St. Maximus the Confessor (ca. 580-662)

Saint Maximos the Confessor
January 21st
Troparion (Tone 3)
Through thee the Spirit poured forth streams of teaching for the Church: thou didst expound God the Word's self-emptying, and shine forth in thy struggles as a true Confessor of the Faith; holy Father Maximos, pray to Christ our God to grant us His great mercy.
St. Maximos the Confessor defended Orthodoxy against the Monothelite heresy which tried to assert that Christ only had a divine will and thus was not fully man. St. Maximos had to endure persecution from both the Emperor and the Patriarch. He was tortured and ridiculed in unspeakable fashion. His tongue was cut off along with his hand. God miraculously restored his hand. He reposed in the Lord in 662.

Source:

http://www.comeandseeicons.com/m/phn60.htm

Maximus the Confessor

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St. Maximus the Confessor

Our venerable and God-bearing Father Maximus the Confessor (ca. 580-662) was an Orthodox Christian monk and ascetical writer known especially for his courageous fight against the heresy of Monothelitism. His feast days in the Church are celebrated on January 21 and, for the translation of his relics, on August 13.

Life

He was born in the region of Constantinople, was well educated, and spent some time in government service before becoming a monk, having been a member of the old Byzantine aristocracy and holding the post of Imperial Secretary under Emperor Heraclius. Around 614, he became a monk (later abbot) at the monastery of Chrysopolis. During the Persian invasion of the Empire (614), he fled to Africa.

From about 640 on, he became the determined opponent of Monothelitism, the heretical teaching that Jesus Christ had only one will. In this, he followed the example of St. Sophronius of Jerusalem, who was the first to combat this heresy starting in 634.

Maximus supported the Orthodoxy of Rome on this matter and is said to have exclaimed: "I have the faith of the Latins, but the language of the Greeks." He argued for Dyothelitism, the Orthodox teaching that Jesus Christ possessed two wills (one divine and one human), rather than the one will posited by Monothelitism.

After Pyrrhus, the temporarily deposed Monothelite Patriarch of Constantinople, had declared his defeat in a dispute at Carthage (645), Maximus obtained the heresy's condemnation at several local synods in Africa, and also worked to have it condemned at the Lateran Council of 649. He was brought to Constantinople in 653, pressured to adhere to the Typos of Emperor Constans II. Refusing to do so, he was exiled to Thrace. (Pope St. Martin of Rome was tried around the same time in Constantinople, and thus deposed and exiled to Crimea.)

In 661 Maximus again was brought to the imperial capital and questioned; while there, he had his tongue uprooted and his right hand cut off (to prevent him from preaching or writing the true faith), and then was again exiled to the Caucasus, but died shortly thereafter.

Ultimately, Maximus was exonerated by the Sixth Ecumenical Council and recognized as a Father of the Church.

Writings

He left many writings (some of which are collected in the Philokalia) that are still widely read today; some are doctrinal, but many more describe the contemplative life and offer spiritual advice. He also wrote widely on liturgical and exegetical subjects. His theological work was later continued by St. Simeon the New Theologian and by St. Gregory Palamas.

His writings include:

• Quaestiones ad Thalassium—65 questions and answers on difficult passages of Holy Scripture
• Ambigua—an exegetical work on St. Gregory the Theologian
• Paraphrases of the works of Dionysius the Areopagite (though many of the works that have come down under Maximus' name are now held to be the work of John of Scythopolis, who wrote in the first half of the 6th century, some 100 years before Maximus)
• Several dogmatic treatises against the Monothelites
• Liber Asceticus
• Capita de Caritate
• Mystagogia—a mystical interpretation of the Divine Liturgy

Hymns

Maximus the Confessor

Troparion (Tone 8) [1]

Champion of Orthodoxy, teacher of purity and of true worship,

Enlightener of the universe and adornment of hierarchs:

All-wise father Maximus, your teachings have gleamed with light upon all things.

Intercede before Christ God to save our souls.

Kontakion (Tone 8)

Let us the faithful fittingly praise the lover of the Trinity,

The great Maximus who taught the God-inspired faith,

That Christ is to be glorified in His two natures, wills, and energies;

And let us cry to him: "Rejoice, herald of the faith."

