Maximos the Confessor: “reason obedient to God”

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“… the blessed Anna, the mother of the great Samuel, being barren and childless, asked God for the fruit of the womb, and fervently promised to give back to God who had given it the baby she was to be given by making him a servant in the temple. The secret teaching of this is that every soul must be barren of fleshly pleasures through being sown by God with the seeds of virtue, so that, conceiving in the mind and giving birth to reason obedient to God, it might be able to bring forth the power to see with knowledge what is in front of it, through a religious attention to contemplation. So that judging nothing its own, as a great and precious obligation, everything is referred to God who gives and receives.”

St. Maximos the Confessor

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