Friday 4 January 2013

Maximus the Confessor The great mystery of the divine incarnation remains a mystery for ever. (always?)



Day Eleven of Christmas - Family amusements.
11 Pipers Piping = the eleven faithful apostles

Friday, December 28, 2012

What I did on my Christmas vacation?


The 12 days of Christmas Vacation - so far. (and it's day 5)

Twelve loads of laundry
Eleven adjustments to the wheelchair
Ten days off school (not counting weekends)
Nine of the same jokes over and over and over again
Eight diapers (a day)
Seven different nurses
Six leaking tubes
Five  TRIPS TO THE MALL
Four days of rain (so far)
Three different family parties
Two episodes of respiratory distress
and an 
emergency trach replacement

I love vacation.  School starts Jan 7.

Then the Pipers will start piping!


4 January  

Night Office of Readings

St Maximus the Confessor 7C Constantinople & Africa
Comparing the translations in cols.
The choice of words opens chinks of mysteries. 

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The Five Hundred Chapters by St Maximus the ConfessorSaint Maximus the Confessor
This reading for Christmas and Epiphany comes from the Five Hundred Chapters by Saint Maximus the Confessor (Centuria 1, 8-13: PG 90, 1182-1186)
A mystery ever new
The Word of God, born once in the flesh (such is his kindness and his goodness), is always willing to be born spiritually in those who desire him. In them he is born as an infant as he fashions himself in them by means of their virtues. He reveals himself to the extent that he knows someone is capable of receiving him. He diminishes the revelation of his glory not out of selfishness but because he recognises the capacity and resources of those who desire to see him. Yet, in the transcendence of mystery, he always remains invisible to all.
  For this reason the apostle Paul, reflecting on the power of the mystery, said: Jesus Christ, yesterday and today: he remains the same for ever. For he understood the mystery as ever new, never growing old through our understanding of it.
  Christ is God, for he had given all things their being out of nothing. Yet he is born as man by taking to himself our nature, flesh endowed with intelligent spirit. A star glitters by day in the East and leads the wise men to the place where the incarnate Word lies, to show that the Word, contained in the Law and the Prophets, surpasses in a mystical way knowledge derived from the senses, and to lead the Gentiles to the full light of knowledge.
  For surely the word of the Law and the Prophets when it is understood with faith is like a star which leads those who are called by the power of grace in accordance with his decree to recognise the Word incarnate.
  Here is the reason why God became a perfect man, changing nothing of human nature, except to take away sin (which was never natural anyway). His flesh was set before that voracious, gaping dragon as bait to provoke him: flesh that would be deadly for the dragon, for it would utterly destroy him by the power of the Godhead hidden within it. For human nature, however, his flesh was to be a remedy since the power of the Godhead in it would restore human nature to its original grace.
  Just as the devil had poisoned the tree of knowledge and spoiled our nature by its taste, so too, in presuming to devour the Lord’s flesh he himself is corrupted and is completely destroyed by the power of the Godhead hidden in it.
  The great mystery of the divine incarnation remains a mystery for ever. How can the Word made flesh be essentially the same person that is wholly with the Father? How can he who is by nature God become by nature wholly man without lacking either nature, neither the divine by which he is God nor the human by which he became man?

  Faith alone grasps these mysteries. Faith alone is truly the substance and foundation of all that exceeds knowledge and understanding


Maximus the Confessor:
The Word of God is Always
Manifested in the Life of Those who Share in Him
The Word of God, born once on the level of the flesh, is always born willingly for those who desire it on the level of the spirit, because of his love for men.
He becomes an infant, forming himself in them by the virtues.
He manifests himself in just the measure of which he knows the one who is receiving him is capable.
It is not through any ill-will that he diminishes the manifestation of his own majesty; it is rather that he weighs the capacity of those who desire to see him.
And so, though the Word of God is always manifested in the life of those who share in him, yet because the mystery is transcendent, he remains always invisible to all.
Thus the holy Apostle, in wise consideration of the meaning of the mystery, says: ‘Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever’.
He knows that the mystery is always new, that the mind in understanding it will never deprive it of its freshness.
Christ God is born, made man by the assumption of flesh endowed with an intelligent soul, he who brought things from nothing into existence.
[...] God becomes perfect man, then, leaving aside no element of nature – except sin, and this does not belong to nature.
He offered his flesh as a bait, to provoke the insatiable dragon to devour the flesh which he was greedily pursuing.
This flesh would be poison to the dragon, destroying him utterly by the power of the divinity in it. But it would be a medicine for human nature, restoring it to its original grace by the power of the divinity in it.
By smearing the tree of knowledge with his poison of evil, the dragon destroyed man when he tasted it.
But having chosen to devour the Lord’s flesh, he too was destroyed, by the power of the divinity in it.
The great mystery of the divine incarnation always remains a mystery.
In his essence the Word exists personally in the Father to the full: how is he in his person essentially in the flesh?
How can the same person be God by nature and become fully man by nature, in no way deprived in either nature, neither in the divine nature by which he is God, nor in ours by which he became man?
Only faith can grasp these mysteries, since it is the substance of things which are beyond intelligence and reason.
Maximus the Confessor (580-662): Centuries  1, 8-13, from the Monastic Office of Vigils for January 4th.

 


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