Philokalia, Volume II, Athens 1893 edition, pp. 188–205 · fresh scholarly translation from the Byzantine Greek
Maximos the Confessor (c. 580–662) was a monk, theologian, and martyr — eventually mutilated and exiled by the Byzantine Emperor for refusing to sign a heretical compromise on the nature of Christ’s will. He is among the most demanding of the Greek Fathers: his thought is dense, architectural, and treats no subject as simple. He wrote this commentary on the Lord’s Prayer for a friend who had asked him about it, and what emerges is not an explanation of a familiar prayer but an unfolding of it as a compressed map of the entire Christian cosmos.
The organizing claim is announced in the prologue: the seven petitions of the Lord’s Prayer correspond to seven gifts that the Incarnate Word came to bestow on humanity. These are not seven separate things but seven dimensions of a single event — the restoration of human nature to its proper end. The gifts are: theology (direct knowledge of the Trinity), adoption by grace (deification, or theōsis), equality with the Angels, participation in eternal life, the restoration of nature to impassibility, the abolition of the law of sin, and the overthrow of the tyranny of the evil one. The whole of the Incarnation, the Passion, the Resurrection, and the eschatological completion of all things is present, in seed, in the six lines of this prayer.
Maximos reads each phrase with extraordinary precision. “Our Father” immediately reveals the Trinity: the Father is the Father, the “name” of the Father is the Son (the Name that is above every name), and the “Kingdom” of the Father is the Holy Spirit — confirmed, Maximos notes, by Luke’s version, which substitutes “let the Holy Spirit come” where Matthew has “thy Kingdom come.” The very address of the prayer is therefore a Trinitarian invocation. To pray “Our Father” is already to confess the whole faith.
The phrase “the meek shall inherit the earth” — which Maximos weaves into his reading of “thy Kingdom come” — yields one of the more beautiful passages in the text. The “earth” is not territory but the stable, immovable habit of virtue: a place of equanimity that stands at the middle point between reproach and praise, unmoved by either, the way the physical earth stands at the centre of the universe. The meek person is not passive but free — sovereign in the exact measure that they are no longer driven by passion.
The “supersubstantial bread” (the word Matthew uses, epiousios, is unique in Greek literature, possibly coined for this prayer) is read as the bread of deification — the same divine life that humanity was meant to share from the beginning, whose access was interrupted by the fall and restored by Christ. It is given to all who ask, Maximos says, but not in equal measure: those who have done greater works receive more abundantly, those lesser, more sparingly. The petition is not for physical sustenance but for the daily renewal of participation in divine life.
The petition for forgiveness is understood as a structural claim about human nature: because all human beings share one nature and one dignity, it is unfitting that this nature should be divided against itself by the tyranny of will. Forgiveness is the mechanism by which the unity of human nature is actively restored — not merely a moral gesture but a participation in the reconciling work of Christ, who abolished the enmity between human beings and between humanity and God.
The final petition — deliverance from the evil one — clarifies the nature of temptation. There are two kinds: the voluntary, pleasurable temptation that is the begetter of sin, which we are commanded to pray against; and the involuntary, painful temptation that is the instrument of divine correction and purification, of which Job is the type. The devil does not tyrannize but insinuates, working through the consent of those who heed him. Deliverance is not immunity from suffering but freedom from the choice that delivers the soul into captivity.
A note on the text: this translation is based on an OCR of the 1893 Athens Philokalia, Vol. II. The source is a two-column folio and OCR artifacts become severe from approximately page 193 onward, where columns are frequently interleaved. Passages marked [OCR garbled] indicate sections too damaged to reconstruct; the surrounding argument has been recovered from legible fragments. For a complete scholarly text, see G.C. Berthold’s translation in Maximus Confessor: Selected Writings (Classics of Western Spirituality, 1985) or PG 90:872–909.
