This document discusses a talk on the life and teachings of St. Maximus the Confessor. It will cover his commentary on the Lord's Prayer and other writings. Some of the key questions that will be addressed are: why St. Maximus is known as the Confessor, what seven mysteries in the Lord's Prayer he reveals, and why the Byzantine emperor had his tongue and hand cut off before exiling him. The discussion will also cover what the Lord's Prayer reveals about God, neighborly love, the Trinity, and deification through Christ. Viewers are invited to ask questions and learn together.

2. Today we will learn and reflect on the life of St Maximus the Confessor, and his
commentary on the Lord’s Prayer and other writings in the Philokalia and other
collections of his works.
Why is St Maximus known as the Confessor?
What seven mysteries hidden in the Lord’s Prayer does St Maximus reveal to us?
Why did the Byzantine Emperor Constans II cut St Maximus’ tongue and right
hand before exiling him on the shores of the Black Sea?
What does the Lord’s Prayer reveal about the two-fold love of God and neighbor,
the nature of the Trinity, and our deification through the grace of Christ? When is
the kingdom of God coming?
Why should we be eager to forgive our neighbor? Should we forgive our neighbor
when he refuses to apologize? Will God ever lead us into temptation?

3. Please, we welcome interesting questions in the
comments. Let us learn and reflect together!
At the end of our talk, we will discuss the sources
used for this video.
Feel free to follow along in the PowerPoint script we
uploaded to SlideShare.

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6. How can we be saved?

7. https://youtu.be/ygxn2qqGnOI
Jesus, repeating Deuteronomy, exhorts us, “You shall love the
Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with
all your mind. This is the greatest and first commandment. And a
second is like it, You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these
two commandments depend all the law and the prophets.”

8. St Maximus’ commentary on this commandment
teaches us that if we truly Love God, this love is a
great blessing that binds God and man together, and
as much as is possible for man, Christ incarnate, the
perfect deified man, will manifest Himself in the
deified man to raise him up as an adopted son to
the Father. “Love is a great blessing and of all
blessings the first and supreme, since it joins God
and men together around him who has love, and it
makes the Creator of men manifest Himself as man
through the exact likeness of the deified man to
God, in so far as this is possible for man.”

9. St Maximus teaches us: “Love
makes man god, and reveals and
manifests God as man, through
the single and identical purpose
and activity of the will of both.”
St Maximus links Love of God to
love of neighbor: “Love of God is
opposed to desire, for it
persuades the intellect to control
itself with regard to sensual
pleasures. Love for our neighbor
is opposed to anger, for it makes
us scorn fame and riches.”

10. The Wedding Feast at Cana, by Paolo Veronese, 1563, Louvre
St Maximus, The Spirit of Early Christianity

11. Pelikan starts his volume on Eastern Christendom with St Maximus, the
universal spirit of seventh century Orthodoxy, who preserved the
Orthodoxy of past Church Fathers while laying a solid foundation for
future generations. One chief idea of St Maximus and Orthodoxy is
deification. When we pray the Lord’s Prayer we pray for our deification.
At the wedding at Cana, Jesus’ first miracle, when the host said the good
wine was saved until now, St Maximus teaches us that this refers to Christ
incarnate. We cannot attain deification on our own, we can only achieve
deification as a gift from God, through our adoption by the Father
through His Son, through divine grace, but with our cooperation, for our
free will must seek deification to receive it.

12. The Wedding Feast at Cana, by Paolo Veronese, 1563, Louvre, Paris

13. The Wedding Feast at Cana, by Paolo Veronese, 1563, Louvre, Paris
We must in faith and in search of understanding seek to clarify
the meaning of the words we use, as St Maximus teaches us,
“To say something without first distinguishing the meanings of
what is said is nothing less than to confuse everything.”

14. St Maximus was born to an upper-class family near Constantinople
around 580, had a classical education in philosophy, and his writings as a
contemplative monk brought him to the attention of the royal court. He
served as a monk, then the Abbott, of a monastery across the Bosporus
Straits, but was forced to flee to Carthage in North Africa when the
Persians conquered Anatolia. During his lifetime, the Monophysite
southern Mediterranean portion of the empire, including Egypt and
modern-day Libya, came under siege and would fall to Islam. St Maximus
would move to Rome, where he became a theological advisor to Pope
Martin I, and is today a saint equally celebrated by both the Roman
Catholic and Orthodox Churches. Most of the second volume of the
Orthodox Philokalia includes his writings.

