A Few Sayings by St. Maximus the Confessor on a Clean Mind
St. Maximus the Confessor
The clean mind sometimes God himself comes into and teaches, sometimes the holy angelic powers suggest the right things, sometimes the vision of the nature of things. … But to participate or not in His goodness and wisdom, depends to the will of the creatures who have reason.
Do not dishonor your conscience, perfectly instructing you always. Because she suggests you the divine and angelic opinion, she sets you free from the hidden infections of the heart and she gives you uprightness before God when you depart.
If you’ve known yourself, you will understand many, great and wonderful things. Because, thinking that you know doesn’t let you progress in knowing.
The sun of justice, rising into the clean mind, reveals Himself and the reasons of all that He created and will create.
Love defeats those three: self-deception, because she is not proud; Interior envy, because she is not jealous; Exterior envy, because she is generous and serene.
All the treasures of wisdom and knowledge are inside our hearts hidden.
Faith without love does not act in the soul the illumination of the divine knowledge.
When the mind receives the ideas of things, by its nature is transformed according to each and every idea. If it sees the things spiritually, it is transfigured in many ways according to each vision. But if the mind becomes in God, then it becomes totally shapeless and formless, because seeing Him who has one face it comes to have one face and then the whole mind becomes a face of light.
*Taken from Speech on Love.
That’s an incredible icon of St. Maximus!
I thought so too! =D
I really like this post, Moses! Good stuff.