WEBVTT 00:00:03.600 --> 00:00:06.200 In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy 00:00:06.200 --> 00:00:14.800 Spirit, Amen. Today we're here to remember and 00:00:14.800 --> 00:00:21.679 honor the glorious Saint Maximus the Confessor. 00:00:28.269 --> 00:00:33.469 It is always an awful thing. I use the word awful 00:00:33.469 --> 00:00:38.770 in its true sense. Awful, awe -inspiring thing 00:00:38.770 --> 00:00:42.170 to think about the saints of the church, whether 00:00:42.170 --> 00:00:47.570 they be martyrs or confessors or theologians 00:00:47.570 --> 00:00:51.770 or pillars of orthodoxy. They always seem to 00:00:51.770 --> 00:00:57.490 be just overwhelming. And perhaps... Nothing 00:00:57.490 --> 00:01:03.030 is more true in that when dealing with this great 00:01:03.030 --> 00:01:06.230 saint, St. Maximus the Confessor. How can we 00:01:06.230 --> 00:01:14.790 possibly boil what he means down in a way that 00:01:14.790 --> 00:01:18.109 we can grasp him and grasp him in a way that 00:01:18.109 --> 00:01:25.209 his teaching will enlighten us truly. There are 00:01:25.209 --> 00:01:30.799 some people, that seem to be miracles, that suddenly, 00:01:30.939 --> 00:01:33.340 that they encompass everything that there is 00:01:33.340 --> 00:01:37.159 about a language or about a tradition or about 00:01:37.159 --> 00:01:40.219 a faith. For example, Shakespeare is a miracle. 00:01:40.540 --> 00:01:44.680 Dante is a miracle. They represent in themselves 00:01:44.680 --> 00:01:48.760 almost the whole, something whole and complete 00:01:48.760 --> 00:01:51.819 of their life and culture just pours out of them 00:01:51.819 --> 00:01:56.640 in a way that seems beyond the human. And yet 00:01:56.640 --> 00:02:04.719 they are here. And I remember what St. Nikolai 00:02:04.719 --> 00:02:09.180 Belomirovich said when he was in England for 00:02:09.180 --> 00:02:11.000 a Shakespeare festival and he was asked to give 00:02:11.000 --> 00:02:15.819 a talk. And he said, I don't know Shakespeare, 00:02:16.139 --> 00:02:22.120 but Shakespeare knows me. He said, everywhere 00:02:22.120 --> 00:02:27.590 I turn in Shakespeare, He reveals myself. I see 00:02:27.590 --> 00:02:31.729 in him. He's a mirror for me. I think we can 00:02:31.729 --> 00:02:37.150 say the same for St. Maximus the Confessor. He 00:02:37.150 --> 00:02:40.870 is called the Confessor because toward the end 00:02:40.870 --> 00:02:45.289 of his life, he defended the Orthodox tradition 00:02:45.289 --> 00:02:48.689 against the last of the Christological heresies, 00:02:48.789 --> 00:02:53.219 which is named monothelitism, which is the that 00:02:53.219 --> 00:03:01.719 there was only one will in Christ. And that's 00:03:01.719 --> 00:03:08.000 why he's called the confessor. If we were listening 00:03:08.000 --> 00:03:11.860 to the various songs that were sung about St. 00:03:12.000 --> 00:03:17.699 Maximus, we heard that he was in prison. And 00:03:17.699 --> 00:03:19.800 if we also listen to the Gospel and the Epistle, 00:03:19.840 --> 00:03:22.740 both the Gospel and the Epistle, Actually, the 00:03:22.740 --> 00:03:26.099 truth that both of them talked about revealed 00:03:26.099 --> 00:03:28.659 what happened in St. Maximus' life. And this 00:03:28.659 --> 00:03:32.939 is at the end of his life, in which he was hauled 00:03:32.939 --> 00:03:39.099 up before the courts and interrogated and, in 00:03:39.099 --> 00:03:42.639 a way, put enormous pressure on him to submit. 