Sources

• w:Maximus the Confessor
• The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, 3rd ed., pp. 1061-1062

External links

• St Maximus the Confessor (OCA)
• Translation of the relics of St Maximus the Confessor (OCA)
• Maximos the Confessor, January 21 (GOARCH)
• Maximos the Confessor, August 13 (GOARCH)
• Icon of St. Maximos the Confessor

Writings

• All extant works of St. Maximus in Greek

SOURCE:

http://orthodoxwiki.org/Maximus_the_Confessor

Father Thomas Hopko on Darwin and Christianity Part XI death

http://ancientfaith.com/podcasts/hopko/darwin_and_christianity_-_part_11_death

A Recent Miracle of Elder Paisios in Serres

The following article is pre-published, and will appear in the September 2012 issue of the Greek periodical ΔΙΑΛΟΓΟΣ. The author has allowed for its distribution, because of the hard times we are living in, especially in Greece.

A few weeks ago another contemporary miracle of Elder Paisios was received in a small village of Serres. It was described by the subdeacon Amphilochios of the Holy Cathedral Church of the Archangels in Serres, as lived by Pantelis K.

Pantelis, 18 years old, a young drug user, had a terrible accident with his motorcycle just outside his village, which resulted in serious head injuries and he suffered a concussion. He was probably under the influence of substances because, although he was in rehab programs, this demon of heroine was not leaving him. He entered the intensive care unit of Serres General Hospital with head injuries.

The doctors had him in repression, and after an inpatient infection he was found to be in a coma with the final opinion being that he was brain dead. The doctors, having no other possibilities available to them, threw up their hands and told the bereaved mother that the situation was in God's hands.

The date of the final opinion of brain death was on July 13th. In one day her son would have been 18 years old, and instead of entering adult life, she saw him struggling in bed, not against the known battle of the scourge of drugs, but quite directly for his very survival.

The lovely Mrs. Anastasia would not put this down. With the exhortation of her Holy Spiritual Father, Papa Athanasios, she took the bus to Thessaloniki the next day, and headed for the Holy Monastery of Saint John the Theologian in Souroti.

She knew of the greatness of Elder Paisios, but she did not know that on that day, July 14th, it had been 18 years exactly since the repose of the Elder. When she arrived and saw the people gathered, she was surprised, but when she was told that her only son was born on the same exact day the Elder reposed she almost fainted. She felt something that she still cannot describe. A union with the divine, the aura of the Elder, and in general that something good would come from this.

Despite the critical situation of her son, she did not use it to get ahead, but waited with humility and kneeling for more than four hours until it was her turn to venerate the place where Elder Paisios reposed. She prayed for her child and took some dirt from the grave, which she brought to her spiritual father, who after praying over it made it into a protective amulet. Mrs. Anastasia ran to the hospital and placed it underneath the pillow of her son.

That very same night she saw in her sleep Elder Paisios, saying: "Do not be afraid. Pantelis will become well."

The next morning Pantelis recovered and was healthy, something which the doctors were unable to explain. A sharp fragrance had invaded the room and it was later found that it came from the pillow of Pantelis, under which his mother had placed secretly the amulet with the dirt from the grave of the Elder.

The only thing Pantelis remembers from his dormancy, is the figure of an elder dresseed in black, telling him: "Come, get up my lad to go with your mother. Your kolyva are not on the belt. It will be a long time until we eat them."

From that morning Pantelis had an aversion to drugs and is healthy, reading and trying to enter university. He confesses to the spiritual father of his mother and he wanted this miracle his family lived distributed, by subdeacon Amphilochios.

"God, sometimes, when a person does not understand with the good, gives him a trial, to recover. If there was not a little pain, sickness, etc., people would become beasts, and would not approach God at all." - Elder Paisios

 

 

Translated by John Sanidopoulos

Thanks to John Sanidopoulos:

 

http://www.johnsanidopoulos.com/2012/08/a-recent-miracle-of-elder-paisios-in.html

Didymus the blind and the Apocatastasis...

Didymus and the Apocatastasis.