15. Map of Constantinople in the Nuremburg Chronicles / Emperor Constantine with his city

16. A mural in
the Istanbul
Archaeology
Museums
depicting
the seaward
walls of the
Byzantine
capital and
the Golden
Horn with
its chains in
the 14th-
15th
centuries.

17. View of Trajan's Forum in Rome, by Ippolito Caffi, 1800's

18. https://youtu.be/rKVBhdHWHGI

19. St Maximus fought against the doctrine of Monotheletism,
the belief that Christ had but one will rather than two
wills. This was similar to the debate of the two natures of
Christ, the divine nature and human nature, decided at the
Council of Chalcedon. To St Maximus, this was not an
obscure theological dispute, we need to accept fully the
humanity of Christ before we can be saved. The Emperor
thought otherwise, wishing to find a theological
formulation acceptable to all so his empire would be
united.

20. Council of
Nicaea in 325,
Fresco in
Capella
Sistina,
Vatican, 1590

21. St Maximus and Pope Martin I were both arrested in Rome
by imperial troops and were tried in Constantinople. When
St Maximus refused to recant, his tongue and right hand
were cut off so he could no longer preach, and he died in
exile on the Black Sea in 662. A confessor is someone who
was not a martyr but was someone who died from wounds
incurred while defending the faith. Pope Martin I also
refused to recant, but he kept his tongue and his right arm
in his Black Sea exile.

22. Byzantine
emperor
Constans II has
Pope Martin I
arrested and
detained in a
monastery. He
was banished
to Cherson in
Crimea on the
Black Sea, the
Roman
bishops
elected a new
pope.
St Maximus
had his tongue
and right hand
cut off so he
could no
longer preach.

23. This doctrine of the two wills is briefly described in the
commentary of St Maximus on the Garden of Gethsemane,
where Christ prays to His Father to ask that this cup be passed
from Him but let not what I will but what thou will be done.
Christ in His human nature fears a painful death, as we would
fear a painful death, and calls upon His father in his human
nature. Then Christ demonstrates that His human will concurs
with His divine will, which is in both Christ and the Father, by
saying He will fulfill the divine will. The human will of Christ,
although human, is not like our human will, as it was in its deified
state immediately at the Assumption.

24. Jesus' Agony in the
Garden, by Andrea
Mantegna, 1460. This
painting depicts Jesus
praying in the
Gethsemane while the
disciples sleep and
Judas leads the mob.

25. Theology of St Maximus the Confessor

26. In his theological writings in the Philokalia, St
Maximus discusses Trinity and divinity, and quickly
transitions into how our thoughts should be on
Christ, how we should worship Christ, how we should
talk and act to our neighbor.

27. St Maximus teaches
us that salvation
and deification are
gifts given by grace
by God who loves
us. “A soul can
never attain the
knowledge of God
unless God Himself
in His goodness
takes hold of it and
raises it up to
Himself.”
Icon of Ladder of Divine Ascent

28. St Maximus teaches us that “the Lord’s
Prayer includes petitions for everything
that the divine Logos effected through His
self-emptying in the incarnation, and it
teaches us to strive for those blessings
from the true provider, God the Father,
through the natural mediation of the Son
in the Holy Spirit. For the Lord Jesus is the
mediator between God and men, since He
makes the unknown Father manifest to
men through the flesh and gives those
who have been reconciled to Christ access
to the Father through the Holy Spirit.” The Holy Trinity, by Artus Wolffort, 1600's

29. The Orthodox and Roman Catholic traditions differ in
their depiction of the Trinity. Orthodox icons never
depict God the Father, we only hear God the Father
from the clouds. The early Church Fathers teach us
that Jesus in his pre-incarnate form spoke to Adam
and Eve and the patriarchs and often appeared as an
angel. The visitation of three angels to Abraham and
Sarah is seen as a representation of the Trinity, the
angel with the halo is the pre-incarnate Christ.

