others, he states,even if we don’t believe we have ever harmed them.  We should step down from the pedestol of self-righteousness and self-assurance we have constructed for ourself remembering that: “I can never be quite certain that I have had no part in creating the unavoidable frictions which constantly arise among men and which also affect me.”

We are in union with God only when we are in communion with others, including the dead. We pray for the dead, forgiving them and hoping that others will pray for us after our death.

The church is never static, Staniloae tells us. Through the on-doing movement of prayer and forgiveness the church is constantly renewed. It is “a dynamic communion, made up of men and women who are sinners and who, at the same time, are being cleansed by their prayer for one another…”

Salvation is not a solitary act. Each of us is saved by taking part in this sacred choreography of people and actions.

So the church   becomes as it were a symphony for Christ, and so she reveals the mystery of her continuity and the mystery of the perpetual renewal of her youth.

SUMMARY OF WHAT WE READ

How does a Saint think, act and experience reality? What makes one saintly? This is the topic of Staniloae’s first chapter, Tenderness and Holiness. Having emptied himself of personal agendas and passions, the Saint is able to listen to, understand and empathize with others. His heart is open and alert to the world, finding meaning in every living being. He has erased from his heart indifference, judgment and desire to control and, thus, he is filled with respect, love, empathy and tenderness for others,

In the next chapter, Pure Prayer or Prayer of the Heart, he compares the true prayer of the heart to meditative practices that confuse sentimentality with true union with God; have no horizon or perspective and, hence, get you lost in an “impersonal infinity.”  Conversely, the only purpose of the true prayer of the heart is an encounter with “a personal God.” It engages both mind and heart but begins at the heart and love for God.

In Holiness: God Shining through the Mystery of Man, Staniloae talks about the paradoxical nature of holiness— “God, the unfathomably personal, imparts himself in his transcendence. Hence the paradoxical nature of holiness: it is one and the same time transcendence and self-disclosure, or communication.”

“Holiness is the radiance from a transcendent person whose object in revealing himself is to raise us up to him.”

Through this two-way communication, we become free to be our authentic selves– liberated from the stories we weave about ourselves and have come to believe, hence becoming confused about what is reality and what is fantasy.

Though God is transcendent,  our nature “has thus become the vehicle for the manifestation of the infinite light, or the infinitely profound consciousness of the divine hypostasis.”

In Prayer and Freedom, Staniloae shows us that only prayer can free us from the enclosed space of our making—our passions and the limits of natural law and ourselves. Prayer is continuous communication with God but can only free us from our “enclosures” through love for others. Relationships of pure love can free us and save us from darkness, but can only be entered by free men. You cannot love others when trying to dominate them.

In the last chapter, Forgiveness and the Renewal of the Church, Staniloae inserts the element of forgiveness. We can only receive forgiveness if we forgive and ask forgiveness from others, he says. In the previous chapter he shows us that in love, we forgo personal agendas and the desire to control. Likewise, in forgiveness we have to strip ourselves from every ounce of pride.

Another form of this humility is the acceptance that we can only be saved in relationship to others and are not self-contained islands. Restating his continuous theme of community as prerequisite for salvation, he compares the church to a “symphony” of constant mutual forgiveness and prayer that keeps renewing the church unto the ages.

 

 

pp. 17-22

Have you ever thought of prayer as the only avenue to true freedom? This is assertion that Staniloae makes in this extraordinary short chapter in which he defines freedom—a freedom that is achieved through prayer and forms the foundation of our relationship with God and fellow men.

His central thesis is that prayer frees us from both ourselves and the confines of nature. We exist and act in a universe of natural laws that drive “complex mechanisms.” We are participants in the natural laws and conversant with nature. We can influence it, for example, when we apply our minds to direct the movement of our bodies, when we grow our food or harm others. Yet unless we are conversant with God, we are limited by the laws of this natural world and are trapped within it by our passions. Only God, who created the universe, is not limited by its laws. Hence by praying to God, we also become free of the boundaries of what we experience through our senses and the laws of nature.

Without God, we are mere cogs in an impersonal universe. We live in a word “destitute of the divine spirit,” a “self-enclosed mechanism, entirely governed by scientific laws.” Such a world would have no meaning. “The world,” Staniloae says, “has no meaning, except as a sphere for dialogue between God and men.”

Through this dialogue “…our union with God in prayer is so perfect and complete that we can no longer tell where our work ends, and God’s work begins…”

To achieve union with God, we must achieve freedom from passions. Yet, Staniloae asks rhetorically,  isn’t it possible for a man to exert control over passions and lead a virtuous life without God?  He gives us a definitive “no” and shows us another enclosure we can be trapped within. If our own personal liberty, rather than union with God, is our only goal we are still trapped in our own pride and self-love. We are still subject to delusion and limited to only the criteria and solutions our minds can invent on their own. We are often caught in downward spirals and quagmires that lead nowhere. We become prisoners “in the realm of blind nature.”