I received my God-guarded master through his all-gracious letters, coming to me as one always present in spirit and never truly absent — yet, through the abundance of his virtue, capable of associating in a God-like manner with his servants, and not refusing the occasion that God has given to nature. Marvelling therefore at the greatness of his condescension, I mingled with my fear toward him a longing bound together with love, and made of the two — fear and longing — a single love sustained by reverence and goodwill; so that fear should not become hatred stripped of longing, nor longing become contempt for want of wholesome fear; but that love, proving itself a law, might embrace all that is naturally akin through goodwill, and hold hatred at bay through reverence, banishing contempt altogether.
This constitutive element of divine love — I mean holy fear — the blessed David recognised above all else, saying: “The fear of the Lord is pure, enduring for ever” [Ps. 18:10]. He knew it to be something other than the craven fear that arises from consciousness of guilt, for that servile fear is utterly expelled by the coming of love, as the great Evangelist John declares: “Love casts out fear” [1 Jn. 4:18]. The holy fear of which David speaks, rather, naturally inscribes the law of true affection, preserving the saints in their relationship to God and to one another for all ages, keeping the ordinance and manner of love wholly incorrupt. Moved then, as I said, by longing, and having joined that longing with fear of my master, I have maintained this law of love toward him until the present day — restrained from writing by reverence, lest contempt find entry; yet urged toward writing by goodwill, lest utter refusal to write be reckoned hatred. I write, then, being commanded to act thus, not according to what I calculate, but according to what God wills and by His grace bestows toward the birth of what is profitable.
The work of divine counsel is the deification of our nature; and the aim of the divine thoughts is the drawing of what is sought in our life toward its end. It is therefore fitting to know, practise, and rightly write about the power of the Lord’s Prayer, since it was also of this Prayer that my master, divinely moved, wrote to me his servant, making mention of it. Taking it therefore necessarily as the subject of my discourse, I beseech the Lord, the teacher of this Prayer, to open my mind to the understanding of the mysteries contained in it, and to grant me a word commensurate with the clarity of things conceived.
For the Prayer holds within its compass, inscribed as it were in brief, the whole aim of the mysteries mystically hidden within its words — or rather, to speak more to the point, proclaimed openly to those of vigorous intellect — for the discourse of the Prayer contains the petition for all the things that the Word of God wrought by means of the flesh in His self-emptying; teaching us to seek to share in those good things of which God the Father alone, through the Son as natural mediator, in the Holy Spirit, is the true bestower. He became man for their sake without change. Of these things He gave to men seven that are more universal than the rest and more excellent by special grace. These the aim of the Prayer mystically contains: theology, adoption by grace, equality with the Angels, participation in eternal life, the restoration of nature to itself in impassibility, the abolition of the law of sin, and the overthrow of the tyranny of the evil one who held us captive through deceit. Let us then contemplate the truth of what has been said.
The Word of God teaches theology when He is incarnate, showing the Father and the Holy Spirit in Himself; for the whole Father and the whole Holy Spirit were essentially and perfectly present in the whole Son when He was incarnate — not themselves incarnate, but the one as approving, the other as cooperating, in the Incarnation wrought by the Son; since the Word remained rational and living, in no way at all encompassed by any other being in respect of substance, save only by the Father and the Holy Spirit.
Adoption He bestows: a supernatural regeneration from above, given through the Spirit by grace unto full deification [theōsis], whose preservation in God is the deliberate choice of those who are born of it — cherishing by genuine disposition the grace that has been given, and through the practise of the commandments carefully beautifying the beauty granted by grace; and so much transformed toward divinity by the poverty of the passions as the Word of God descended from His own pure glory — willingly becoming in very truth a perfect man.
He has made men equal in honour to the Angels: not only because through the blood of His cross He made peace between things in heaven and things on earth, and abolished the hostile powers that filled the space between heaven and earth, showing one festival of the heavenly and earthly powers for the preservation of divine gifts — but because also, after the completion of His economy for our sake, He ascended with the body He had assumed, and united heaven and earth through Himself, and joined the intelligible to the sensible, and showed the one created nature as bound together at the extremities of its own members in virtue and the knowledge of the first Cause, united to itself.
