Perfect Love

St. Maximus the Confessor says:

You have not yet acquired perfect love if your regard for people is still swayed by their characters - for example, if, for some particular reason, you love one person and hate another, or if for the same reason you sometimes love and sometimes hate the same person.

Perfect love does not split up the single human nature, common to all, according to the diverse characteristics of individuals; but, fixing attention always on this single nature , it loves all men equally. It loves the good as friends and the bad as enemies, helping them, exercising forbearance, patiently accepting whatever they do, not taking the evil into account at all but even suffering on their behalf if the opportunity offers, so that, if possible, they too become friends. If it cannot achieve this, it does not change its own attitude; it continues to show the fruits of love to all men alike. It was on account of this that our Lord and God Jesus Christ, showing His love for us, suffered for the whole of mankind and gave to all men an equal hope of resurrection, although each man determines his own fitness for glory or punishment.

If you are not indifferent to both fame and dishonour, riches and poverty, pleasure and distress, you have not yet acquired perfect love. For perfect love is indifferent not only to these but even to this fleeting life and to death.

Life and Death

"Be dead in life and you will not live in death. Let your soul die strenuously and not live in weakness. Not only those who, for the sake of faith in Christ suffer death, are martyrs; but also those who die because of the observance of His commandments."

St. Isaac the Syrian

The War against the Flesh

"...I am sure you are all familiar with the commandment of St. Paul to "make not provision for the flesh, to fulfill the lusts thereof" (Rom. 13:14). You are probably also aware that the flesh is not the body. St. Paul opposes flesh, not to mind, but to spirit, and especially to the spirit of God. Perhaps the simplest way to understand the flesh is that it is self-love. It is our innate tendency to seek our own comfort and security rather than acting, feeling, and thinking in a way that is permeated with the love of God. It manifests itself through the whole range of sins and passions: hatred, anger, gluttony, lust, sloth, and all the others.
Now the Fathers were well aware that the flesh is not the body. However, they thought that the surest way to conquer the flesh is, in fact, by disciplining the body. The reason is that the flesh manifests itself at the most elemental level as love for one's own body. To meet it on its home turf, so to speak, one must confront the body and its power of domination. This does not mean neglecting the body. It means habitually denying one's bodily urges and replacing them with urges of the spirit. The desire for food must be met by fasting; the desire to let the mind coast--to do what we do today when we plop down in front of the T.V.--must be met by prayer and study of Scripture; the desire for sleep must be met by vigils; the desire for material security must be met by almsgiving; the desire for distraction and idle chatter must be met by silence and solitude. And all of this must be done regularly enough so that the new, spiritual urges come to be habitual—so that you actually want to pray more than you want to plop down in front of the T.V.
This is very difficult. It is especially difficult to do alone. That is why practices such as regular hours of communal prayer and regular periods of required fasting were so important in the early Church. Difficult though it may be, ascetic struggle is necessary if one's most basic habits and inclinations are to be reoriented away from love of self and toward love of God. Jesus said that "from the days of John the Baptist until now the kingdom of heaven suffereth violence, and the violent take it by force" (Matt. 11:12). This is a cryptic saying, but for the Church Fathers its meaning is clear: it refers to the violence one must do to the flesh and the passions.
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from "Christianity East and West" by David Bradshaw. Dr. Bradshaw's homepage where the entire article is published is here: http://www.uky.edu/~dbradsh

Cultivating Love for God

St. Maximus The Confessor says:

Dispassion engenders love, hope in God engenders dispassion, and patience and forbearance engender hope in God; these in turn are the product of complete self-control, which itself springs from fear of God. Fear of God is the result of faith in God.

If you have faith in the Lord you will fear punishment, and this fear will lead you to control the passions. Once you control the passions you will accept affliction patiently, and through such acceptance you will acquire hope in God. Hope in God separates the intellect from every worldly attachment, and when the intellect is detached in this way it will acquire love for God.

Seeking Divine Understanding

"The brethren came to Abba Anthony and laid before him a passage from Leviticus. The old man went out into the desert, secretly followed by Abba Ammonas, who knew that this was Abba Anthony's custom. He went a long way off and stood there praying, crying in a loud voice, 'God, send Moses to make me understand this saying.' Then there came a voice speaking with him. Abba Ammonas said that although he heard the voice speaking with him, he could not understand what it said."