“It is only when he is set free from himself that man becomes free in the true sense of the word…” he concludes. Drawn into a relationship of love with God, we forget about ourselves and our passions.

It is love in our relationship with God, then, that sets us free. The same applies in our relationship to other human beings. “Only a relationship of pure love with another person can set us free from the world outside and from ourselves.”

Freedom, in fact, can only be achieved through a relationship with another human being rather than solidary action or meditation. “Wanting to be lord over himself, man then finds that he is subject to himself…”

A relationship of pure love requires authentically free people, Staniloae tells us. Unless we are free of passions through a life of prayer, we want to dominate others. Love and domination, however, cannot coexist.

“Only another authentically free being, one, that is, who is free from all passion and who has therefore no desire to dominate will affirm and uphold my freedom.”

Yet our relationship with God is not one of mere submission but one of reciprocity and growth. We give ourselves to God and receive all he has and life as a gift. We are not slaves but sons and daughters of god, partaking in his freedom.

Paradoxically, “we have to give ourselves to another authentically free being in order to receive the gift of freedom, and the only freedom which is of nature inexhaustible is that of the supreme Person.”

 

From Prayer and Holiness (Chapter 2)

By Dumitru Staniloae

In the previous chapter, Staniloae alludes to St. Maximos in saying that, upon reaching the upper echelon of spiritual maturity, theosis, there are no longer dueling dualities and fragmentation.

Building on the contrast between duality and unity, he introduces the practice of pure prayer or “prayer of the heart,” also known as the Jesus Prayer. This level of purity of prayer occurs only when your heart and mind are united.

Pure prayer is concerned with reuniting the mind (nous) and the heart. Neither mind nor heart can be allowed to remain alone.

When prayer comes only from the mind, he tells us, it is cold. We utter words, engage in thoughts and entertain ideas about God without experiencing a connection with him.

Yet prayer that comes only from the heart is also incomplete. It can veer toward sentimentality, such as the sentimentalization of the Christ figure without acknowledgment of his passion or understanding of theological foundations.

Or, as represented in many of today’s spiritual trends, one’s impatience to experience immersion in a mystical experience, bypasses a relationship with the person of Christ, and creates “the feeling of being lost in an impersonal infinity.”

Staniloae makes it clear that, far from being impersonal, pure prayer requires a direct and intimate relationship with God.

The union between heart and mind has a single direction—from the mind to the heart. The mind, itself, looks to the heart to find the rest it longs for.

This because the heart is the seat of love and “the infinity of God cannot be experienced apart from his love for us.”  Far from being an abstraction “this infinity is the infinity of a God who is personal.”

During the prayer of the heart we come into a direct encounter with God and experience his reality. We “no longer encounter God through ideas but through the awareness of his presence which enables us to submit our thoughts to the test of reality In fact, “Thinking about God interrupts direct encounter with him.”

In the prayer of the heart we not only move from ideas to direct encounter but from solitary, self-induced thought to a relationship.

Staniloae makes us aware of the many obstacles preventing us from setting aside self and experiencing a total immersion in the love of God. For example, “physical sensations or to the imaginations which reflect them…” Being drawn to images that, while appearing to be good, are gateways to sin; attraction to sin, thoughts that are “considered as dangerous obstacle to the mind’s entry into the heart.”

Instead of temptations and circular thoughts Staniloae brings up examples from patristic writings.

Fathers speak of prayer as consisting or a single thought. Strictly speaking it is not even a thought, but rather an awareness in the reality of God.

He concludes:

This state of profound feeling is more adequately expressed by the wrong than by words for what is being expressed is beyond words. It is pure prayer, prayer if the whole being, in which the feelings have moved our beyond all things, all thoughts, beyond the very self, to the encounter with God.

St. Maximos’ writings penetrate the depths of our lifelong journey toward theosis. But what do our transformed lives look and feel like in our everyday lives? How might we perceive and be impacted by a saint? Eminent theologian, Dumitru Staniloae, poses that question in this short book Prayer and Holiness:

How does this renewed humanity show itself in practice, he asks?

To answer it in the first part of the book, Tenderness and Holiness, he illustrates the characteristics of a true saint. These include:

Spiritual alertness and full presence; respect and compassion vs. indifference

There is nothing that a saint is indifferent to and that does not touch his heart. “His consideration extends even to animals and to things, because in every creature he sees a gift of God’s love and does not wish to wound that love with negligence and indifference.”

Instead of being solitary or static, a saint is in continuous communion with every aspect of God’s creation. Nothing is boring, worthless, hateful or insignificant to him because “he has respect for each man and for each thing.”

His respect and compassion reveal what Staniloae calls a “higher form of tenderness.”  In the place of sentimentality or affection only for one’s loved ones, the saint has a deep connection with all creatures and things, and genuine respect for each.