Didymus' doctrine of apocatastasis, if it was in fact a part of his teaching, remains unclear. He speaks about a "universal salvation," but this by itself is inconclusive. He seems to have hesitated on the problem of the salvation of fallen angels and to have limited the redemption achieved through Christ's assumption of the flesh and full humanity to mankind. The fragmentary nature of the surviving documents does not allow us to make definite conclusions, but most likely Jerome was right when he accused Didymus of confessing the ultimate restoration of the devil. Apparently Didymus also accepts the pre-existence of souls and he sees the afterlife as a process of purification. He insists that everything which has a source or a beginning is mutable and must have an end, and from this he concludes that the material world will ultimately be destroyed. He rejects metempsychosis and metasomatism, and his teaching on resurrected bodies as heavenly bodies is clear. Didymus suggests that in the future world there will be no evil men, not because their essence will be destroyed but because evil "as a quality" will cease to exist. He understands the Day of the Lord as an internal illumination of the soul. All of these doctrines reveal the influence of Origen. It should also be noted that Didymus seems to have sensed that the last days were at hand and to have expected the coming of the Antichrist.

The Christian Life.

Didymus places great emphasis on the necessity of disciplined effort and striving. It is not enough to be without sin. Virtue must be a constant habit and a condition. A man's life as a Christian begins with the sacrament of baptism, which cleanses him of sin and returns to him his freedom. After his rebirth through baptism a believer is free and without sin, and the path of good works is open before him. Didymus considers the highest virtue to be wisdom or gnostic knowledge. This knowledge is not abstract or intellectual but is expressed in virtue and in the discipline of the soul. Didymus sees an example of a true philosopher in Job, whose image in his interpretation takes on Stoic features. Wisdom can be acquired only by renouncing and mortifying the flesh. Didymus presents the life of the true Christian as a marriage with Christ, which was also a favorite image of the Egyptian ascetics. Sanctified souls participate in the Word to the degree that they are united with Christ in such intimacy that they can be spoken of as christs and gods. In this expression Didymus is more reminiscent of Methodius than of Origen. Didymus places high value on virginity but he makes clear that this path is not for everyone. He emphasizes that marriage was sanctified and dignified by the birth of Christ.

Incorporeal Beings.

Didymus expresses his personal views on angels with particular vividness. Angels are incorporeal and "intellectual beings," but Didymus ascribes to them "heavenly bodies" which are similar to the bodies of righteous men who have achieved perfection. Angels are creatures which have been created for service. Didymus describes their participation in the fate of the visible world, which is the reason that men are justified in invoking them through prayer and in dedicating churches to them.

The "True" Gnostics.

Didymus follows the example of Origen in opposing Gnostics, men for whom a higher knowledge is possible, to men who can never attain the truth, who do not comprehend the spiritual meaning of Scripture, and who are incapable of defending them selves against heretics by giving a clear confession of their faith. The philosophy possessed by true gnostics is Divine. When Didymus is compared with previous Alexandrians, it becomes evident that the distinctions he makes in this respect are moderate.

Source:

http://www.holytrinitymission.org/books/english/fathers_florovsky_1.htm#_Toc3723885

Didymus the blind Christological Thought

Christological Thought.

The most striking feature of Didymus' Christology is his insistence on the reality and completeness of the human nature of the Savior. This also can be explained by historical circumstances, since at this time Didymus was involved in polemics with the Manichaean Docetists and with the Apollinarians. He was also trying to refute the Arian denial of the completeness of the human soul in Christ. At the same time Didymus stresses the absolute indivisibility of these two natures, which were united forever when the Word assumed flesh or, more exactly, when He became man. Didymus does not examine the way in which the two natures are united, but he makes clear that within this union they remain unblurred and unchanged. For some reason he avoids the words μιξις, κρασις and συναφεια. Instead, he restricts himself to the indefinite term “a single Christ,” which indicates the two natures, divine and human, in Him Who is one and the same. For this reason there is a single worship of Christ, Who has two natures. In connection with this Didymus always refers to the Virgin Mary as the Bearer of God (apparently the term Theotokos had already been used by Origen and Pierius of Alexandria), and he also stresses her continuing virginity (Athanasius had expressed this with αει παρθενος. The second, human generation of the Word from the Virgin, is a mystery which in the opinion of Didymus can only be compared to His eternal generation from the Father.

