rendering unto God all that belongs to Him

Struggle to keep the commandments.

The commanments are assimilation’s of God. They are things that have been uttered by God, and thus they are an extension of God Hinself; they come directly from Him, and to them my will must be united…

…the purpose of the commandments then, is rendering to God what belongs to to God. It is, we could say my self identification with God, my being found together with God, with what He thinks, and with what the Holy Trinity thinks together as one. The moral or ethical life which is the concrete application of God’s commandments, does not consist in, “I must do this, and not do that; this is forbidden, that is permitted.” To the contrary, morality is essentially a fullness of life in God, having as its basic element the assimilation of God’s will, and the rendering to God of all that belongs to Him, so that my work and activities are in accord with God who is still working.

The Mystical Marriage : Spiritual Life According to Saint Maximos the Confessor

Elder Aemilianos of Simonopetra

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