Kenosis

“The model of this tenderness,” Staniloae tells us, “is the kenosis, the self-condescension, of Christ.” Rid of passions, free of personal agendas, jealousy and judgment, we are able to listen to, and care for, others without distractions or reservations, and fully give of ourselves like Christ. We thus acquire sensitivity and true insight:

…the saints can see the most secret states of soul in others. For he is able to discern in others a scarcely articulated need, the whole of their capacity to desire what is good.

Authenticity

One of our most painful of human tragedies is forgetting our true selves and mistaking who we want others to see us as, for we who we are authentically. Staniloae recalls St. Maximos’ discussions on “simplicity” – a state achieved through theosis and characterized by the absence of warring dualities and contradictions. The saints, he says, have also “passed beyond the struggle between soul and body, between good intentions and work performed between deceitful appearances and hidden thoughts, between what they pretend to be and what they actually are. They have become simple because they have given themselves entirely to God.””

Relationships

Through kenosis and simplicity, the saint is able to enter into “a higher form of relationship” with others. “He creates the conditions for a direct, candid and open relationship between himself and others,” because his goal is not to control or embarrass them but to serve as confidant; to help us achieve the insights and remedies that will result in salvation.

He will give you, as you well know, the diagnosis and effective remedy of an illness which you vaguely sense to be a mortal one.

Because “he makes the person of Christ real for you in his gentleness and strength,” he guides and inspires us through his example and ability to help us uncover our true nature.

In all these qualities is shown forth in an eminent degree the full capacity of human nature

Certainly, the need for meeting one’s potential is almost a mantra today. Staniloae’s saint, however, is not concerned with our potential for realizing our artistic or professional talents, achieving recognition and possessing material things or status. Instead, he helps us uncover the true capabilities God embedded in our nature– such as those for love, hope, inner peace, redemption, compassion, union with God– and the path for fulfilling them.

Freed from duality the saint integrates seeming contradictions, becoming a foundation of stability unto eternity:

He is rooted   in the stability of the love and suffering of God incarnate…triumphed over time while living intensely in time.

 

 

 

 

Various Texts on Theology, the Divine Economy, and Virtue and Vice, Second Century, #83-91

In these paragraphs, St. Maximos explores the extent of individual responsibility with regard to joy and pain, and thus uncVovers the foundations of change and spiritual growth.

It is “the height of folly,” he tells us, for someone who took  pleasure in a sin he committed out of his own free will—who might have made excuses for it and even taken pride in it—to look for salvation by asking a just man to pray for him. The only way he could benefit, he continues, is if he acts on these prayers.

In this way, St. Maximos shows our role in, and responsibility for, both our perdition and salvation.

He then extends the exploration to two new arenas—distress and temptation.

For St. Maximos, distress is “a state devoid of pleasure” and is unnatural.  Absence of pleasure, he tells us,  means the presence of pain.”

Distress, then, is not a state that is inherent in our God-given nature. It comes from a disorder or dysfunction of the natural condition of a faculty. It means that we used incorrectly a natural function. It comes, as St. Maximos says, from directing this faculty toward something that does not exist: perhaps conjectures about what someone might have meant and speculations about whether you should take offense; fantasies of what might have been or become; desires for things you do not possess; jealousy about lives you do not live.

 To misuse the natural function is to direct the faculty to what does not exist by nature and lacks substantial being.

Since distress stems from a choice and action of our own doing, we bear responsibility for it.

There are two kinds of distress, according to St. Maximos.

The first is produced imperceptibly in the soul, the second palpably to-the senses. The first embraces the fall depth of the soul, tormenting it with the lash of conscience; the second pervades all the senses when their natural tendency to turn towards external things is checked by pain. The first kind is the result of sensual pleasure, the second of the soul’s felicity. Or rather, the first results from sense experiences that we deliberately embrace, the second from those we suffer against our will.

 One type of distress is subject to our will. We submit to a passion that provides temporary pleasure, but it doesn’t “have the soul’s blessing.” As a result, we are tormented by our conscience and the wounding of our souls.

Another type of distress is that which occurs outside our control. While producing suffering in the senses this type of distress can yield joy in our soul.

Ironically, when we take shortcuts by trying to avoid pain and inconvenience, and choosing quick and temporary pleasure, we emerge with our souls in distress, deprived of joy. Yet when we accept involuntary pain or eschew pleasure for the sake of salvation, we will experience joy.

St. Maximos quotes Peter (1 Pet. 1:6).

…who through faith are shielded by God’s power for the salvation that is ready to be revealed in the last time. In this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while you may have had to suffer grief in various trials, so that the proven character of your faith—more precious than gold, which perishes even though refined by fire—may result in praise, glory, and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ.…

St. Maximos encapsulates the paradoxical relationships between distress and pleasure and our responsibility regarding which kind of distress we choose.

 The soul’s distress is the result of sensual pleasure. For it is sensual pleasure that produces distress of soul. Similarly, distress in the flesh is the result of the soul’s pleasure. For the soul’s felicity is the flesh’s distress.

 We face comparable choices and reap similar results in the case of temptations:

 91. Temptation willingly accepted creates distress in the soul, but clearly produces pleasure in the A trial undergone contrary to our wishes produces pleasure in the soul but distress in the flesh.