00:03:43.120 --> 00:03:49.039 And it was unusual. It wasn't just happening 00:03:49.039 --> 00:03:51.490 in one place. We're talking about the entire 00:03:51.490 --> 00:03:56.250 empire. We're talking about the emperor himself, 00:03:56.449 --> 00:03:59.310 the patriarch, all the bishops who had already 00:03:59.310 --> 00:04:02.909 been subdued, and then there was Maximus, and 00:04:02.909 --> 00:04:06.530 he was not even a clergyman. He was not a bishop, 00:04:06.669 --> 00:04:09.710 he was not a priest, he was a monk. But he was 00:04:09.710 --> 00:04:17.769 a very famous monk because he was the most profound 00:04:17.769 --> 00:04:21.209 teacher. He was a teacher of Orthodox. He had 00:04:21.209 --> 00:04:24.750 the heart of the Spirit, as the song says. The 00:04:24.750 --> 00:04:28.149 illuminator of our faith. And that had been going 00:04:28.149 --> 00:04:33.550 on his whole life. And in a way, you could say 00:04:33.550 --> 00:04:37.589 that his whole life was geared for this final 00:04:37.589 --> 00:04:41.730 moment. But I think that perhaps the theologians 00:04:41.730 --> 00:04:45.170 of today and people of today maybe overemphasize 00:04:49.740 --> 00:04:52.120 The last events of his life, because they are 00:04:52.120 --> 00:04:56.459 so dramatic, having his, I mean, he was exiled 00:04:56.459 --> 00:04:58.360 and he was brought back, and he was exiled again 00:04:58.360 --> 00:05:01.620 and brought back, and then finally, in front 00:05:01.620 --> 00:05:05.339 of the emperor and the patriarch, he was declared 00:05:05.339 --> 00:05:09.079 a traitor, a traitor to the empire. Why? Because 00:05:09.079 --> 00:05:12.180 he would not submit, he wouldn't just submit 00:05:12.180 --> 00:05:15.860 this one little thing, this one thing that just 00:05:15.860 --> 00:05:19.209 had to be changed. Because in those days, The 00:05:19.209 --> 00:05:23.029 unity of the empire was ensured by the unity 00:05:23.029 --> 00:05:26.209 of faith. And there were divisions in faith that 00:05:26.209 --> 00:05:30.269 had come about more or less since the third, 00:05:30.329 --> 00:05:34.069 fourth, and fifth ecumenical councils. So that 00:05:34.069 --> 00:05:37.370 there was a whole section of the empire that 00:05:37.370 --> 00:05:40.629 was no longer really in loyalty with the emperor 00:05:40.629 --> 00:05:44.009 because they believed that what happened in the 00:05:44.009 --> 00:05:47.120 fourth council was a violation. of their faith. 00:05:47.360 --> 00:05:50.720 So there were divisions. And the emperor wanted 00:05:50.720 --> 00:05:54.120 the church, wanted the empire to be united, and 00:05:54.120 --> 00:05:57.720 in order for it to be united, the faith had to 00:05:57.720 --> 00:06:00.459 be united. And it seemed to me, the heart of 00:06:00.459 --> 00:06:05.699 the problem was this whole idea of Jesus Christ, 00:06:05.839 --> 00:06:08.720 God, and man, two natures. That was where the 00:06:08.720 --> 00:06:15.110 problem was. Because the monothelite heresy That 00:06:15.110 --> 00:06:17.310 really occurred after the Third Council in St. 00:06:17.370 --> 00:06:22.769 Cyril. The Fourth Council was 20 years later, 00:06:22.829 --> 00:06:29.629 in 451, the Council of Chalcedon was called in 00:06:29.629 --> 00:06:32.290 order to kind of correct that so they would all 00:06:32.290 --> 00:06:36.870 be one. And the whole idea of that council was 00:06:36.870 --> 00:06:39.610 to provide a way in which we could truly understand 00:06:39.610 --> 00:06:44.529 the idea of how it is that God and man... the 00:06:44.529 --> 00:06:46.990 divine nature and the human nature are in Christ. 