30. Icon: Abraham, Sarah, & Three Visiting Angels
Tradition
holds that
Jesus has
pre-incarnate
appearances
in the Old
Testament,
including as
one of three
angels
visiting
Abraham,
and when
Jesus was
depicted
during the
Creation.

31. However, during the Renaissance the warrior Pope
Julius II, and he picked the name of Caesar rather
than a saint, commissioned Michelangelo to paint on
the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel the depiction of God
the Father creating man, rather than the pre-
incarnate Jesus. After the genius of Michelangelo,
there was no going back.

32. https://youtu.be/Ff-XsE5CuSo

33. Similarly, I like to picture the theology of St Maximus regarding the Incarnation and
the Trinity as like the couple who drive to a dinner theater, but they take a wrong
turn, and don’t pay attention, they drive into a canal, and they lose their car, their
keys, their money, and they stumble in the theater with their muddy clothes. The
usher kindly and lovingly admits them in without a ticket, without asking for money,
finds them new clothes, and ushers them into a massive room where they discover
that not only are there no seats in this theater, and there is no one play, there is no
stage either, but there are thousands of plays intertwined together. They ask when
the play begins, and the usher tells them the play began when they arrived, and it
never really ends. They expect to be spiritually fed, but that is incomprehensible
here, nor can they merely watch a play, they are in the play with everyone else, they
are there to ascend to the stage, by Loving God, and loving their neighbor, bringing
out the best in them, bringing out the best in themselves, becoming divine, with the
usher at the side of every actor, ever present, ever consoling, ever comforting, ever
assisting.

34. German
Theater
performance,
by Frans
Geffels, 1668

35. Holy Communion
at St Demetrios
Divine Liturgy in
Fort Lauderdale, FL
Photo taken from
the balcony

36. We transition from a crowded theater to the Divine
Liturgy because so often we expect to be entertained
by the singing at Sunday services, and the complaint
that you are not spiritually fed at a church service
implies you are a passive participant, whereas you
would benefit the most from Sunday services if you
are an active participant, listening to the Scriptures
and praying the prayers to the Lord. So, if you do not
benefit from the Sunday services, it is at least
partially your fault.

37. St Panteleimon Monastery on Mount Athos, picture taken 2016

38. To put this in a more scholarly manner, St Maximus is a cosmic
theologian, where the cosmos of the divine descending from
above in the incarnation is mirrored in the micro-cosmos of the
individual ascending to Heaven through deification. The
Incarnation of Christ, the hypostatic union of divine and human
natures, eternally begotten, is safeguarding the purpose of the
Incarnation, the deification of man. If man chooses, he can
through deification be unified in God through grace. The Logos is
the supreme divine Mediator, while humanity, the microcosm of
the created order, can participate in Christ’s mediation.

39. Allegory of
Trinity, by
Frans Floris I,
1562

40. According to the theologian Lars Thunberg, for St Maximus the theologia,
the trinitarian mystery, and the oikonomia, the incarnation of the Logos,
both differ as they are the same. They differ as the Logos is of the Trinity,
and they are the same as when we imitate Christ, we also imitate the
Father, whom we know through Christ, and who offers His only Son as a
sacrifice for us, and we also imitate the Trinity as a whole. The
incarnation, the Logos assuming flesh to dwell among us, through whom
we are saved, by whom we are adopted by the Father, was in the divine
plan. St Maximus speculates that the Incarnation was planned without
regards to the possibility of the fall. Jesus’ taking flesh transcends mere
words, the Incarnation means God is personally involved in His creation,
and always intended to suffer and die so our soul can ascend so we can
truly be like God.

41. Adoration of the Trinity, by Albrecht Dürer, 1511:
Holy Spirit, God the Father, and the crucified Christ
God the Father
and the Holy
Spirit depicted
above Jesus, by
Francesco
Albani, 1600's

42. The Trinity, Book of Hours, by Guillaume Le Rouge, 1510
God the Father and the Holy Spirit above
Jesus, by Bartolomé Esteban Murillo, 1600's

43. St Maximus, Excerpts: Centuries of Theology
Icons of Ladder of Divine Ascent

44. Many Church Fathers view obedience as a virtue, St
John Climacus teaches us that obedience is one of
the first virtues you master in your spiritual climb.
Obedience masters your will and makes you open to
spiritual instruction, increasing humility and virtue.