 

 

Various Texts on Theology, the Divine Economy, and Virtue and Vice, Third Century, #59-70

In these paragraphs, St. Maximos contemplates three demons: excessive love of self (self-esteem), pride and the longing for popularity. The common denominator in all three is the belief that our authentic, God-given selves have low value in themselves. We are simply not enough as we are. What’s more, we cannot rely on God alone to confer on us the kind of importance that will impress others. Hence, we take on the task ourselves, obsessively building and presenting our own fiction about us, rather than understanding God’s will for us.

After a lifetime of practice, we believe our stories about ourselves and become self-centered and self-loving. We are now invested in our own stories and, hence, we are devastated when they are challenged or taken away. Criticism by others, the loss of a position, our child’s disappointing choices, loss of status or money, lack of praise pull the rug from under our feet and lead to loss of our sense of self and despair.

This is why St. Maximos compares pride and self-love to Absalom’s beautiful hair. While it was once a source of pride, his hair ends up causing his death by trapping him in a tree and making him easy prey for his enemies.

“He who on account of his virtue or spiritual knowledge falls victim to self-esteem grows his hair like Absalom, to no good purpose” (cf. 2 Sam. 14:26; 18:9).

Trapped by our own fiction, the way Absalom was trapped by his hair, we lead lives of spiritual exhaustion, for example, by forcing ourselves to be always “on stage”—making sure our achievements are noticed, the impressions we make on others are positive, comparisons with others are in our favor. We want to reflect the virtues and characteristics that are highly admired in our world and to be praised for them.

We thus live a double life which often makes us feel disingenuous and empty.

“Outwardly he appears to pursue a moral way of life, but it is carefully contrived and mixed (like a mule) with conceit and designed to deceive onlookers.”

Like Absalom, we engineer our own demise through a series of distortions and substitutions.

Spiritual and material achievements become sources of pride because we mistake them for our own and forget that it is through God’s grace that we received them. Caught in self-love we are deluded in believing in our own omnipotence and forget our human weakness.

“Puffed up with his vainglory, he tries to supplant the spiritual father who gave him birth through the teaching of the Logos; for in his pride he wants, like a usurper, to arrogate to himself all the splendor of-the virtue and spiritual knowledge which his spiritual father possessed as a gift from God.”

Usurping and substituting God is the ultimate distortion of our perception and tragedy for mankind.

“Self-esteem,” St. Maximos tells us, “is the replacing of a purpose which accords with God by another purpose which is contrary to the divine.”

Losing our true purpose in God, we pursue popularity with others as a substitute and judge our lives by their worldly criteria: Have we met our professional potential? Are we losers because we failed to make as much money as others or sent our children to prestigious schools? Why haven’t we been invited to the homes of popular people or given the respect we deserve by our colleagues and superiors? Has the priest noticed how many liturgies we attended during Lent? How dare the new members in the church ignore us? They must not realize that we are the pillars of this community and make the highest donations?

We are thus doomed to live on the surface with a thirst for God that is never quenched by the substitutes we choose.

“The person who likes to be popular attends solely to the outward show of morality and to the wards of the flatterer. With the first he hopes to attract the eyes and with the second the ears of those Who are charmed and impressed only by what is visible and audible, and who judge virtue only with their senses.”

The result, we are told, is that:

“By doing or speaking what is virtuous in order to be seen by men, he sets a much higher value on the approbation of men than on that of God.”

Unless we have a foundation of wisdom and a purpose in God, virtues alone will not save us.

“Neither do these demons hate self-restraint, fasting, almsgiving, hospitality, the singing of psalms, spiritual reading, stillness, the most sublime doctrines, sleeping on the ground, vigils, or any of the other things which characterize a life lived according to God, so long as the aim and purpose of a person trying to live such a life are tilted in their direction.”

Even the achievement of inner stillness and reaching the last rungs in the process to Theosis are not adequate if their end goal is not union with God. The corrective is the achievement of wisdom which engenders the fear of God and leads to pure love.

Various Texts on Theology, the Divine Economy, and Virtue and Vice, Third Century, 54-#59

Latimer is the hero of a little book by George Elliott called “The Lifted Veil.” He is the heir of a wealthy family, a man of deep poetic sensibility with near prophetic insight into others’ souls. Upon his brother’s death, not only does he become the sole heir of his father’s vast fortune, but he also marries his brother’s fiancée, a woman he desired and thought himself in love with. Then why is it that we see him defeated, despondent, bereft of joy and hope in the middle of what should have been a fulfilling and joyous life?

In the paragraphs we read, St. Maximos shows us the importance of the proper order of things and steps in the path to salvation. Latimer is an example of a man lost without understanding and adhering to the proper order and timing of elements.

In the proper order, intelligence and reason serve as handmaidens “for everyone who practices the virtues.”  Decoupling intelligence from virtue can lead to destruction.

