January 21st, 2014: St Maximos

In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy

Spirit, Amen. Today we're here to remember and

honor the glorious Saint Maximus the Confessor.

It is always an awful thing. I use the word awful

in its true sense. Awful, awe -inspiring thing

to think about the saints of the church, whether

they be martyrs or confessors or theologians

or pillars of orthodoxy. They always seem to

be just overwhelming. And perhaps... Nothing

is more true in that when dealing with this great

saint, St. Maximus the Confessor. How can we

possibly boil what he means down in a way that

we can grasp him and grasp him in a way that

his teaching will enlighten us truly. There are

some people, that seem to be miracles, that suddenly,

that they encompass everything that there is

about a language or about a tradition or about

a faith. For example, Shakespeare is a miracle.

Dante is a miracle. They represent in themselves

almost the whole, something whole and complete

of their life and culture just pours out of them

in a way that seems beyond the human. And yet

they are here. And I remember what St. Nikolai

Belomirovich said when he was in England for

a Shakespeare festival and he was asked to give

a talk. And he said, I don't know Shakespeare,

but Shakespeare knows me. He said, everywhere

I turn in Shakespeare, He reveals myself. I see

in him. He's a mirror for me. I think we can

say the same for St. Maximus the Confessor. He

is called the Confessor because toward the end

of his life, he defended the Orthodox tradition

against the last of the Christological heresies,

which is named monothelitism, which is the that

there was only one will in Christ. And that's

why he's called the confessor. If we were listening

to the various songs that were sung about St.

Maximus, we heard that he was in prison. And

if we also listen to the Gospel and the Epistle,

both the Gospel and the Epistle, Actually, the

truth that both of them talked about revealed

what happened in St. Maximus' life. And this

is at the end of his life, in which he was hauled

up before the courts and interrogated and, in

a way, put enormous pressure on him to submit.

And it was unusual. It wasn't just happening

in one place. We're talking about the entire

empire. We're talking about the emperor himself,

the patriarch, all the bishops who had already

been subdued, and then there was Maximus, and

he was not even a clergyman. He was not a bishop,

he was not a priest, he was a monk. But he was

a very famous monk because he was the most profound

teacher. He was a teacher of Orthodox. He had

the heart of the Spirit, as the song says. The

illuminator of our faith. And that had been going

on his whole life. And in a way, you could say

that his whole life was geared for this final

moment. But I think that perhaps the theologians

of today and people of today maybe overemphasize

The last events of his life, because they are

so dramatic, having his, I mean, he was exiled

and he was brought back, and he was exiled again

and brought back, and then finally, in front

of the emperor and the patriarch, he was declared

a traitor, a traitor to the empire. Why? Because

he would not submit, he wouldn't just submit

this one little thing, this one thing that just

had to be changed. Because in those days, The

unity of the empire was ensured by the unity

of faith. And there were divisions in faith that

had come about more or less since the third,

fourth, and fifth ecumenical councils. So that

there was a whole section of the empire that

was no longer really in loyalty with the emperor

because they believed that what happened in the

fourth council was a violation. of their faith.

So there were divisions. And the emperor wanted

the church, wanted the empire to be united, and

in order for it to be united, the faith had to

be united. And it seemed to me, the heart of

the problem was this whole idea of Jesus Christ,

God, and man, two natures. That was where the

problem was. Because the monothelite heresy That

really occurred after the Third Council in St.

Cyril. The Fourth Council was 20 years later,

in 451, the Council of Chalcedon was called in

order to kind of correct that so they would all

be one. And the whole idea of that council was

to provide a way in which we could truly understand

the idea of how it is that God and man... the

divine nature and the human nature are in Christ.

Unfortunately, it didn't happen. It didn't occur

that way and there were divisions. So here we

are now in the 600s. Maximus died in 662. With

Islam, it had just started up because the life

of Saint Maximus and the life of Muhammad are

more or less parallel. Maximus was... born in

580, died in 662, and Muhammad was born in 570

and died in 632. So really, there was parallels.

So the empire was being threatened, deeply threatened,

as they found out later. And part of the idea

was to unite this empire. So if you can imagine

yourself being called up before the President

of the United States, Congress, the Supreme Court,

And you're just one individual. And they're all

saying, you know, we think you're a traitor.

But if you just will, if you will just simply

say, you know, our faith is the same. We're saying

it's yours. Everything is wonderful. If you will

just say that there was just one will in Christ.

That will get those people who believe in one

nature. kind of go along with the idea that,

yes, okay, there's two natures, but really one

will. Well, one will is more or less saying one

nature. So, but Maximus didn't do that. He was

exiled. And they brought him back again. And

they brought in false witnesses and so on. He

defeated all the false witnesses. And he simply

refused To bow. And here comes the point. He

refused to bow. Why? Because he was in the truth.

He knew, he knew, not only in his mind, he knew

in his heart, and he knew by divine vision the

truth. And that was more important than anything.

And that's why he suffered the fate of a traitor.

Which is, if you preach against the kingdom,

your tongue is... is torn out. And if you write

against a traitorous thoughts, your hand is cut

off. And that's what happened. And then he lived

just a few months. But you see, that's not the

whole of St. Maximus. The whole of St. Maximus

is that he lived the truth. He is one of these

people, one of these miracles that sort of comes

forth in which all of the entire Orthodox tradition

from the very beginning. All the currents of

thought. He's like the confluence of all the

rivers of our tradition. And they come together

and make one mighty river which then flows down

to the sea. He's that point of confluence in

which the Gospels, St. Paul, the early files

of the church. Saint Athanasius, the Cappadocians,

Saint Basil and Gregory and the other Gregory,

Dionysius the Areopagite, Cyril of Alexandria,

all of their teachings come together in Maximus.