00:06:48.589 --> 00:06:51.550 Unfortunately, it didn't happen. It didn't occur 00:06:51.550 --> 00:06:54.129 that way and there were divisions. So here we 00:06:54.129 --> 00:07:00.529 are now in the 600s. Maximus died in 662. With 00:07:00.529 --> 00:07:06.269 Islam, it had just started up because the life 00:07:06.269 --> 00:07:08.589 of Saint Maximus and the life of Muhammad are 00:07:08.589 --> 00:07:11.060 more or less parallel. Maximus was... born in 00:07:11.060 --> 00:07:14.839 580, died in 662, and Muhammad was born in 570 00:07:14.839 --> 00:07:19.939 and died in 632. So really, there was parallels. 00:07:20.060 --> 00:07:22.879 So the empire was being threatened, deeply threatened, 00:07:23.060 --> 00:07:27.500 as they found out later. And part of the idea 00:07:27.500 --> 00:07:30.860 was to unite this empire. So if you can imagine 00:07:30.860 --> 00:07:34.139 yourself being called up before the President 00:07:34.139 --> 00:07:38.180 of the United States, Congress, the Supreme Court, 00:07:41.539 --> 00:07:44.000 And you're just one individual. And they're all 00:07:44.000 --> 00:07:47.199 saying, you know, we think you're a traitor. 00:07:48.040 --> 00:07:50.800 But if you just will, if you will just simply 00:07:50.800 --> 00:07:54.519 say, you know, our faith is the same. We're saying 00:07:54.519 --> 00:07:56.439 it's yours. Everything is wonderful. If you will 00:07:56.439 --> 00:08:01.180 just say that there was just one will in Christ. 00:08:01.360 --> 00:08:04.199 That will get those people who believe in one 00:08:04.199 --> 00:08:07.910 nature. kind of go along with the idea that, 00:08:07.990 --> 00:08:11.290 yes, okay, there's two natures, but really one 00:08:11.290 --> 00:08:14.829 will. Well, one will is more or less saying one 00:08:14.829 --> 00:08:18.310 nature. So, but Maximus didn't do that. He was 00:08:18.310 --> 00:08:21.850 exiled. And they brought him back again. And 00:08:21.850 --> 00:08:26.550 they brought in false witnesses and so on. He 00:08:26.550 --> 00:08:33.070 defeated all the false witnesses. And he simply 00:08:33.070 --> 00:08:38.179 refused To bow. And here comes the point. He 00:08:38.179 --> 00:08:41.740 refused to bow. Why? Because he was in the truth. 00:08:41.960 --> 00:08:46.220 He knew, he knew, not only in his mind, he knew 00:08:46.220 --> 00:08:49.879 in his heart, and he knew by divine vision the 00:08:49.879 --> 00:08:53.019 truth. And that was more important than anything. 00:08:53.159 --> 00:08:57.799 And that's why he suffered the fate of a traitor. 00:08:57.980 --> 00:09:02.240 Which is, if you preach against the kingdom, 00:09:02.440 --> 00:09:06.490 your tongue is... is torn out. And if you write 00:09:06.490 --> 00:09:10.250 against a traitorous thoughts, your hand is cut 00:09:10.250 --> 00:09:12.269 off. And that's what happened. And then he lived 00:09:12.269 --> 00:09:15.149 just a few months. But you see, that's not the 00:09:15.149 --> 00:09:18.049 whole of St. Maximus. The whole of St. Maximus 00:09:18.049 --> 00:09:25.210 is that he lived the truth. He is one of these 00:09:25.210 --> 00:09:29.830 people, one of these miracles that sort of comes 00:09:29.830 --> 00:09:34.789 forth in which all of the entire Orthodox tradition 00:09:34.789 --> 00:09:37.470 from the very beginning. All the currents of 00:09:37.470 --> 00:09:40.990 thought. He's like the confluence of all the 00:09:40.990 --> 00:09:45.730 rivers of our tradition. And they come together 00:09:45.730 --> 00:09:48.590 and make one mighty river which then flows down 00:09:48.590 --> 00:09:52.110 to the sea. He's that point of confluence in 00:09:52.110 --> 00:09:56.870 which the Gospels, St. Paul, the early files 00:09:56.870 --> 00:10:00.299 of the church. Saint Athanasius, the Cappadocians, 00:10:00.299 --> 00:10:02.940 Saint Basil and Gregory and the other Gregory, 00:10:03.460 --> 00:10:07.480 Dionysius the Areopagite, Cyril of Alexandria, 00:10:07.759 --> 00:10:11.019 all of their teachings come together in Maximus. 