Over a Cohen–Macaulay (CM) local ring, we characterize those modules that can be obtained as a direct limit of finitely generated maximal CM modules. We point out two consequences of this characterization: (1) Every balanced big CM module, in the sense of Hochster, can be written as a direct limit of small CM modules. In analogy with Govorov and Lazard's characterization of flat modules as direct limits of finitely generated free modules, one can view this as a “structure theorem” for balanced big CM modules. (2) Every finitely generated module has a pre-envelope with respect to the class of finitely generated maximal CM modules. This result is, in some sense, dual to the existence of maximal CM approximations, which has been proved by Auslander and Buchweitz.