And by the genius of his mind, he encompassed

and embodied and synthesized all that thought

into a whole and a complete He's the father of

the Byzantine Orthodox tradition. And yet, he

was able in the early part of his life as a monk

to write things that were on love, that were

virtually the equivalent of St. Paul. I mean,

one could say that St. Paul's communion to love

in 1 Corinthians 13 is probably the most beautiful

hymn to love ever written. Well, St. Maximus

wrote what's called Letter 2 on love. And if

you put those two together, he wrote that early

in his life, if you put those two together, it's

almost the same thing. It is almost at that same

level of the sheer glory and beauty and understanding

of love. So, all of his thought I mean, how do

we, how do we encompass it? What do we, how do

we really see that? How do we see, how he became

a martyr was, was this total understanding of

the reality of God and man in Christ, the two

natures. It is said that St. Maximus literally

created the, a Chalcedonian logic. which is to

say that from that Council of Chalcedon in 451,

which tried to embody the truth of Christ, the

truth of what the Incarnation, what our faith

really is, in a way that could not be shaken

and would also be preserved. And it did that

by saying, One thing over and over. Over and

over it said one thing. It said Jesus Christ

is one and the same. One and the same. Jesus

Christ is two natures in one and the same person.

And those two natures are not confused, not changed,

not divided, and not separated. And those four,

are called the four Chalcedonian adverbs. Not

confused, unconfused, unchanged, undivided, and

unseparated. And Maximus took that and through

all of his thought pulled that together and through

that he was trying to express the true mystery

of God. and man. So if I could summarize the

teaching of St. Maximus, I would say there are

really three things there. One is the Trinity.

One is this understanding that he had of unity,

the fullness of unity. And there are certain

places in St. Maximus where his teaching rises

to heights of mystical sublimity that if you

just look at, if you just gaze upon what he's

actually saying and you actually realize what

he is saying, it literally blows your mind. And

the third one is what we could call reciprocity.

And by reciprocity, big word, it's translating

the word in Greek, perichoresis, which is an

even bigger word, I suppose. But reciprocity,

was really the heart of his teaching. And the

reciprocity is what God did in the Incarnation

will happen to us in deification. The reciprocity

is the Incarnation is the descent of God and

the whole purpose of that is for the accent of

humanity. denotization, deification. The reciprocity

of God and man was the heart of Maximus' teaching.

That what we know of God is imaged in man. And

we're going to be coming up shortly to the when

we reach Lent and the Sunday of Lent where we

honor the icons and it's called the Triumph of

Orthodoxy. Well, that's for the future. But in

reality, what Maximus was dealing with here was

this understanding of the reality of the divine

image. The divine image in man, whatever the

incarnate Christ reveals is what is for humanity

to attain through grace. And so he was always

aware of... this idea of unity. And he was also

very much aware, and I think this is the beauty

of St. Maximus, in his writings, is that we human

beings, we follow human beings, are constantly

tempted to go to one side or the other about

our faith. We're constantly tempted to maybe

confuse things a little bit. Or we're constantly

tempted to, maybe we want to separate things

so we can understand it. We're constantly tempted

to divide. And we're constantly tempted to change.

So what the fathers of the fourth council did,

they didn't say what it was. They didn't say

what the mystery was. They didn't define the

mystery. They prevented the mystery from being

lost by using negatives, by using negative adverbs.

And Maximus took that, and what his theology

was, what the genius of the Holy Spirit coming

through him did, he took those ideas, he took

that truly to heart, and whatever had to happen,

whatever we said and did about Christ, we had

to keep the divine nature and the human nature

unconfused. That is not... not mixed up into

something. Unconfused. And yet, we have to make

sure that the divine and human nature of Christ

were unchanged. Not to be changed in any way.

Our understanding of the divine nature, our understanding

of the human nature, could not be changed. Not

only was it to be unconfused and unchanged, but

it also had to be undivided. And here we come

to the heart of the mystery. Somehow, the nature

of God and the nature of man, is not only unconfused,

not only unchanged, but undivided. Undivided

in Christ. And finally, that the divine nature

and the human nature in Christ is unseparated.

Not to be separated. Not to be divided. Not to

be changed. Not to be confused. And all of Maximus'

theology is in a way grounded in those four fundamental...

of the fourth council. But through that, the

whole idea, the whole realization was that there

is a mysterious identity in difference between

God and man, between us as human beings, between

us and God, and that the purpose of Adam, the

purpose of human nature, was to unite those things.

The fall prevented that from happening. Christ

then came, as the second Adam, to unite all the

things that the first Adam, us, was supposed

to accomplish. And those things are, and Maximus

wrote about that in one of his things, and I'll

close with this. He said, in Ambigium 41, he

talked about these five unities that Christ united.

And they were the unity of man and woman, number

five, the unity of the inhabited earth and paradise.

Number four, the unity of heaven and earth. Number

three, the unity of the visible and the invisible.

Number two, and finally, the unity of the uncreated

and the created. The unity, not the separation

of the uncreated and the created. The undividedness

of the uncreated, and the created. The unchangeableness

of the uncreated and the created. And the unconfused

of the uncreated and the created. That is the

true legacy of the teaching of St. Maximus the

Confessor. And for this we honor him and give

him praise and give our God praise that he gave

him to us. Amen. Blessing of the Lord is received

upon us through his divine grace.