Latimer’s gifts were not subservient to virtue and, hence, were derailed by destructive passions. Long before he married his wife, he had a moment of revelation in which he clearly saw a vision of the coldness, selfishness and hatred of her soul, hidden under the exterior of youthful beauty. Yes, he purposely pushes away this knowledge and, succumbing to his passion, he marries her thus entering a life bereft of love, companionship and goodness.

Even once the proper re-ordering of things has been achieved, St. Maximos demonstrates, there is no stasis. We ascend to God through a dynamic continuum in which each step is transformative and leads to the next; each spiritual level is a steppingstone to a higher level.

Hence, harnessing intelligence and reason to virtue—what St. Maximos calls “the stage of practical philosophy” — is not our final destination. Once this level has been achieved, “intelligence and reason are set free to devote themselves to spiritual contemplation, that is to say, they contemplate the inner essences of created beings.”

Latimer’s gifts of poetry and insight are futile. Uncoupled from virtue they have no purpose. They dead-end in despair rather than inner transformation and union to God.

The author, herself, describes the book, and her hesitation to publish it, through what she calls a “motto” in which she questions the value of talent, intelligence and insight if they do not lead to love:

Give me no light, great heavens, but such as turns

To energy of human fellowship

No powers save the growing heritageThat makes complete manhood

Throughout the book, Latimer is overwhelmed by a vague sense of unfulfilled desire, yet he is never able to quench his thirst. In contrast, once we have entered the realm of spiritual contemplation, desire itself is transformed. It is now experienced—not as potential and fantasy but as the fulfillment of pleasure.

Thus he who has subjected desire and incensiveness to the intelligence will find that his desire is changed into pleasure through his soul’s unsullied union in grace with the divine, and that his incensiveness is changed into a pure fervor shielding his pleasure in the divine, and into a self-possessed frenzy in which the soul, ravished by longing, is totally rapt in ecstasy above the realm of created beings.

The proper timing, sequence of, and relationships among elements are essential to our journey to salvation.  You cannot skip steps to hasten your arrival to desired destinations.  For example, to free intelligence and reason “to devote themselves to spiritual contemplation,” one must have first achieved detachment from material things and a state of dispassion. Skipping these steps to jump into the state of spiritual contemplation and divine ecstasy can be disastrous.

In George Elliot’s book, Latimer rushes to the fulfillment of desire without having subjugated his intelligence to the practice of virtues. The result was an empty, fearful, isolated, hopeless and unhappy life. This is why St. Maximos advises:

But-so long as the world and the soul’s willing attachment to material things are alive in us, we must not give freedom to desire and incensiveness, lest they commingle with the sensible objects that are cognate to them, and make war

For Latimer, the lifting of the veil is futile, failing to lead to true knowledge and spiritual transformation. In spite of his gift of insight, he marries a woman who he knows is evil. In the course of the book her coldness toward him turns to hatred. After he finds out that his wife is planning to murder him, he leaves the marriage and retreats to a solitary, hopeless existence whose only purpose is to wait for his death. There is no repentance and redemption; no lessons learned; no transformation of pain into wisdom and love.

Latimer’s gifts are never fulfilled but remain self-referential and theoretical. He is a poet at heart, capable of perceiving the beauty of things and even glimpses of their inner essence. Yet he never writes or paints; never shares his thoughts and gifts with others to deepen his connection with them; never uses them as gateways to love and goodness. In fact, as the novel proceeds, he loses his insight and becomes increasingly isolated and non-communicative, slipping into an insular fantasy world of his own making.

He is an example of what St. Maximos sees as the perversion of natural goodness into evil, by using his own will and limited understanding to hand pick desired destinations –skipping steps and constructing his own path–rather than submitting to a God-driven order.

 

 

In these chapters St. Maximos talks about how to understand the nature of God and enter into a union with Him.

1. BEYOND HUMAN CATEGORIES

He first addresses a major challenge in our relationship to God. God is uncreated, unoriginate and uncontainable. Yet we try to understand Him through the limited categories of the created world that we know. This contradiction is the tragedy of our human condition. We long for God and the peace and unity that union with Him would confer. Yet we are doomed to an incomplete, fragmented perception of God and the world around us if we are not united with him and see through His eyes and not ours.

As long as we understand God in the flesh, through symbols and the letter of the law, we still perceive reality in fragments and be unable to achieve full knowledge of God

St. Maximos reminds us that there is a grave danger in mistaking our own perceptions for the truth; becoming so preoccupied with the symbols and words of the scripture that we lose sight of its essence.

Hence a person who seeks God with true devotion should not be dominated by the literal text, lest he unwittingly receives not God but things appertaining to God; that is, lest he feel a dangerous affection for the words of Scripture instead of for the Logos.

2. THE PATH TO THEOSIS

The solution is to progress in our spiritual knowledge so that there is no longer separation between God and us. He dwells within us and we participate, in part, in his divinity. This stage in our relationship with God is called theosis. St. Maximos’ writings on theology all concern themselves with the lifelong process of achieving theosis and the stages within it.

