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MAXIMUS THE CONFESSOR: UNITED WITH THE FATHER'S WILL DESPITE THE ALMOST “STATE OF EMERGENCY” ECCLESIAL

In this summer time we can dedicate a few more moments to reflection and prayer, without sending God on holiday too, the Mass and the Church - perhaps in front of a sea or mountain panorama, contemplating the beauty of the truth of Jesus in creation.

— Theologica —

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Who today strives to authentically live the Catholic faith risks being ridiculed, sometimes isolated - often due to choices of ecclesiastical institutions and men of the Church, in good or bad faith. We must fear it? I do not believe: it might make us angry, give us frustration, but it is precisely here that the experience of San Massimo can help us.

In an almost “state of emergency” which never authorizes, minimizes or glorifies the birth of schisms or divisions, this holy monk teaches us extraordinary things about Jesus, with theology and with life. St. Maximus the Confessor (580–662 d.C.) it stands at the height of Eastern patristic speculation, an essential point of reference for Christology and Christian spiritual life. Nato, according to the historiographical tradition, in Constantinople — or in Palestine, according to an alternative Syriac biography —, he received an excellent humanistic and philosophical education, which led him to hold the office of first secretary of the emperor Heraclius. Then driven by the desire for a contemplative life, he abandoned palace honors to retire to the monastery of Chrysopolis, becoming its abbot.

The existence of Massimo was marked by the great political upheavals of the 7th century and, above all, from heated Christological controversies. To escape the invasions that threatened the Empire, he first took refuge in Crete, then in Byzantine Africa. In this context, monoenergism and monothelitism were born, promoted by the patriarch Sergius of Constantinople and supported by the Byzantine emperors to mend the rift with the Monophysites, according to which in Christ there would be a single energy and a single will. To understand what's at stake: monophysitism (the greek “one nature”) it is the doctrine, condemned at the Council of Chalcedon in 451, according to which in Christ, after the Incarnation, only one nature would exist - the divine one, that would have absorbed the human one -, against the Chalcedonian belief in two natures, divine and human, united without confusion in a single person. Il monoenergismo, promoted in the 7th century precisely to bring the Monophysites closer to the imperial Church, he was looking for a compromise: two natures yes, but a single energy, a single operating principle, in Christ. Monothelitism was its coherent development: if there is only one energy, it was stated, the will must also be, because will and action are closely linked.

Massimo understood that denying the human will of Christ meant dissolving his real and autonomous humanity. Referring to the principle of Gregory Nazianzen - "what is not assumed is not cared for" - he defended the integrity of the human nature assumed by the Word. In 645 he disputed in Carthage with the deposed patriarch Pyrrhus, masterfully refuting the Monothelite theses; he then went to Rome, where he was the inspirer and reference theologian of the Lateran Council of 649, wanted by Pope Martin I, who condemned Monothelitism.

The imperial reaction was ruthless: In the 653 Pope Martin I and Maximus were arrested and taken to Constantinople. Despite years of imprisonment, interrogations and political pressure, the monk remained unwavering in his defense of Chalcedonian orthodoxy. In 662, at the end of the last process, to prevent him from continuing to preach or write, the Monothelites inflicted the mutilation of his tongue and right hand; exhausted by torture, he was deported to the fortress of Schemaria in Lazica, on the Black Sea, where he died 13 August of the same year, historically deserving the title of “Confessor”¹.

The commentary on the Gethsemane episode

The focal point of the Christological reflection of Saint Maximus is concentrated in the exegesis of the dramatic prayer of Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane: «Dad, if it is possible, let this cup pass from me; but not what I want, but what you want» (Mt 26,39; LC 22,42). For monothelites, the request to remove the cup indicated a single divine will moved with a view to the economy, or it would have introduced an unacceptable conflict between the will of the Son and that of the Father.