He restores nature to unity with itself, not having men stand any longer with their will opposed to the reason of nature, but being unchanged as both nature and will. He purifies nature from the law of sin, not permitting pleasure to lead the way in His incarnation for our sake. For the conception was without seed — paradoxically beyond nature — and the birth without corruption, beyond nature. For the God who was born bound the bonds of virginity to His mother more firmly than nature did in the birth, and freed all of nature, in those who are willing, from the dominion of the law that previously held it, by mortifying bodily members in those who imitate His death voluntarily — for it is a mystery of salvation for those who are willing, not for those who are compelled.
And He overthrows the tyranny of the evil one who held us through deceit, setting forward as a weapon against him the flesh that was defeated in Adam, and conquering — to show that nature, which had once been captured unto death, now captures its captor and destroys his life with a natural death, to the end that all whom he was able to swallow, holding the power of death, he might vomit forth; and that He might give life to all of human nature, as a leaven pushing the whole mass of nature toward resurrection.
For the Prayer speaks of Father, and of the name of the Father, and of the Kingdom. And again it presents the one praying as a son by grace of this Father. It seeks that those in heaven and on earth should come to have one will. It commands the petition for the supersubstantial bread. It legislates reconciliation among men, and binds nature to itself through the mutual giving and receiving of forgiveness, not divided by the difference of will. It teaches us to pray against entering into temptation as a law of sin. And it urges deliverance from evil.
“Our Father who art in heaven: hallowed be Thy name; Thy kingdom come.”
Immediately and fittingly the Lord teaches those who draw near to begin with theology in these words, and initiates them in the mystery of the creative cause of beings according to substance. For the words of the Prayer contain a declaration of Father, and of the name of Father, and of Kingdom of Father, so that from the very beginning we may be taught to venerate, invoke, and worship the monad-Trinity. For the name of God the Father, subsisting essentially, is the Only-begotten Son. And the Kingdom of God and Father, subsisting essentially, is the Holy Spirit — for what Matthew here calls “Kingdom,” another Evangelist elsewhere calls “Holy Spirit,” saying: “Let the Holy Spirit come and purify us.” For the Father does not possess His name as an acquisition, nor do we understand His Kingdom as a dignity subsequently conferred upon Him. He did not come into being so that He might begin to be Father or King; but always being, He is always both Father and King — not having the slightest beginning of being, or of being Father or King. And if He is always, He is always Father and always King; and therefore the Son and the Holy Spirit always subsist together with the Father essentially — being from Him and in Him naturally, beyond cause and reason, yet not after Him.
Beginning then with this Prayer, we are impelled to venerate the consubstantial and supersubstantial Trinity as the creative cause of our coming to be, and to announce to others the grace of adoption given to us: being deemed worthy to call Him who is by nature Father by grace our Father also, so that, revering the name of our Father by grace, we may be diligent to inscribe in our life the marks of our Begetter, hallowing His name on earth and showing ourselves His children through deeds, and magnifying through what we understand or do the natural Son of the Father, through whom we were granted adoption. We hallow the name of our heavenly Father by grace when we mortify the earthborn desire and are purified of destructive passions. For sanctification is the complete quieting and mortification of desire at the level of sensation, abiding in which we calm the unseemly surges of anger — I say anger not because we still have it roused and intemperately superabundant, but because it has already been mortified to holiness according to reason. For anger, being the natural champion of desire, naturally ceases to rage when it sees desire dead.