Conventionally, there are three stages of spiritual growth: purification, illumination and glorification. St. Maximos repeatedly shows that these stages are not static destinations but pivots for the next phase and pieces of a transformative journey to theosis.

We first renounce the “flesh.” We next rise higher through “ascetic practice/practice of virtues;” and we finally reach the stage of mystical contemplation/complete union with God.

St. Maximos uses a great variety of metaphors and perspectives to depict the stages—each time unveiling a different dimension and level of meaning. In these chapters he frequently brings up parallelisms with the Old Testament.

3. PURIFICATION AND THE VIRTUES

Our journey begins with purification—getting rid of worldly passions and attachments or there will be no space for God to enter our soul. Yet purification is not enough. It must be followed by the lifelong cultivation of virtues and a life lived in God’s commandments.

We cannot reach union with God on our own, but only through the grace of God. What we can do on our part is to cultivate virtue and nurture in our hearts the true desire for spiritual contemplation of God. It is then that we may experience the grace of God when we least expect it.

 “For he who lives not for himself but for God, is filled with all the gifts of Grace which were not previously apparent to him because of the disturbance of passions.”

4. THE MIDWAY POINT

St. Maximos sheds light on the dynamics of our individual paths to theosis by pausing to highlight the struggles at the midway point. Our journey, he says, can be compared to that of Abraham’s, from the land of the Chaldeans, which signifies passions, to the promised land which symbolizes theosis. Before reaching the promised land, Abraham makes a stop at Haran. The Israelites have succeeded in abandoning passions (the land of the Chaldeans). Yet Haran is only “the intermediate state between virtue and vice – a state not yet purified from the delusion of the senses.”

How many of us find ourselves in some way or another in that midway state; between and betwixt? Not totally lacking in faith but not totally committed to it either; admiring the principles yet unwilling to practice them; loving yet not submitting to love fully, without judgment and control.

Many may be tempted to stop the journey halfway and settle for the success they have achieved so far. This is not what we are called to do as Christians, however.

Settling for the middle means making do with a fragmented view of the word and a diminution of Christ to man-made measures. As long as I remain imperfect and refractory, neither obeying God by practicing the commandments nor becoming perfect in spiritual knowledge, Christ from my point of view also appears imperfect and refractory because of me. “For I diminish and cripple Him by not growing in spirit with Him, since I am ‘the body of Christ and one of its members’ (1 Cor. 12:27).”

St. Maximos shows the consequences of spiritual laziness:

Whoever does not advance towards God by these means remains paralyzed until the Logos comes to teach him how he can obtain prompt healing, saying to him, ‘Rise, take up your bed and walk’ (John 5:8); that is to say, the Logos commands him to upraise his intellect from the love of pleasure which dominates him, to shoulder the body of the virtues and to go home, that is, to heaven.

5. CHARACTERISTICS OF COMPLETE UNION WITH GOD:
   1. Simplicity and Wholeness

St. Maximos describes the state of unity with Christ as one in which advance “altogether beyond intellection,’ and beyond duality so that we can dwell in unity.”

Perceiving the universe through our intellect alone and through our own, worldly categories produces a multiplicity of “intellections; for it is marked by the form of each intelligible object that it apprehends.” This multiplicity prevents us from true union with God. We struggle with doubt, competing principles, confusion, faulty conclusions and passions. We are unable to discern the essence of things through conflicting allegiances, racing thoughts on past grievances and future uncertainties that rob us of the present, futile efforts to control and script our lives and that of others.

When we are united with Christ, we transition from fragmentation and multiplicity to unity. We can suddenly see the truth clearly and, hence, we are not torn by conflicting dualities.

St. Maximos brings up parallels with the Old Testament to get us to see the process of theosis from still another perspective.

According to the scripture, he tells us, “the Law instituted the Sabbath…so that your ox and your servant might rest (cf. Exod. 20:10). He sees the ox and the servants as symbols of the body. During the stage of “ascetic practice/practice of virtues,” while we have purified our senses, we are still in the realm of the created universe because our body, “the ox,” is still “led by the intellect, undergoing deprivations and discipline to attain virtue.”

However, when we ascend to the level of spiritual contemplation, our bodies and souls are no longer separate entities. “When we advanced spiritually, the duality between body and intellect is erased.” Antithetical categories no longer have meaning.

In the beginning of our journey, our intellect rejects material things to be beautified. At the stage of theosis body and spirit are united through participation in God “Rather than being passively subjugates, the body is now a participant in intellection.”  And we have now reached the Sabbath:

“…the Sabbath signifies the final goal pursued by them throughout the ascetic and the contemplative life, and so it provides for both of them a fitting rest…The Sabbath is a virtuous, dispassionate and peaceful condition of both body and soul. It is an unchanging state.”