45. https://youtu.be/_bjQcNvzb-c

46. Likewise, St Maximus teaches us that
“just as the result of disobedience is
sin, so the result of obedience is
virtue. And just as disobedience leads
to breaking the commandments and
to separation from God who gave
them, so obedience leads to keeping
the commandments and to union with
our God who gave them.”
Disobedience separates us from God,
while obedience unites us with God.

47. St Maximus teaches us that conquering
the passions will never lead to spiritual
happiness unless you keep the
Commandments. Those who have
spiritual knowledge also have a rich store
of virtue saved by practicing the virtues.
“The subjugation of the passions is not
sufficient to ensure spiritual happiness for
the soul unless the soul also acquires the
virtues by keeping the commandments.”
“Whoever possesses spiritual knowledge
must always possess a rich store of virtue
as well, gained through his conduct.”

48. St Maximus teaches us, “According to the
Gospel, the person who is simply a man of the
faith can remove the mountain of his sin through
the practice of the virtues.” “If he has the
capacity to be a disciple, he received fragments
of the loaves of spiritual knowledge from the
hands of the Logos who feeds thousands of
people, demonstrating by his action how the
power of the Logos is increased and multiplied
by the practice of the virtues.” The Logos is the
Christ who miraculously fed five thousand from
a single fish and a loaf of bread.
Blessing of the breads, Gonia Odigitria
monastery, by monk Nilus, 1643

49. St Maximus makes it clear that true knowledge
of God is not a passive knowledge, you can
never understand what Loving God means
unless you truly try to live a virtuous life. St
Maximus teaches that those “who put on a
show of holiness for the sake of self-display
not only fail to achieve anything through their
false piety, but also are wounded by their
conscience.” But “when a man’s intellect is
constantly with God, his desire grows beyond
all measures into an intense longing for God
and his incensiveness and anger is completely
transformed into divine love.”
Maximus the Confessor and His Miracles,
1600's, Stroganov school icon

50. St Maximus teaches us that if we
“expound the teaching of the Logos
from the standpoint of the moral life,
using” simple and plain words all can
understand, “you make the Logos
flesh. Conversely, if you elucidate
mystical theology by means of the
higher forms of contemplation, you
make the Logos spirit.”
Icon of St John of Damascus and
St Maximus the Confessor

51. St Maximus’ Commentary on Lord’s Prayer

52. St Maximus commentary on the Lord’s Prayer is an ideal window through
which we can view his theology of Christ’s Incarnation and the economy
of our salvation. We seek deification in the Lord’s Prayer, the model
prayer, which starts out, “Our Father who art in Heaven, hallowed by Thy
Name,” so we are exhorted to Love God, and understand how we stand in
His Kingdom, and continues as we pray how we should live our lives.
Once we understand how we must repent of all our transgressions, no
exceptions, and forgive everyone, no exceptions, so God will forgive us,
and not withhold forgiveness from anyone, lest God withholds His
forgiveness of us.

53. As Matthew exhorts us after the end of the
Lord’s Prayer, “For if you forgive men their
trespasses, your heavenly Father also will forgive
you; but if you do not forgive men their
trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your
trespasses.” This prepares us for the teachings of
St Maximus on the dangers of selfishness and
self-love, the root of all evil.
Self-love can delude us to desperately seek the
lust that leads to often mere moments of
pleasure that can cause years of suffering for us
and those around us. This self-love and lust for
pleasure to avoid life’s pain instead tyrannizes
the lives of those close to us.
Jesus' agony in garden of Gethsemane,
by Giovan Pietro Birago, 1490

54. To St Maximus, through the Lord’s Prayer we seek
deification of our nature and the spiritual bread we
need to live a godly life. We pray for the blessings of
the Father, through the mediation of Christ or Logos,
who bestows adoption by the Father by grace from
above through the Holy Spirit. As the Logos makes
men equal to the angels, we should strive after the
Logos through the practice of the virtues, through
godly living in imitation of Christ.