00:10:11.100 --> 00:10:19.220 And by the genius of his mind, he encompassed 00:10:19.220 --> 00:10:23.700 and embodied and synthesized all that thought 00:10:23.700 --> 00:10:29.649 into a whole and a complete He's the father of 00:10:29.649 --> 00:10:36.809 the Byzantine Orthodox tradition. And yet, he 00:10:36.809 --> 00:10:39.409 was able in the early part of his life as a monk 00:10:39.409 --> 00:10:44.029 to write things that were on love, that were 00:10:44.029 --> 00:10:47.950 virtually the equivalent of St. Paul. I mean, 00:10:48.009 --> 00:10:51.129 one could say that St. Paul's communion to love 00:10:51.129 --> 00:10:56.850 in 1 Corinthians 13 is probably the most beautiful 00:10:59.700 --> 00:11:05.019 hymn to love ever written. Well, St. Maximus 00:11:05.019 --> 00:11:08.120 wrote what's called Letter 2 on love. And if 00:11:08.120 --> 00:11:10.279 you put those two together, he wrote that early 00:11:10.279 --> 00:11:13.440 in his life, if you put those two together, it's 00:11:13.440 --> 00:11:16.460 almost the same thing. It is almost at that same 00:11:16.460 --> 00:11:21.240 level of the sheer glory and beauty and understanding 00:11:21.240 --> 00:11:26.899 of love. So, all of his thought I mean, how do 00:11:26.899 --> 00:11:29.379 we, how do we encompass it? What do we, how do 00:11:29.379 --> 00:11:32.340 we really see that? How do we see, how he became 00:11:32.340 --> 00:11:40.179 a martyr was, was this total understanding of 00:11:40.179 --> 00:11:44.679 the reality of God and man in Christ, the two 00:11:44.679 --> 00:11:47.580 natures. It is said that St. Maximus literally 00:11:47.580 --> 00:11:56.870 created the, a Chalcedonian logic. which is to 00:11:56.870 --> 00:12:02.269 say that from that Council of Chalcedon in 451, 00:12:02.470 --> 00:12:12.809 which tried to embody the truth of Christ, the 00:12:12.809 --> 00:12:16.649 truth of what the Incarnation, what our faith 00:12:16.649 --> 00:12:21.129 really is, in a way that could not be shaken 00:12:21.129 --> 00:12:23.990 and would also be preserved. And it did that 00:12:23.990 --> 00:12:28.889 by saying, One thing over and over. Over and 00:12:28.889 --> 00:12:31.870 over it said one thing. It said Jesus Christ 00:12:31.870 --> 00:12:36.629 is one and the same. One and the same. Jesus 00:12:36.629 --> 00:12:41.470 Christ is two natures in one and the same person. 00:12:41.649 --> 00:12:48.769 And those two natures are not confused, not changed, 00:12:49.190 --> 00:12:55.070 not divided, and not separated. And those four, 00:12:55.610 --> 00:12:59.190 are called the four Chalcedonian adverbs. Not 00:12:59.190 --> 00:13:05.210 confused, unconfused, unchanged, undivided, and 00:13:05.210 --> 00:13:11.789 unseparated. And Maximus took that and through 00:13:11.789 --> 00:13:14.850 all of his thought pulled that together and through 00:13:14.850 --> 00:13:22.389 that he was trying to express the true mystery 00:13:22.389 --> 00:13:30.600 of God. and man. So if I could summarize the 00:13:30.600 --> 00:13:33.120 teaching of St. Maximus, I would say there are 00:13:33.120 --> 00:13:36.059 really three things there. One is the Trinity. 