Fittingly therefore, by the casting off of anger and desire, the power of the Kingdom of God and Father — according to the Prayer — comes upon those who are worthy to say “Thy Kingdom come” having cast them off — that is: the Holy Spirit, already making temple of God those who have been conformed to the pattern of meekness and humility. For He says: “Upon whom shall I rest? But upon the meek and humble and those who tremble at my words” [Isa. 66:2]; whence it is clear that the Kingdom of God the Father belongs to the meek and humble. “Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth” [Mt. 5:5]. By this earth — which stands at the middle place of all things by nature — God has promised an inheritance to those who love Him.
[On the “earth” that the meek shall inherit]
Since these things have been so promised to those who love the Lord, who — fixing his mind upon the bare letter of the Scripture — would equate the heaven and the Kingdom prepared from the foundation of the world with the earth that stands in the natural middle position of all things? Rather, the “earth” must be understood as that stable and immovable habit of goodness belonging to the meekness of those who are gentle — ever abiding with the Lord and possessing unfailing joy, already apprehended of the inheritance prepared, and deemed worthy of the station ordered in heaven. As the earth is the middle of the universe, so the principle of virtue is that according to which one remains impassible in the middle between reproach and praise — neither cast down by reproaches nor puffed up by praises, being free by nature, unaffected by either.
For whoever is the subject of the discourse of virtue stands apart from these when they press upon him, resting himself from the storm about them, and turning the whole freedom of the soul toward the divine power — desiring to receive from the Lord the impassible and free — saying, as the Lord Himself teaches those who come to Him: “Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am meek and lowly in heart, and you shall find rest for your souls” [Mt. 11:29]. And if to the humble and meek is given the unassailable power of the incorruptible Kingdom, who is so insensible and without appetite for divine goods as not to desire above all the acquisition of meekness and humility, in order to become the image of the divine Kingdom — which is possible for a human being — bearing in himself the image of the King who is by nature King according to essence?
“Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.”
He who has achieved this, who lives the life of Christ and is moved and exists in Christ, has put away from himself the birth of what is unequal and discordant — not bearing in himself as it were male and female, meaning the contrary dispositions of the passions — so that the dignity of the divine image instilled in the soul might not be enslaved, but might persuade the soul to be transformed in its will toward divine likeness, and to become the all-radiant dwelling of the Holy Spirit.
Therefore the one who is alive in Christ and moved and has attained this has received spiritual birth through the Incarnation — Christ born mystically, being incarnated through those who are being saved, and making the soul that begets Him a Virgin Mother — having none of the passions of Christ, that is, of the life and discourse according to Christ. For if the one who says it is true: “In Christ Jesus there is neither male nor female” — meaning thereby the marks and passions of a nature under corruption and generation — then there is only the God-like Word in divine knowledge and the monadic striving of the will, choosing virtue alone.
[On the Trinity: one Monad, three Hypostases]
One alone is unoriginate, subsisting essentially — the Father alone as Unbegotten, the Son as Only-begotten, the Spirit as proceeding — seen in Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. One alone is without cause, subsisting essentially; and since only one subsists as cause, it is the Father alone who is named Begetter and source of the cause of the others. The Trinity is not divided from the Monad, nor the Monad from the Trinity — for the Trinity is not divided in the manner in which divided things are divided, nor is the Monad gathered in the manner in which gathered things are gathered — one Monad undivided into the hypostases; and not gathered together by way of confusion; avoiding thereby both what is divisive by multiplicity and what is formless by confusion.
“Give us this day our supersubstantial bread.” [Mt. 6:11]
The one who has received this certainly receives fully, in the measure of his capacity. For to all He gives with love for mankind, He who is the Bread of Life [Jn. 6:35]; but not in the same measure to all — but to those who have accomplished great works, more abundantly; to those who are lesser, more sparingly; to each according to the worth of his capacity to receive. So the discourse of the present tense of the Prayer — “this day” — commands that we make no account at all of sensible nourishment, for our Saviour says plainly: “Be not anxious for your life what you shall eat or what you shall drink, nor for your body what you shall put on” [Mt. 6:25] — all these things being what the Gentiles seek; but that we seek the Kingdom of God and His righteousness, knowing well that we who are nourished by it abound in all things.