Once we enter “the Logos, who is beyond intellection,” Maximos tells us, “then the intellect contemplates only its own immutability, and rejoices with an unspeakable joy because it has received the peace of God which transcends all intellect, and which ceaselessly keeps him who has been granted it from falling (cf. Phil. 4:7).”

2. Contemplation

Maximos sees contemplation, not as erudition or engagement in complex, abstract thoughts but, on the contrary, as a respite and utter simplicity.

One can think of mystical contemplation as a state of silence and inner stillness; a stage in our relationship with God beyond words, symbols or logical categories. It is, as St. Maximos tells us, a state in which we are able to contemplate God “in His true simplicity, in His principial state with God the Father (cf. John 1:1-2).”

“When a man passes from the life of ascetic practice to the stage of spiritual knowledge, he is absent from the flesh (cf. 2 Cor. 5:8). Caught up as on clouds by the more lofty conceptual images into the translucent air of mystical contemplation, he is able to ‘be with the Lord for ever’ (1 Thess. 4:17).

 

 

 

Love, along with faith and hope, is located at the last and ultimate rung in St. John Climacus’ Ladder of Divine Ascent. The Ladder depicts the transformative process of climbing 30 steps, through which we renounce passions and cultivate virtues, to attain theosis– a complete union with God, in other words, a state of perfect love.  Love is at the heart of St. Maximos’ teachings. He, in fact, devotes four chapters exclusively on love.  Below is a review of key themes in these chapters.

“Love,” St. Maximos tells us, is not a mere emotion but “a holy state of the soul, disposing it to value knowledge of God above all created things.” Achieving such love is not the result of any one action but an ecosystem of interrelated actions and a process of continuous, spiritual ascension and transformation.

In these chapters, St. Maximos reiterates many of the principles he repeats in his other writings, for example.

• There is a synergistic relationship among passions and a progression from the lesser to the most destructive of them. For example, greed is the chief enabler among them and opens the floodgates for the rest of them.
• Thoughts are the subtlest and, hence, most dangerous of the demons assailing us: “for the war which the demons wage against us by means of thoughts is more severe than the war they wage by means of material things.”
• We have a major role in allowing sin into our souls by first “assenting to it, before actually committing it and then gradually submitting to them until they dominate our soul and drive our thoughts and actions.”
• Total assent to sin is when desolation sets in.

PERFECT LOVE

The opposite of this desolation brought about by passions, is perfect love.

To reach the ultimate rung of theosis–perfect love and union with God—it is not enough to purify passions and lead a virtuous life. It takes a mystical and total immersion in love for God that transcends both actions and intellect.

Throughout all his writings, St. Maximos constantly explains the state of theosis, each time from a different angle and through different metaphors.

The intellect alone can only take you so far because it is still human and limited by our imperfect human nature that can never fully grasp God. To reach the state of perfect love and union with God, we have to transcend intellect and participate mystically in God’s nature.  Union with God is not manifested through intellectual understanding but through inner transformation and the ability to suddenly see the world through God’s eyes.

When we are in this state of perfect love, we are able to discern God in everything around us— not to “descry God’s inmost nature,” which is not possible, but “to discern, as far as possible, the qualities that appertain to His nature – qualities of eternity, infinity, indeterminateness, goodness, wisdom, and the power of creating, preserving and judging creatures, and so on.”

WHAT IS CHRISTIAN LOVE?

Perfect love in Christ is not simply a “feeling” or “emotion.” There is no “cuteness” or romance associated with it; no soft music playing in the background. On the contrary, as St. Maximos says, “Love of God is opposed to desire, for it persuades the intellect to control itself with regard to sensual pleasures.” Through love, we reach a state of dispassion as our hearts are free of jealously, judgment, the desire to control, possess or manipulate that block true love.

Love is a state of total union with God that allows us to perceive the world as unified with Him and ourselves as participants in that unity. Instead of focusing on our personal agendas, jealousies, recriminations, ambitions and other created things, “love impels [our intellect] to concentrate its whole natural power into longing for the divine.”

UNITY RATHER THAN SEPARATION

We often mistake passions, such as lust, the desire to control and possess, with love. In fact, we frequently dehumanize others by seeing them as mere commodities to compare ourselves to and benchmark our successes or failures against.  The remedy St. Maximos outlines is to separate the resentment from the thought and view others in the fullness of their humanity rather than through the filter of our passions, thus opening our hearts to compassion and love.

Trough love, we give an end to alienation and separation through passions and perceived our shared humanity with others.

For him who is perfect in love and has reached the summit of dispassion there is no difference between his own or another’s, or between Christians and unbelievers, or between slave and free, or even between male and female. But because he has risen above the tyranny of the passions and as fixed his attention on the single nature of man, he looks on all in the same way and shows the same disposition to all. For in him there is neither Greek nor Jew, male nor female, bond nor free, but Christ who ‘is all, and in all’ (Col. 3:11; cf. Gal. 3:28).

With love, we never again feel estranged from others and God. Love “makes it difficult or, rather, makes it utterly impossible for the intellect to estrange itself from the tender care of God.”

