pure prayer :: most fitting

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Pure prayer is not the personal property of monks or a small group of individuals. It is for everyone, it is the one activity that is the most fitting to the human person. Every human being is called to the wedding feast of the Lord, and thus every human being lives in order to practice pure prayer. It is the most simple practice or activity that a person can undertake. Of course, it is another matter entirely if a person has become accustomed to allowing his mind to wander about and be tyrannized by thoughts, so that when he turns to prayer, he does so with a head filled with distractions and thus can not engage in pure prayer.

Elder Aimilianos of Simonopetra Monastery

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

the need to experience God

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When you live a contemplative spiritual life, when your spirit is in a state of continual contemplation, your mind is never disturbed by distractions. But when you are living in the midst of the world, you struggle to find a few minutes to contemplate God, and afterwards, you quickly fall back into the patterns and routines of everyday life. The same thing can happen to a monk in a monastery: he too can become caught up in mundane activities and daily routines, just like people living in the world. Such a life is not necessarily sinful; it is simply the way life in the world is.

This is why I have to have a succession of spiritual contemplations in my life. We all h ave a great need for inner spiriutal experiences of God, of revelations given to us directly from God, in such a way that these revelations become something uniquely my own; something that I understand, and which I recognize, and which I wholly possess and “love”. This is what it means for something to be “mine” And in this case, what I live, and possess and understand and feel, is obviously God Himself. In this way, my life becomes bound up with the life of God.

Elder Aimilianos of Simonopetra Monastery

God’s will is simple

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dried sunflower blooms from the backyard garden 2019

You often hear people say that in every moment, in every event, we must seek to discover the will of God. But such an approach is rather narrow and scholastic and int he end it only leads you to anxieties and doubts. All it does is show that the person is troubled, worried, caught up in problems and thus at a distance from God.

Our will needs to be completely absorbed by the will of God. When this happens, there is no agonized questioning about “what God wants”, because in a certain way I am not, as it were conditioned or colored by my own will, but I enact the will of God. And God’s will is something very simple and within reach. There is no need for someone to puzzle over what it is, or how to recognize it, or how it should be acted on in every singe instance. When a person reaches this point. which is the basic point of departure for the spiritual life, then it is easy to enter into the mind of the Lord.

Elder Aimilianos of Simonopetra

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

that element that unites us with God

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culpeper – virginia
small rural town
down to earth people

Love is not the feeling or emotion I have when I sin, or when I hurt, or when I have a feeling of sweetness in my heart. This is why Saint Maximos says, “When the mind – not the heart – begins to make progress in the love of God. Love is that element that unites us with God. Love distances me from myself and binds me closely to God. And my deeper being, that tends toward God, and which can draw together with it the whole of the human person, is my spirit. The human spirit is similar to God in the sense that it can draw near to God, and can be united with Him. If, then, my sprit loves God then my mind will also be absorbed by God, and then I can say that I love God, and my mind will bring with it my body, and my soul.

Elder Aimilianos of Simonopetra

if you so wish

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If you so wish, believe in Him; if not, don’t believe. In either case, He remains Eternal King, seated upon His throne. If you so wish, offer Him your heart, for we encounter God in faith, in the spacious freedom of the heart. The Lord does not approach us in order to sway us with arguments and theories. He approaches us in order to enter our hearts. He is so infinitely great as to be beyond comprehension, and yet at the same time He is close, so near to hand, like an intimate acquaintance, just as He is with the Psalmist.

Elder Aimilianos of Simonopetra

rendering unto God all that belongs to Him

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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

the wings of the Holy Spirit

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S

Quite naturally then, a person is led to a state of mind, that is purely eschatological; to a mind that looks beyond this life and thinks only of the next. When someone possesses divine love, he or she no longer wishes to live in this present state of existence, but is concerned only about the future. This is because they realize that whenever the mind is drawn away and becomes preoccupied with something — with its problems, its life, or with some material thing, good or bad — but does not love God and runs the risk of forgetting Him altogether.

Saint Maximos seeks to life up the human spirit, and give it wings, so that it might soar to the heavens. This is why he uncovers for us the true meaning of life, namely that life is spiritual, it is upborne by the Holy Spirit. The wings of the Holy Spirit lift up the wings of the human spirit, freeing it from every weight and heaviness and enable it to rise upward.

Elder Aimilianos

The Mystical Marriage spiritual life according to Saint Maximos the Confessor

we are called to be people of eternity

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The life of the faithful should be filled with joy and gladness, which are among the fruits of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit Himself gives these fruits to our souls and to our communities. At the same time our life must be something that transcends the world, informed by theological thought and feeling, manifesting the experience of eternity in the place and time in which we live. We are obliged truly to be people of eternity. If we are not thinking theologically, and if our relationships are not relationships of essential contact with God, then our life will be prosaic and vain…

Elder Aemilianos of Simonopetra

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


one signifies the other

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Prayer is the transcendence of time and thus an enty into the timelessness, eternity, perfection and splendor of God. Prayer is our inclusion in the life of God, our perichoresis in God, and – if I may put it this way, our obliteration in God, so that we might become one with Him. This is what happens in prayer; this is what prayer is. And this is why love and prayer are so closely aligned that each can signify the other.

Elder Aimilianos of Simonopetra

of blessed memory

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

the toil that God undertakes

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Theotokos surrounded by blossoming trees

Think about the toil that God undertakes on your behalf. Think of His concern and anxiety for you, along with His patience, and long-suffering. Consider His wisdom, and His great strength. He has become everything entwined with all things, interwoven with all things, in the clouds, in the pillars of fire, on the mountain tops, in the low places, in our sins, in our cries, in everything. He is everywhere. And since I know that I can’t live without Him, I will never forget Him, or live apart from Him.

The Way of the Spirit, page 177-178

Elder Aemilianos of Simonopetra