Friday, May 10 : Saint Maximus the Confessor

Since the pleasure of the senses gives rise to affliction, that is to say, the pain of the soul (for the two are the same thing for each other), the pleasure of the soul naturally generates affliction, that is to say, pain of the senses. He who seeks the life he hopes for, the life of our God and Savior Jesus Christ, through the resurrection of the dead, in the inheritance kept in heaven free from all corruption, from all defilement and from all blight (cf. 1 Pet 1,4), has in his soul a rejoicing and an ineffable joy: he is continually radiant, illuminated by the hope of good things to come, but he has in the flesh and in the senses an affliction, the sorrows which come to him temptations of all kinds and the suffering they inflict on him. For pleasure and pain accompany all virtue. The pain of the flesh, when it is deprived of the pleasant senses. And the pleasure of the soul, when it rejoices in the delights of reasons in spirit, pure of all sensible things. It is necessary that during present life the intelligence, now afflicted in the flesh – this is what I think – because of the numerous sorrows of the trials which befall it for virtue, always rejoices in the soul and is filled with pleasure because of the hope of eternal goods, even if in it the senses are overwhelmed. “For the sufferings of this present time cannot be compared to the glory to come, which must be revealed in us” (Rom 8:18), says the divine Apostle.

Roman Catholic Ordinary Calendar – rosary,team