~St Maximos the Confessor
6. When your intellect is concentrated on the love of God you will pay little attention to visible things and will regard even your own body as something alien.
7. Since the soul is more noble than the body and God incomparably more noble than the world created by Him, he who values the body more than the soul and the world created by God more than the Creator Himself is simply a worshipper of idols.
8. If you distract your intellect from its love for God and concentrate it, not on God, but on some sensible object, you thereby show that you value the body more than the soul and the things made by God more than God Himself.
9. Since the light of spiritual knowledge is the intellect’s life, and since this light is engendered by love for God, it is rightly said that nothing is greater than divine love (cf. 1 Cor. 13:13).
10. When in the intensity of its love for God the intellect goes out of itself, then it has no sense of itself or of any created thing. For when it is illumined by the infinite light of God, it becomes insensible to everything made by Him, just as the eye becomes insensible to the stars when the sun rises.
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Open Dag in Utrecht op Zaterdag 4 mei 2024
Kees Voorhoeve is studiecoördinator van de Opleiding Spiritualiteit en Zingeving van de Academie voor Geesteswetenschappen
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