00:13:37.659 --> 00:13:42.820 One is this understanding that he had of unity, 00:13:42.980 --> 00:13:47.399 the fullness of unity. And there are certain 00:13:47.399 --> 00:13:52.639 places in St. Maximus where his teaching rises 00:13:52.639 --> 00:13:56.330 to heights of mystical sublimity that if you 00:13:56.330 --> 00:14:00.649 just look at, if you just gaze upon what he's 00:14:00.649 --> 00:14:02.789 actually saying and you actually realize what 00:14:02.789 --> 00:14:06.309 he is saying, it literally blows your mind. And 00:14:06.309 --> 00:14:10.289 the third one is what we could call reciprocity. 00:14:10.509 --> 00:14:17.429 And by reciprocity, big word, it's translating 00:14:17.429 --> 00:14:19.649 the word in Greek, perichoresis, which is an 00:14:19.649 --> 00:14:22.850 even bigger word, I suppose. But reciprocity, 00:14:23.320 --> 00:14:27.340 was really the heart of his teaching. And the 00:14:27.340 --> 00:14:33.740 reciprocity is what God did in the Incarnation 00:14:33.740 --> 00:14:38.379 will happen to us in deification. The reciprocity 00:14:38.379 --> 00:14:43.299 is the Incarnation is the descent of God and 00:14:43.299 --> 00:14:48.919 the whole purpose of that is for the accent of 00:14:48.919 --> 00:14:53.600 humanity. denotization, deification. The reciprocity 00:14:53.600 --> 00:14:58.580 of God and man was the heart of Maximus' teaching. 00:14:58.940 --> 00:15:04.740 That what we know of God is imaged in man. And 00:15:04.740 --> 00:15:09.460 we're going to be coming up shortly to the when 00:15:09.460 --> 00:15:13.000 we reach Lent and the Sunday of Lent where we 00:15:13.000 --> 00:15:15.620 honor the icons and it's called the Triumph of 00:15:15.620 --> 00:15:18.070 Orthodoxy. Well, that's for the future. But in 00:15:18.070 --> 00:15:20.750 reality, what Maximus was dealing with here was 00:15:20.750 --> 00:15:24.490 this understanding of the reality of the divine 00:15:24.490 --> 00:15:30.190 image. The divine image in man, whatever the 00:15:30.190 --> 00:15:37.190 incarnate Christ reveals is what is for humanity 00:15:37.190 --> 00:15:43.490 to attain through grace. And so he was always 00:15:43.490 --> 00:15:49.200 aware of... this idea of unity. And he was also 00:15:49.200 --> 00:15:52.200 very much aware, and I think this is the beauty 00:15:52.200 --> 00:15:56.320 of St. Maximus, in his writings, is that we human 00:15:56.320 --> 00:15:59.220 beings, we follow human beings, are constantly 00:15:59.220 --> 00:16:03.320 tempted to go to one side or the other about 00:16:03.320 --> 00:16:06.080 our faith. We're constantly tempted to maybe 00:16:06.080 --> 00:16:09.419 confuse things a little bit. Or we're constantly 00:16:09.419 --> 00:16:11.820 tempted to, maybe we want to separate things 00:16:11.820 --> 00:16:14.600 so we can understand it. We're constantly tempted 00:16:14.600 --> 00:16:18.559 to divide. And we're constantly tempted to change. 00:16:19.820 --> 00:16:25.259 So what the fathers of the fourth council did, 00:16:25.419 --> 00:16:29.120 they didn't say what it was. They didn't say 00:16:29.120 --> 00:16:31.820 what the mystery was. They didn't define the 00:16:31.820 --> 00:16:36.559 mystery. They prevented the mystery from being 00:16:36.559 --> 00:16:42.179 lost by using negatives, by using negative adverbs. 