“Wish you, for a moment, what St. Maxim said, and you will see how your being will change and will light up! Wish for a moment, and you will immediately realize how easy it is! Is it possible that God can demand hard things from us? Is it possible for God to burden us? (…) That He can say to us: ‘Love is fullness, love is fulfillment, love is perfection, love unites us to God’, means that love is the easiest thing” Archimandrite Emilianos of Simonos Petras

All St. Maxim’s chapters on love are inspired by the everyday life of man and by the mysterious marriage of God with every soul; therefore they have a purely nuptial expression. The genuineness of love for God is connected with the traits of legality, permanence and faithfulness in marriage. The one who authentically loves God is the one who does not introduce into his life the “divorce” with God, that is, does not bring a third person or some other thing that intervenes and nullifies the conjugal faithfulness between his soul and God. He who genuinely loves God, he also always prays unrepentantly. And he who prays always unceasingly, he also genuinely loves God. But he who has his mind set on earthly things, he does not pray without restraint. The passions that dominate the mind bind it to material things and, having separated it from God, cause it to indulge in them. (II, 3) He who has cast off self-love, the mother of the passions, with God’s help, easily casts off the other passions, such as anger, sorrow, remembrance of evil, and the rest. And he who is ruled by the first is wounded, even unwittingly, by the second. And the love of self is passion toward the body. (II, 8) When the mind begins to advance in the love of God, then the devil also begins to tempt it and to put in its train such thoughts as no man, but the devil, who is the author of them, can conceal. (II, 14) There are four things in all the words of the Lord: commandments, dogmas, threatenings, promises. (II, 24) The mind, when it works well, advances in the spirit. And when it well fulfills contemplation, it advances in knowledge. The first is to lead the struggler to discern between virtue and wickedness, and the other is to lead the partaker of it to reason about the ungodly and the fleshly. (II, 26)