Love is distinguished by the beauty of recognizing the equal value of all men.

The nature of love is the nature of God and the nature of God is unity rather than fragmentation.

TRANSFORMATION

Perfect love is not an emotion toward an object but a transformative perception of, and relationship with, God and the world around us.

What does this mean? As Maximos says, when one experiences perfect love, he “sees things clearly in their true nature. Consequently, he both acts and speaks with regard to all things in a manner which is fitting, and he is never.”

And so, love is the light of our souls rather than limited to specific occasions and one on one relationships. It is the fulfillment of God’s promise of “eternal blessings” and “the pledge of the Spirit in your hearts (cf. 2 Cor. 1:22).”

With love, we become partakers of God’s nature and live in unity rather than alienation.

The nature of love is the nature of deluded God and the nature of God is unity rather than fragmentation.

(Various Texts on Theology, the Divine Economy, and Virtue and Vice Third Century #31-40)

St. Maximos begins this section with the dynamic interrelationship between love, truth and faith.

“Love,” he tells us, begins with the longing to participate in goodness which results in our “unfailing pleasure and indivisible union.”   Love is intrinsically connected to, and enabled by, truth—”the fulfillment of all spiritual knowledge and of all the things that can be known.” Like love, truth takes us from fragmentation and conflict to a state of indivisible union. Truth “transcends all things, truth admits of no plurality, and reveals itself as single and unique…”

When we are able to discern truth, we escape the anguish of ambiguity, doubt, conflicting realities and contradictions because we are now able to see clearly that there is only one simple, all-encompassing, self-evident truth. To experience truth, however, one must have faith.  Real faith is, in fact, truth in that it is “free from all falsehood.”

With our souls calmed and purified, we are then able to experience love because “a good conscience confers on us the power of love, since it is not guilty of any transgression of the commandments.”

OUR PART IN THE RELATIONSHIP WITH GOD

In this divine ecology of interrelated “puzzle pieces,” man is not merely a passive recipient but an active participant in constant interaction with God.

In the first place, God has endowed us with natural capabilities for receiving:

“for, corresponding to every divine gift, there is in us an appropriate and natural organ capable of receiving it – a kind of capacity, or intrinsic state or disposition.”

For example, “he who purges his intellect of all sensible images receives wisdom. He who makes his intelligence the master of his innate passions – that is to say, of his incensive and desiring powers – receives spiritual knowledge.”

Secondly, virtues, like truth, are not abstract concepts, frozen in a tableau, from which we can pluck them randomly. Instead, God, matches them to our individual needs and levels of preparedness.

“On some it bestows lucid spiritual knowledge of the grace they have lost, and to others it grants, through an indescribable mode of perception and by means of participation, clear understanding of the goodness for which they long.”

Thirdly, we exercise free will for the choices we make and, hence, bear responsibility for them and the state of our soul.  For example,

“our actions disclose the measure of our faith, and the strength of our faith determines the measure of grace that we receive. Conversely, the extent to which we fail to act reveals the measure of our lack of faith, and our lack of faith in turn determines the degree to which we are deprived of grace.”

This means, St. Maximos tells us, that envying others for their virtuous lives and the peace they experience is “more than misguided, for the choice of believing acting, and of receiving grace according to the measure of his faith, clearly depends on him and not on anybody else.”

THEOSIS AND THE SEVEN SPIRITS

Having shown how these virtues are interrelated and dependent on our level of preparedness and willingness to receive them, St. Maximos “deconstructs” the pieces to enable us to understand them in the context of ascendance to theosis by interpreting them in terms of the seven spirits that rest “upon the Lord. (cf. Isa. 11:2):”

• the spirit of the fear of God
• the spirit of strength
• the spirit of counsel
• the spirit of cognitive insight
• the spirit of spiritual knowledge
• the spirit of understanding
• the spirit of wisdom,

These are not merely static elements to be checked off a list. There is a logical sequence in the seven spirits, transforming them into a ladder by which we ascend to God.

First, St. Maximos says, we start our journey “by abstaining from evil because of fear;” next we “advance to the practice of virtue through strength.” By committing to practicing virtue, we advance to the ability to discern good from evil through the spirit of counsel. Cognitive insight “is an unerring perception of the ways in which virtue is to be practiced;” we understand the relationship between virtuous thought and action and enter into “a settled state of virtue.” We next ascend to the higher level of understanding in which we truly grasp and conform to “the divine principles of virtue that we have come to know.”  From this, St. Maximos writes, “we advance to the simple and undistorted contemplation of the truth that is in all things. From this point of vantage, as a result of our wise contemplation of sensible and noetic beings, we will be enabled to speak about the truth as we should.”

Far from being static, virtues are dynamic and interrelated, with each building new capabilities in us and setting the ground for the next, more advanced level of our relationship to God.

By choosing to follow this path of ascendance, we rise “step by step from what is remotest from God, but near to us, to the primal realities which are furthest from us but near to God.”