00:16:43.340 --> 00:16:47.519 And Maximus took that, and what his theology 00:16:47.519 --> 00:16:50.899 was, what the genius of the Holy Spirit coming 00:16:50.899 --> 00:16:54.720 through him did, he took those ideas, he took 00:16:54.720 --> 00:16:57.639 that truly to heart, and whatever had to happen, 00:16:58.220 --> 00:17:02.600 whatever we said and did about Christ, we had 00:17:02.600 --> 00:17:05.779 to keep the divine nature and the human nature 00:17:05.779 --> 00:17:12.130 unconfused. That is not... not mixed up into 00:17:12.130 --> 00:17:16.950 something. Unconfused. And yet, we have to make 00:17:16.950 --> 00:17:18.789 sure that the divine and human nature of Christ 00:17:18.789 --> 00:17:22.670 were unchanged. Not to be changed in any way. 00:17:22.769 --> 00:17:25.109 Our understanding of the divine nature, our understanding 00:17:25.109 --> 00:17:28.930 of the human nature, could not be changed. Not 00:17:28.930 --> 00:17:32.069 only was it to be unconfused and unchanged, but 00:17:32.069 --> 00:17:35.950 it also had to be undivided. And here we come 00:17:35.950 --> 00:17:39.250 to the heart of the mystery. Somehow, the nature 00:17:39.250 --> 00:17:42.299 of God and the nature of man, is not only unconfused, 00:17:42.299 --> 00:17:46.019 not only unchanged, but undivided. Undivided 00:17:46.019 --> 00:17:50.880 in Christ. And finally, that the divine nature 00:17:50.880 --> 00:17:55.039 and the human nature in Christ is unseparated. 00:17:55.339 --> 00:17:58.880 Not to be separated. Not to be divided. Not to 00:17:58.880 --> 00:18:03.680 be changed. Not to be confused. And all of Maximus' 00:18:03.680 --> 00:18:08.299 theology is in a way grounded in those four fundamental... 00:18:09.440 --> 00:18:13.200 of the fourth council. But through that, the 00:18:13.200 --> 00:18:17.039 whole idea, the whole realization was that there 00:18:17.039 --> 00:18:22.859 is a mysterious identity in difference between 00:18:22.859 --> 00:18:28.279 God and man, between us as human beings, between 00:18:28.279 --> 00:18:31.119 us and God, and that the purpose of Adam, the 00:18:31.119 --> 00:18:33.920 purpose of human nature, was to unite those things. 00:18:34.119 --> 00:18:36.839 The fall prevented that from happening. Christ 00:18:36.839 --> 00:18:42.230 then came, as the second Adam, to unite all the 00:18:42.230 --> 00:18:44.849 things that the first Adam, us, was supposed 00:18:44.849 --> 00:18:47.970 to accomplish. And those things are, and Maximus 00:18:47.970 --> 00:18:49.950 wrote about that in one of his things, and I'll 00:18:49.950 --> 00:18:55.549 close with this. He said, in Ambigium 41, he 00:18:55.549 --> 00:18:59.009 talked about these five unities that Christ united. 00:18:59.349 --> 00:19:04.710 And they were the unity of man and woman, number 00:19:04.710 --> 00:19:11.640 five, the unity of the inhabited earth and paradise. 00:19:12.059 --> 00:19:15.279 Number four, the unity of heaven and earth. Number 00:19:15.279 --> 00:19:20.059 three, the unity of the visible and the invisible. 00:19:20.339 --> 00:19:25.759 Number two, and finally, the unity of the uncreated 00:19:25.759 --> 00:19:30.240 and the created. The unity, not the separation 00:19:30.240 --> 00:19:36.099 of the uncreated and the created. The undividedness 00:19:36.099 --> 00:19:43.480 of the uncreated, and the created. The unchangeableness 00:19:43.480 --> 00:19:48.640 of the uncreated and the created. And the unconfused 00:19:48.640 --> 00:19:54.119 of the uncreated and the created. That is the 00:19:54.119 --> 00:19:56.880 true legacy of the teaching of St. Maximus the 00:19:56.880 --> 00:19:59.779 Confessor. And for this we honor him and give 00:19:59.779 --> 00:20:03.400 him praise and give our God praise that he gave 00:20:03.400 --> 00:20:08.509 him to us. Amen. Blessing of the Lord is received 00:20:08.509 --> 00:20:10.250 upon us through his divine grace.