SAINT MAXIMUS
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SAINT MAXIMUS |
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THE CONFESSOR
(662)
Saint Maximus was abbot of a noble birth, a native of Constantinople. He is called the ‘confessor’ because of his pain and sufferings for his faith. He is considered a great theologian, and a pillar of the orthodox faith against heresies. He grew up highly educated and became secretary of emperor Heraclius.
When the emperor supported the heresies, which in effect denied the full humanity of Christ, Maximus became uncomfortable and resigned his post in about 616. He found that it was the proper occasion meeting his desire to leave the world and be a monk. He joined the Chrysopolis monastery and began a zealous life of asceticism. When the time came up to choose a new abbot for the monastery, he was unanimously elected. St. Maximus carried out his duties strictly, following the footsteps of the holy fathers, in addition to writing what was known as ‘century’: one hundred terse paragraphs written on one subject, and mystical treatises. During the Persian invasion in 626, he took refuge in Alexandria, closely supporting Pope Martin who condemned the heresies.
Meanwhile the heresies grew and spread, supported by emperor Constans. Maximus continued his vigorous defense of his orthodox faith. While in Rome attending a council convened by Pope St. Martin, the emperor arrested Maximus, after he ordered Martin imprisoned and exiled. At age seventy-five, St. Maximus spent six years, flogged in prison. In order to obtain his recantation, a bishop was sent to offer him favors; he refused. Then he was tortured by amputating his tongue and his right hand. The holy martyr died soon after that in his exile. It was said that before he departed to the Lord, St. Maximus was comforted by a certain vision.
INSPIRATIONAL‘CENTURY’:
St. Maximus wrote four centuries (every one includes 100 paragraphs) on ‘Love’. Here is the first paragraph of every one:First Century: 1- Love is that good disposition of the soul in which it prefers nothing that exists to Knowledge of God. But no man can come to such a state of love if he were attached to anything earthly.
Second Century: 1 - A sincere lover of God prays wholly without distraction, just as he who prays without distraction loves God sincerely. But that man cannot pray without distraction whose mind is nailed to something earthly. Thus whose mind is attached to something earthly does not love God.
Third Century: 1 - A rational use of representations and objects brings chastity, love and knowledge; and an irrational use - lack of self-mastery, hatred and ignorance.
Fourth Century: 1 - When the mind reflects on the absolute infinity of God, on this unfathomable and greatly desirable deep, it is first filled with wonder; and then it is struck with amazement how God has brought into being from nothing all that is. But there is no end of His greatness, so too is His wisdom unsearchable.
- EARLY FATHERS FROM THE PHILOKALIA|
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September 24, 656 • Maximus the Confessor Faced Heretics
"You are full of pride. You think that you are the only Orthodox theologian, the only person being saved, and that everyone else is a heretic and perishing!" Troilus and Sergius, agents of the emperor in Constantinople, leveled their accusation against Maximus, the abbot of Chrysopolis Monastery whom they were interrogating.
"When all the people in Babylon were worshipping the golden idol, the Three Holy Youths* did not condemn anyone to hell," retorted Maximus. "They did not concern themselves with what others were doing, but took care only for themselves, so as not to fall away from true piety."
He added, "God forbid that I should condemn anyone, or say that I alone am being saved. However, I would sooner agree to die than, having fallen away in any way from the right faith, endure the torments of my conscience."
Maximus was a man of great ability. Born in Constantinople around 580, he was well educated and served as secretary to Emperor Heraclius. But in 626, Maximus became a monk. At that time a heresy known as Monothelitism raged in the eastern half of the Roman Empire. Monothelites taught that Christ's divine will had swallowed up and destroyed his human will so that in effect he had only one will. Maximus stoutly denied this.
Christ's incarnation was the whole point of human history, Maximus argued, because it was intended to restore the equilibrium lost when Adam fell into sin. If Christ was not fully God and fully man, he said, then salvation was void.
Insisting on religious unity among their subjects, emperors tried to force compromise teachings on them. Many eastern bishops accepted these faulty doctrines, published in the Ecthesis and the Typos. Maximus rejected both.
At the end of 655, when he was about seventy-five years old, Maximus was sent to Constantinople for trial. Accused of conspiracy and the absurd charge of causing the loss of the emperor's North African holdings, Maximus was sent into exile in Thrace, where he suffered cold and hunger.
At the emperor's command, one of the traitor bishops, Theodosius of Caesarea in Bithynia, went to see the old abbot. With him were two officials, Theodosius and Paul. They met on this day, September 24, 656. Maximus shredded their arguments so thoroughly that the bishop promised to submit. Maximus said it was not to him, but to Rome that he must submit. Maximus was a strong advocate of the primacy of the Pope--a fact that the Roman Church cites in backing up its claim to authority over all Christians. Theodosius argued that the Lateran Council of 649 was invalid because the emperor never authorized it. Maximus replied that if it was not pious faith but emperors that made councils valid, then several rigged councils held by wicked emperors must be accepted even though what they taught was contrary to Orthodox faith. The old abbot could not be moved from his staunch defense of true doctrine.
Six years after this meeting, Maximus, then in his eighties, was again dragged in for questioning. When he refused to buckle to Sergius and Troilus, they cut out his tongue, lopped off his right hand and sent him into exile again. His tough old body had taken all the punishment it could bear: he died that August, unbroken in his confession of the Christ he loved. Because of this, he is called Maximus the Confessor.
[*Maximus was referring to Shadrack, Mesheck and Abednego, who refused to bow to an image that Nebuchadnezzar had erected. The story is told in Daniel, a book of the Bible.]
"Knowledge is good by nature, and so likewise is health, but their opposites
have benefited even more than have they. In the wicked knowledge does not result
in good, even though, as was said, it is good by nature. The same is true for
health or wealth or joy. These are not used profitably by them. So it is, then,
that their opposites are profitably, and therefore it happens that they are not
evil in themselves even though they seem to be evil."
St. Maximus the Confessor.
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Page Written By H. G. H. ãCopyright 2001