55. Feeding the Five
Thousand, by
Marten van
Valckenborch,
1590

56. What are the seven mysteries St Maximus teaches
us are hidden within the Lord’s Prayer?
• “These seven are theology,
• Adoption as sons by grace,
• Equality with the angels,
• Participation in eternal life,
• Restoration of human nature when it is
reconciled dispassionately with itself,
• Abolition of the law of sin,
• And the destruction of the tyranny that holds us
in its power through the deceit of the evil one.”
Jesus' agony in garden of Gethsemane,
by Giovan Pietro Birago, 1490

57. As St Maximus teaches us, “The Lord’s
Prayer includes petitions for everything
that the divine Logos, or Christ, effected
through His self-emptying in the
Incarnation, and it teaches us to strive
from blessings of” “God the Father alone
through the natural mediation of the Son
in the Holy Spirit. For the Lord Jesus is
mediator between God and men,” “since
He makes the unknown Father manifest
to men through the flesh and gives those
who have been reconciled to Him access
to the Father through the Holy Spirit.”
The Lord's Prayer, by James Tissot, 1894

58. We live theology when we pray,
“Our Father who art in Heaven,
hallowed by Thy Name; Thy
kingdom come.” St Maximus
teaches that these words “reveal
to us Father, the name of the
Father, and the kingdom of our
Father, so that from this beginning
we may be taught to revere, invoke
and worship the Trinity in unity.”

59. To the Trinity owe our creation and our
existence, and our adoption as Sons of God. As St
Maximus teaches us, “we are taught to proclaim
the grace of our adoption, since we have been
found worthy of addressing our Creator by
nature as our Father by grace.” Thus, the Love of
Christ leads us to seek to live a godly life,
“venerating this title of our begetter by grace, we
strive to stamp our Creator’s qualities on our
lives, sanctifying His name on earth, taking after
Him as our Father, showing ourselves to be His
children through our actions, and through all
that we think or do, glorifying the author of this
adoption, who is by nature Son of the Father.”
Heavenly and Earthly Trinities, by Murillo, 1677

60. Desire and corrupting passions breed anger, but
anger stops when “desire has been put to death.”
When we pray, “Thy Kingdom come,” we pray, “May
the Holy Spirit come,” “making us a temple for God
by the teaching and practice of gentleness.” Here
meekness is translated as gentleness in the
Beatitude, “Blessed are the gentle, for they will
inherit the earth.” St Maximus speculates that here
the “earth signifies the resolution and strength of
the inner stability, immovable rooted in goodness,
that is possessed by gentle people. This stability”
“contains unfailing joy, enables the gentle to attain
the kingdom,” and “permits the gentle to inherit
the principle of virtue, as if virtue were the earth
that occupies a middle place in the universe.”

61. St Maximus asks, “What
man will be so lacking in
love and completely without
appetite for divine blessings
that he will not desire the
greatest degree of humility
and gentleness so he can
take on the stamp of the
kingdom, so far as this is
possible for men, and to
bear in himself by grace an
exact spiritual likeness of
Christ, who is by nature the
truly great King?”

62. When Jesus was asked by the Pharisees
when the kingdom of God was coming,
he answers, “The kingdom of god is in
the midst of you.” St Maximus reflects on
this, teaching us that there are “souls
that through the grace of God resemble
God” “In these souls Christ always
desires to be born in a mystical way,
becoming incarnate in those who attain
salvation, and making the soul that gives
birth to Him a Virgin Mother.”
God the Father On His Throne, Anonymous,
Westphalia, late 1600’s

63. St Maximus continues, “This
kingdom is characterized by
humility and gentleness of
heart.” “The humble does not
regard what is painful in the
senses as a privation of pleasure:
he knows only one pleasure, the
marriage of the soul with the
Logos,” seeking deification
through the grace of Christ.
Icon of Ladder of Divine Ascent

64. What is meant by: “Thy will be
done, on earth as it is in
Heaven?” St Maximus teaches us
that when we “worship God
mystically with our intelligence
alone, keeping it free from
sensual desire and anger, we
fulfill the divine will on earth just
as the angels fulfill the divine will
in Heaven.” Who will be saved?
Who will inherit the kingdom?
Those who are humble and
gentle, for “all who are humble
are invariably gentle, and all who
are gentle are invariably humble.
Xenophon, LIFE magazine
gony in the Garden, by Andrea Mantegna, 1460. Jesus prays, the
isciples sleep, and Judas leads the mob.

