Saint Maximus the Confessor
(
03.02.2009
)
The Church honours the memory of the Venerable Maximus with two feasts during the year: January 21 and August 13. Because the latter feast corresponds with the leavetaking of Transfiguration, the celebration of the summer feast of St. Maximus is transferred to August 12.
St. Maximus was an official in the court of the Emperor Heraclius of the
St. Maximus’ keen mind was illuminated through his ascetic struggles, and he wrote extensively about the spiritual life based in the writings of those who had gone before and his own experience of those truths. But in 634, through his association with St. Sophronius, Patriarch of Jerusalem, St. Maximus was enrolled in the struggle against the Monothelite heresy, which taught that Jesus Christ had had only one will—a divine one. But for Christ to lack a human will was to render Him less than fully human. The consequences of this were not merely academic, for as St. Gregory the Theologian had taught, “What is not assumed is not healed.” If Christ had not assumed a human will, then man’s will was not healed by Christ—and it was man’s will above all, perhaps, that needed to be healed. Man could not be saved if Christ lacked a human will. For the rest of his life, and sometimes nearly alone,
St. Maximus bears the titles “venerable” and “Confessor”. “Venerable” (prepodobnii) is the title given to monastic saints. “Confessor” (ispovednik) is the glorious title given to a saint who has been persecuted and has suffered for the Faith.
One of the Church’s most profound theologians, St. Maximus possessed equally profound insight into the spiritual life which he acquired through his practice of it. True Christian life always consists both of believing and confessing the right doctrine as well as doing the right things or living the right way. In his writings, the intimate relation between theology and spirituality is manifest. Christian spirituality (how one approaches and interacts with God) depends on Christian theology (what is said about God). If the Church’s confession of who God is, and especially, who Jesus Christ is, becomes corrupt or distorted, it cannot but have a corrupting influence on spiritual life.
St. Maximus teaches that there are three faculties of the soul: the rational faculty (mind or nous), the concupiscent (desiring) and the irrascible (temper). There is a proper use for each, and there are misuses of each, which are sinful. Regular misuse results in a sinful habit. To overcome a fixed habit of pleasure related to the concupiscible element, one needs the continual exercise of fasting, vigils, and payer. To overcome a habit of temper, kindness, benevolence, love, and mercy are needed.
Sin in action is preceded by sin in thought. “For unless anyone sins first in thought, he will never sin in deed.” As a result the war with sinful thoughts is far harder to win than the war with sinful actions. To prevail over thoughts, Maximus counsels, “Take care of your passions and you will easily drive thoughts from your mind. Thus for fornication—fast, keep vigil, work hard, keep to yourself. For anger and hurt—disdain reputation, dishonor, and material things. For grudges—pray for the one who has hurt you, and you will be rid of them.”
But what is a passion? “A passion is a movement of the soul contrary to nature either toward irrational love or senseless hate of something or on account of something material.” Furthermore, “the beginning of all passions is love of self, and the end is pride. Self-love is irrational love of the body, and if one eliminates this, he eliminates along with it all the passions stemming from it.” Notice that passion is a movement of the soul contrary to nature, not according to God's design.
About money, St. Maximus says there are three sinful reasons for loving it: “pleasure-seeking, vainglory, and lack of faith. And more serious than the other two is lack of faith. ”There is also a virtuous reason for acquiring money: the financial administrator acquires money “so that he might never run short in relieving each one’s need.”
St. Maximus’ teaching offers us many more spiritual riches than we can recount here. Many of his writings are found in volume two of the Philokalia. His work entitled 400 Chapters on Love should be known and followed by all Christians. He wrote many other works, including 200 Chapters on Theology, and commentaries on the Lord’s Prayer and the Divine Liturgy.
St. Maximus shines as an example both of faithfulness to the Truth and as one who practiced the life he taught to others. His teachings instruct us not only in the mysteries of the highest theology, but also in how to live the Christian life , conquer our passions, attain the love of God and our fellow man, and be deified. Let us honour his memory by receiving his instruction and striving to follow his example in our own time.