Didymus most frequently refers to Christ as the Savior. He emphasizes that the primary significance of our salvation is our liberation from sin and our victory over the devil and the power of death. This was apparently a feature of Origen's system. Didymus also opposes the disobedience of Adam to the obedience of the Second Adam, an obedience which extended even to the sacrificial death on the cross, which he considers vital to our redemption. The first gift of salvation is victory over death and eternal life. Didymus does not deal with deification but speaks only about the return or the restoration of the image and the likeness. He also focuses on the ransom.

Source:

http://www.holytrinitymission.org/books/english/fathers_florovsky_1.htm#_Toc3723885

Didymus the blind Hypostatic Properties of the Son and Spirit.

The Hypostatic Properties of the Son and Spirit.

Didymus was influenced by Gregory the Theologian, who was the closest to him of the Cappadocians, and he defines the hypostatic properties of the Son and the Spirit as "generation and procession." The distinction of these modes is inaccessible even to the angels, and Didymus stresses that Divine generation is incommensurate with the generation of creatures. The Father is the single source or root of the Divinity. Didymus has no expression which is analogous to the phrase "through the Son" used by Gregory of Nyssa. Instead, he speaks about the procession of the Spirit from the immortal source of the Father, and in this way he avoids any suggestion of inequality among the hypostases. Didymus considers it vitally important to stress the perfect equality of the persons of the Trinity.

In defending his doctrine from heretical attacks Didymus attributes the following words to the lips of the Word: "The Father is God, and I am also, for I am His true and beloved Only-Begotten Son. The Father is the Lord and I am also. I am the Lord of everything, the heir of the living Father, and the master of the inheritance, for I rule that which is Mine both as the Creator and as the true Son. I became the heir through the Incarnation. The Father is the Creator and I am also. For I have said to you: 'He is the Emperor and He has arranged a wedding for his Son the Emperor.' The Father is unchanging and I am also. It has been said of Me: 'You abide in the ages and Your years will never pass away.' The Father is impassive and I am also and I give participation in this impassivity to those who are Mine. The Father is eternal and I am also, for there was never a time when the Father did not possess His name, the personal radiation of His glory, the image of His hypostasis, and the image of His Divinity, and that is I. The Father is Life, Light, Goodness, Strength, Truth, and Wisdom, and everything that is worthy of God. I am also the Savior, the sun which shines on righteous men and sinners and which does not return evil for evil. The Father loves men and I love them. I have given Myself for you, have accepted the outer form of a slave, and from you I have endured ridicule and humiliation and the Cross." A stronger testimony to the consubstantiality of the Son can hardly be imagined.

The Trinitarian theology of Didymus is completely free of Origenist heresies. He is close to the doctrines of the Cappadocians, but their similarities are not restricted to external details of theology alone. The immediacy and vividness of Didymus' own contemplation are evident in his writings on the Trinity, which are frequently developed with the intensity of prayer.

Source:

http://www.holytrinitymission.org/books/english/fathers_florovsky_1.htm#_Toc3723885

Thoughts from Dr. Ravi Zacharias' speech on Essential Human Worth /Anchored to God not evolution

If our intrinstic worth is not exterior or from God, and it has instead evolved without God, then the value or worth of each individual is forever changing. It is therefore not permanent but ever changing. And if it is changing, then who will give it value, what value, and when? Is it a person or persons that gives each person intrinsic value? Is it a creed? Is it a king? Is it a nation or government? If this is so, then anyone at any age may change the meaning as they please. This is then crucial. Intrinsic human value has to come from God, God who transcends us. Only then will our value be eternal and never up for the whims of change, the winds of change. Only then will it be anchored. Evolution cannot give value to human beings because it is always changing and that means no absolutes, no anchor. Essential worth means not conveyed worth or secondary worth. We are all created equal. Essential dignity with a reflective glory!


source:

Thanks to Dr. Ravi Zacharias

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vmTPxgGuA7Q&feature=related