Clear Canvas

44. Stop defiling your flesh with shameful deeds and polluting your soul with wicked thoughts; then the peace of God will descend upon you and bring you love.

St. Maximus the Confessor Four Hundred Centuries on Love: #44

Imagine the soul as a clear, blank canvas, still to be colored by the tints of our thoughts and actions. Every stroke, every hue in this canvas of a personality signifies the ideas entertained, the choices, and the actions. When our actions are ignoble and our thoughts are unclean, it is as though we take a brush dipped in muddied colours and soil the canvas with every careless swathe.

Maximus the Confessor invites us to put down these tarnished brushes, to cease the defilement of our flesh with actions that leave dark marks upon our life's canvas. "He exhorts us to get rid of the smog of the skies that pollutes the clear sky of our soul with thoughts that eclipse our inner light."

Take the act of creating a masterpiece. An artist must first ensure that the palette is clean, the colors pure, and the canvas unblemished. Similarly, to invite the peace of God into our life, we should first cleanse the palette of our heart, purify the colors of our intentions, and present a canvas which is unmarred by the chaos of sin and vice.

The peace of God is like the dawn after a very long night breaks, in light not sharp nor piercing, but tender, able to force away any shadow it strikes. It brings with it a warmth that softens the hardened paint of past mistakes, allowing us to begin anew. Every deed of virtue, every noble thought, adds a stroke of light and harmony to this picture, so that here is a work which in its reflection may be considered as a work of God Himself.

And with that peace comes love. Not love as an emotion, but as a state of being, so much a part of us as to be woven into the very fabric of existence. It is a love that is patient and kind, that rejoices in the truth, and that bears all things. This divine love does not push its way onto the canvas but rather waits for our invitation, requiring that we first set the stage through our own efforts of purification and sanctification.

So let us be careful stewards of our soul's canvas. Let us choose actions that beautify rather than blemish, thoughts that illuminate rather than obscure. For when we do, the peace of God will certainly set upon us, reaching out to our soul the transcendental love that changes, fulfils, and redeems.