The ikos from the canon of Matins for the saint well sums up his life:
Showing thyself to be an emulator of the sufferings of the Savior, and having Him in thy soul, O most blessed one who art most rich, thou didst appoint ascents in thy heart. And He hath given thee grace from heaven; for thou didst manfully oppose the tyrants, O wise one; and preaching the unoriginate, divine, and consubstantial Trinity, and denouncing the heretics who fought against God, thou didst endure boundless trials, O venerable and most praised one: the severing of thy theologizing tongue together with thy hand. Yet didst thou not cease to speak with boldness, confirming the faithful with thy divine teachings, manifestly preaching the transcendent and unoriginate Trinity unto all the people.
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"Love is a good disposition of the soul by which one prefers no being to the knowledge of God. It is impossible to reach the habit of this love if one has any attachment to earthly things." 400 Chapters on Love, 1.1
"If the soul is better than the body, and God is incomparably better than the world which He created, the one who prefers the body to the soul and the world to God who created it is no different from idolaters." 400 Chapters on Love, 1.7
"The work of love is the deliberate doing of good to one's neighbor as well as long-suffering and patience and the use of all things in the proper way." 400 Chapters on Love, 1.40
"What anyone loves he surely holds on to, and looks down on everything that hinders his way to it so as not to be deprived of it. And the one who loves God cultivates pure prayer and throws off from himself every passion which hinders him." 400 Chapters on Love, 2.7
"If you hate some people and some you neither love nor hate, while others you love only moderately and still others you love very much, know from this inequality that you are far from perfect love, which lays down that you must love everyone equally." 400 Chapters on Love, 2.10
"When a person loves someone, he is naturally eager to be of service. So if one loves God, he is naturally eager to do what is pleasing to Him. But if he loves his flesh, he is eager to accomplish what delights it." 400 Chapters on Love, 3.10
"Not so much out of necessity has gold become enviable by men as that with it most of them can provide for their pleasures.
"There are three reasons for the love of money: pleasure-seeking, vainglory, and lack of faith. And more serious than the other two is lack of faith.
"The hedonist loves money because with it he lives in luxury; the vain person because with it he can be praised; the person who lacks faith because he can hide it and keep it while in fear of hunger, or old age, or illness, or exile. He lays his hope on it rather than on God the Maker and Provider of the whole creation, even of the last and least of living things."
"There are found kinds of people who acquire money, the three just mentioned and the financial administrator. Obviously only he acquires it for the right reason: so that he might never run short in relieving each one's need." 400 Chapters on Love, 3.16-19
"In bringing into existence a rational and intelligent nature, God in His supreme goodness had communicated ot it four of the divine attributes by which He maintains, guards, and preserves creatures: being, eternal being, goodness, and wisdom. The first two He grants to the essence, the second two to its faculty of will; that is, to the essene He gives being and eternla being, and to the volitive [will] faculty He gives goodness and wisdom in order that what He is by essence the creature might become by participation. For this reason man is said to be made 'to the image and likeness of God': to the image of His being by our being, to the image of His eternal being by our eternal being (even though not without a beginning, it is yet without end); to the likeness of His goodness by our goodness, to the image of His wisdom by our wisdom. The first is by nature, the second by grace. Every rational nature indeed is made to the image of God; but only those who are good and wise are made to His likeness." 400 Chapters on Love, 3.25
"Love of God is always fond of flying off to hold converse with Him; love of neighbor prepares the mind to think always well of him." 400 Chapters on Love, 4.40
"Many people have said much about love, but only in seeking it among Christ's disciples will you find it, for only they have the true love, the teacher of love, of whom it is written, 'If I have prophecy and know all mysteries and all knowledge but do not have love, it profits me nothing.' Therefore, the one who possesses love possesses God Himself, since 'God is love.' To Him be glory forever. Amen. 400 Chapters on love, 4.100