For this bread is spoken of by those who know as the bread that was prepared for us from the beginning for the immortality of our nature; whose sharing the transgression of the divine commandment did not allow. The one who prays for this bread, praying for the supersubstantial, receives it entirely in the measure of his capacity.
The Lord, in commanding us to ask for this nourishment, recalls us from every concern with visible nourishment by affirming: “Be not anxious.”
“And forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.” [Mt. 6:12]
He orders us to ask forgiveness of our trespasses, and joins nature to itself through mutual forgiveness, not dividing it by diversity of will. For as creation by itself is one, possessing an equal dignity of the image, it is unfit that it should be divided against itself by the tyranny of those who dominate each other by will. This Christ is working out in the Spirit through the fashioning of those who are willing, beyond nature and law — the fashioning whose character is meekness and humility, of which the conjunction is the natural mark of every one in Christ: for every humble person is certainly also meek, and every meek person humble, in the full sense — humble, because knowing himself to be indebted for the gifts given to him; meek, because using the natural powers for the generation of virtue.
The one who truly forgives trespasses, imitating God, brings about peace between God and his neighbour. But he who asks God to forgive him and does not himself forgive others only asks God to help him by forgiving — he calls on God as one who shares the same nature with the offender, and by so doing teaches himself patience. “If you forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you” [Mt. 6:14].
“And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one.” [Mt. 6:13]
The discourse of the Prayer, having set out the principle — the petition for the nourishment that sustains our souls and the preservation of those graces given to us — proceeds now to the protection against temptation. For there are, according to Scripture, two kinds of temptation. One is pleasurable, the other painful; one voluntary, the other involuntary. The one is the begetter of sin, into which the Lord’s teaching commands us to pray we should not enter, saying: “Lead us not into temptation” [Mt. 6:13]; and: “Watch and pray, that you do not enter into temptation” [Mt. 26:41]. The other kind of temptation — that which is involuntary and painful — belongs to the corrective and purifying working of divine providence, which brings about patience and hope. Of this kind Job is the type.
“But deliver us from the evil one”: from the evil one who persuades us to seek our own advantage through the passions at the expense of our neighbour — not by open tyranny and compulsion, but by secretly drawing the free choice of the will. For the devil does not tyrannize but insinuates himself through the consent of those who heed him. The Prayer therefore teaches us to ask not merely forgiveness of what we have already done, but deliverance from the very insinuation of evil — that we may not, through our own free choice, become the children of the evil one in our manner of life, plainly shown to be his and receiving death in exchange for life; since each of the two fathers naturally makes his followers partakers of what is his: the one bestowing eternal life on those who love him, and the other bringing death to those who voluntarily submit to temptation.
So the Lord, by means of the words of the Prayer, has taught us the whole aim of the divine economy through the petition for seven gifts encompassing every mystery: theology [theologia], adoption by grace [huiothesia], equality with the Angels [isotimia pros tous Angelous], participation in eternal life [aidiou zōēs metochē], the restoration of nature to itself in impassibility [phuseōs apathōs pros heautēn neouēs apokatastasis], the abolition of the law of sin [tou nomou tēs hamartias katalusis], and the overthrow of the tyranny of the evil one [tēs tou ponērou turannidos kathairesis].
Such are the mysteries that the Word of God has given to men by the words of the Prayer, so that, knowing both the dignity of those who ask and the greatness of Him from whom all things are asked, we might be filled with all the fullness of God [cf. Eph. 3:19] — knowing the Lord Jesus Christ, in Whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge [Col. 2:3], and through Whom we have received adoption as sons, becoming partakers of the divine nature [2 Pet. 1:4], being made in the image of the Only-begotten, through Whom and in Whom the Father wills to give Himself wholly to all — which is the ultimate scope of beatitude, in which all beings naturally move according to their principle, and toward which all look, knowing that they are and live and are moved in God [Acts 17:28].