65. What do we pray when we pray, “Give us this day
our daily bread?” St Maximus teaches us, “If we live
in the way we have promised, we will receive as
daily and life-giving bread from the nourishment of
our souls” “the Logos Himself; for it was He who
said, ‘I am the bread that came down from heaven
and gives life to the world.’”
St Maximus believes that “this day refers to the
present age,” the spiritual daily bread that grants us
immortality. Adam, “the first man, was prevented
from partaking of this bread by his transgression of
the divine commandment” not to eat the apple
from the Tree of Knowledge. But we can partake of
the bread of the Logos Himself, who came down
from Heaven to give life to the world.

66. If we pray that our
physical needs are met, St
Maximus teaches us that
we should pray for today’s
bread, we should eat to
live, not live to eat, eating
enough to stay in good
health, and trust in God,
and do not worry about
where the bread for
tomorrow will come. But
“let us show that we eat
for the sake of living, and
not be guilty of living for
the sake of eating.”
Bread of Life, by Andrei Mironov, 2022

67. St Maximus teaches us that “it is not food that
is evil but gluttony, not the begetting of
children but unchastity, not material things
but avarice, not esteem but self-esteem. This
being so, it is only the misuse of things that is
evil, and such misuse occurs when the
intellect fails to cultivate its natural powers.”
St Maximus teaches us that “he who asks to
receive his daily bread,” the Bread of Life,
“receives it according to his spiritual capacity”
to receive this bread. Those who are righteous
are given this bread in greater measure, but all
are given this Bread out of God’s Love. Bread of Life icon

68. After we have sought our daily spiritual bread, we
should be eager to pray, “Forgive us our debts, as
we also have forgiven our debtors.” We should
forgive others with joy and without hesitation, for
St Maximus teaches we should “beg for God to
treat us as we have treated our neighbors!” “Just
as God dispassionately forgives us, so we should
be dispassionate” towards those who harm us,
eagerly forgiving them without anger, without
rancor, without hesitation. “We must not allow the
memory of our afflictions be stamped on our
intellects” lest they separate us from our neighbor.
When we are unable to forgive our neighbor, “we
cannot receive God’s gift of Himself.”
Bread of Life icon

69. The Four Centuries of Love by St Maximus provides
other useful teachings on repentance and forgiving.
St Maximus teaches us we are not capable of truly
repenting of our sins if we do not forgive others their
sins.

70. St Maximus teaches us, “He who busies himself
with the sins of others, or judges his brother on
suspicion, has not yet even begun to repent or to
examine himself to discover his own sins, which
are truly heavier than a great lump of lead.”
St Maximus teaches us that we sin for various
reasons. “It is one thing to sin through force of
habit, and another thing to sin impulsively.” When
you sin impulsively, you do not “deliberately
choose the sin before committing it and are often
deeply distressed by the sin. But when you sin by
habit, you were already sinning in your thoughts,
and afterward you are in the same state of mind.”

71. Should we forgive our brother even
when he does not apologize? St
Maximus and the other church
fathers say little about apologies,
though St Maximus says that we
should apologize to make peace with
our brother. Apologies should never
be a prerequisite for forgiveness, for
as St Maximus teaches, “if your
brother does not want to live
peaceably with you, nevertheless
guard yourself against hatred,
praying for him sincerely, and do not
speak ill of him to anyone.”

72. St Maximus teaches us that the sensible man gladly
bears the sufferings of this world, as they are caused
by our sins, and does not blame those who bring us
trials and sufferings but rather rejoices in his humility
through suffering.

73. In the words of St Maximus, “when a trial
comes unexpectedly, do not blame the person
who caused it, but try to discover the reason
why it came” “As long as you have bad habits,
do not reject hardship, so you can be
humbled.” “Trials are sent to some so as to take
away past sins, to others to eradicate current
sins, and yet to others to forestall future sins”
But when the “fool, ignorant of God’s wisdom,
sins and is corrected, he blames either God or
men for the hardships he suffers.”

