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Vatican City (Agenzia Fides) – “ The life and the thought of Maximus are powerfully illuminated by immensely courageous witness to Christ in his whole reality, without limitation or compromise. This reveals who man really is, how we must live to respond to our calling. We must live united with God in order to be united among ourselves and with the cosmos, and so give the right form to the cosmos itself and to humanity ”. Benedict XVI said this during the General Audience on Wednesday 24 June, in his presentation of the figure of Saint Maximus the Confessor, a great Doctor of the Church of the East
Christian tradition assigned to Maximus, born in Palestine around 580, the title of Confessor “for the intrepid courage with which he bore witness – "confessed" – even with suffering, the integrity of his faith in Jesus Christ, true God and true Man, the Saviour of the world”, the Pope explained. Introduced as a boy to the monastic life and the study of the Scriptures, Maximus, was forced by barbarian invasions to take refuge in Africa. Here he distinguished himself for his courageous defence of orthodoxy, since a new theory had arisen affirming that in Christ there was only one will, the divine will. “So, the Pope recalled, Saint Maximus stated decisively: the man shown to us by Sacred Scripture is not amputated, he is a true man and a whole man: God, in Jesus Christ, truly took on the whole human being–except sin naturally – therefore also human will”.
Saint Maximus was called to Rome in 649, to take part in the Lateran Council convoked by Pope Martin I to defend the two wills of Christ, against an imperial edict banning all discussion of the matter. For this initiative Pope Martin was arrested, tried and sentenced to death, a punishment commuted in definitive exile in Crimea, where he died on 16 September 655, after two long years of humiliation and torment.
A little later in 662, for the same reason Maximus and two of his disciples were also subject to a draining trial, despite the fact that they were well over the age of eighty. “The imperial court found him guilty of heresy and sentenced him to cruel mutilation of tongue and right hand, two limbs with which, through words and writing, Maximus had fought the erroneous doctrine of the one will of Christ. In the end the saintly mutilated monk was exiled in Colchide, on the Black Sea, where, exhausted by suffering he died at the age of 82, on 13 August of the year 662.”
Mentioning the many works of Saint Maximus which have come down to us, the Holy Father said “the thought of Maximus is never merely theological, speculative, focussed on itself, because its point of arrival is always the concrete reality of the world and its salvation... to man created in his image and likeness, God entrusted the mission of unifying the cosmos. Just as Christ in himself unified the human being, in man the Creator unified the cosmos. Maxiumus shows us how to unify in the communion of Christ the cosmos and obtain in this way a world which is truly redeemed. A reference to this powerful salvific vision was made by one of the greatest theologians of the 20th century, Hans Urs von Balthasar, who – 're-launching' the figure of Maximus – defines his thought with the icastic expression Kosmische Liturgie, " cosmic liturgy". The centre of this solemn "liturgy" is always Christ, the only Saviour of the world. The effectiveness of his saving act, which has definitively unified the cosmos, is guaranteed by the fact that, although God, he is also wholly man– including man's 'energy' and will”.
The Holy Father continued: “Christ' universal 'yes', demonstrates clearly how we must give the proper place to all other values. We think of values rightly defended today such as tolerance, freedom, dialogue. However if tolerance were to lose the ability to distinguish between good and evil it would become chaotic and self-destructive. So too: a freedom which fails to respect the freedom of others or find the common measure of our respective freedoms, would become anarchy and destroy authority. Dialogue which no longer knows what to dialogue about becomes empty chatter. All these values are great and fundamental, but they will only remain true values if they have a point of reference which unites them and gives them real authenticity. This point of reference is synthesis between God and the cosmos, it is the figure of Christ in whom we learn the truth about ourselves and learn in this way where to place the other values, since we learn their proper meaning ”.
Before the Audience the Holy Father had blessed a statue of Saint Luigi Orione (1872-1940), Founder of the Piccola Opera della Divina Provvidenza, and he greeted in various languages the crowds of Famiglia Orionina, members at the audience: “May the inauguration of this statue of your Founder give all his spiritual children new impulse to continue along the way traced by Saint Luigi Orione especially to bring to the Successor of Peter– as he used to say – 'the little ones, those humble class, poor workers and people rejected by life who are those dearest to Christ, and are the true treasures of Christ's Church.” (S.L.) (Agenzia Fides 26/6/2008)