74. Next, we ask God to “lead us not into
temptation but deliver us from evil.” Why would
God lead us into temptation? Surely God does
not, but we need God’s grace to help us to resist
temptation. St Maximus teaches us: “he who
has not completely forgiven those who stumble
and has not brought his heart to God free from
grievance and illuminated with the light of
reconciliation with his neighbor, will fail to attain
the grace of the blessings he has prayed for.
Indeed, he will justly be handed over to
temptation and to evil, so that, having retracted
his judgements of other people, he may learn to
purify himself of his own sins.”
Jesus' agony in the garden of Gethsemane,
by Martin Schongauer, 1491

75. St Maximus teaches us
that we should be eager
for forgive the sins of our
neighbors, “so when
saying the Lord’s Prayer,
we should receive a
double grace: forgiveness
of sins already
committed, and
protection & deliverance
from future sins.”
The Agony in the Garden, by El Greco, 1590

76. Which is why I always describe the two-fold Love of God
and love of neighbor with the St Maximus corollary, that
we should be eager to forgive our neighbor.
What does St Maximus teach about the aims of prayer?
When we pray, we should seek deification, we should
remember the depths to which we were dragged by the
weight of our sins, and how Christ emptied himself to take
on flesh so He could raise us up to the Heavens with his
compassionate hand.

78. In St Maximus’ words, “when we pray, let our
aim be this mystery of deification, which shows
us what we were once like and what the self-
emptying of the only-begotten Son through
the flesh has now made us; which shows us
the depths to which we were dragged down by
the weight of sin, and the heights to which we
have been raised by His compassionate hand,”
“so we can have greater Love for Him who has
prepared this salvation for us with such
wisdom.” “He who truly Loves God prays
without distraction, and he who prays entirely
without distraction Loves God truly.”
The Agony in the Garden, by El Greco, 1608

79. St Maximus reminds us that “the
intellect joined to God for long periods
through prayer and love becomes wise,
good, powerful, compassionate,
merciful and long-suffering; in short, it
includes within itself almost all of the
divine qualities. But when the intellect
withdraws from God and attaches itself
to material things, either it becomes
self-indulgent like some domestic
animal, or like a wild beast it fights with
men for the sake of these things.”
Agony in the Garden, by Ludovico Carracci, around 1600

80. Discussing the Sources

81. St Maximus the Confessor is one of my favorite Eastern
saints. As is often true with translations from the Greek,
sometimes it is a bit wordy, I did condense many
quotations. We chose to concentrate on his essay on the
Lord’s Prayer because it is a good introduction to his
thought, we scratched the surface of his other works in the
Philokalia, they take up most of Volume 2, plus his other
works. We discuss the sources more in depth in our
introductory video on the Philokalia.

82. https://youtu.be/rKVBhdHWHGI

83. We have another collection of his writings in On the Cosmic
Mystery of Jesus Christ, and a collection of scholarly essays on
the Philokalia. We had purchased a tome authored by Lars
Thunberg on our saint, it was as dense as bricks, we preferred his
shorter book on our saint, Man and the Cosmos. Jaroslav
Pelikan’s history of Christian Doctrine is excellent, we elaborate
on this series in our Book Reviews of the Early Church Fathers.

84. https://youtu.be/I_2q4BiRBlU

85. St Maximus the Confessor was deeply influenced in his depictions
of the nature of Christ and his descriptions of the Trinity by
Dionysius the Areopagite, a Christian Neoplatonist theologian,
and in particular his work on the Divine Names. We began our
reflections on Dionysius with his Mystical Theology, we are
planning a video on his Divine Names in late 2023. This will
include reflections on Hans Urs Balthasar’s book on St Maximus,
the Cosmic Liturgy, that explores the influence of Dionysius on
the works of St Maximus.

86. https://youtu.be/wlr55ddb-lc

87. https://youtu.be/6VffPIzfT-o

88. Many of our icons of St Maximus were from the
Mystagogy website, they have many interesting
articles on St Maximus. And the thumbnail is a photo
of a monastery on Mount Athos in Greece.

89. https://www.johnsanidopoulos.com/search?q=maximus
This website has many interesting
articles on St Maximus the Confessor.

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