In the booklets dedicated to the agony of Jesus (especially him Brochures 6, 7, 15, 16 e 24), Maximus demonstrates that the request to be freed from death comes from the natural will of the flesh assumed by Christ: temerla, feel anguish, shunning it are dimensions of human nature, which cannot help but retreat from physical dissolution. Taking on real flesh, rational and intelligent, the Word appropriated all the natural properties of humanity, including pain and fear, without this introducing any opposition between human will and divine will. The mistake of Massimo's opponents was to confuse the natural distinction with themoral opposition: rebellion does not come from nature, but from sin, which alters the way he acts - τρόπος (in the tropics) — nothing that is natural can be in conflict with the Creator².

Like this, in Gethsemane, the human will of Christ first expresses the natural weakness of the flesh in the face of death, but immediately afterwards he submits and adapts perfectly to his own divine will and that of the Father: «Not mine, but your will be done». There is no opposition, but "supreme consensus" and "perfect union": the human will of Jesus, free and immune from sin, it totally is “deified” from the hypostatic union with the Word. Thus Christ's obedience in Gethsemane redeems Adam's disobedience, taking care of the human will and bringing it back to full communion with God³.

The anthropology of San Massimo: Nature, Person and Freedom

The anthropology of San Massimo presents man as a cosmic synthesis and a “mediator” called to recapitulate within himself and unite the entire creation with God. According to Bernardo De Angelis, Maximian anthropological speculation rests on the fundamental methodological distinction between nature or substance — οὐσία (ousia) — e persona o ipostasi — presence (Hypostasis)⁴.

While the nature expresses what is common and universal to a species (the “what is it”), l’hypostasi O persona indicates the concrete existent, singular and unrepeatable (the “who is it”). Alla natura appartiene il principio essentia — reason of nature (logos physeos) — which includes all the powers and faculties constitutive of the human being, including reason, intelligence e volontà naturale — natural will (thelema physikon): an innate power, the faculty of desiring what is in conformity with rational nature and of tending towards the good.

Unlike the natural will, freedom of choice or gnomic will — γνώμη (gnome), will of opinion (thelema gnomicon) — is specific to the person and the hypostasis. The gnome expressi il modo — way of being (tropos hyparxeos) — in which the individual person exercises his or her natural faculty of will. In fallen man, gnomic will is a hesitant and uncertain process, marked by deliberation in the face of opposing alternatives, from doubt, from ignorance and the tragic possibility of choosing evil, deviating to selfishness — φιλαυτία (philautia).

Maximian anthropology culminates in the doctrine of deification — θέωσις (theosis). Man was created to become “God by grace”, participating in divine life. This process does not cancel human nature, but leads it to its perfect fulfillment⁵. In deification, the oscillations of the gnomic will are overcome: the deified person, mossa dall'amore — love (agape) — adheres stably and freely to the Supreme Good, without any more hesitations or internal divisions.

In this picture we understand the excellence of the humanity of Jesus Christ: in Him there is a real and complete natural human will, but there is no hesitant or imperfect gnomic will. The hypostasis of Christ being the same as that of the divine Word, his human will, moved and guided by divinity in a perfect and sinless way, represents the model and the first fruits of true freedom and the deification of all humanity.

Let's listen directly to San Massimo, writing to the hegumen prior of the Monastery of San Giorgio di Cizio:

To the holy Egumeno priest Giorio […] full of pity, I propose an answer according to my strength, saying that humanity in the Savior by nature is not something different from ours; but it is the same and entirely similar in essence, for He has taken from us in an unspeakable way the virginal and uncontaminated blood of the all-pure Mother of God, to whom, like a seed, the Logos united and became flesh without ceasing to be God according to essence. And he became a perfect man like us, except sin, which often makes us rebel and oppose God, in the will, as it makes us swing from two sides. But He by nature is free from all sin, as he is not simply a man, but God made man, and has nothing against it, but it preserves our nature properly and in all things pure and immaculate, as it says: «now comes the prince of this world, and he has no power over me" […] Voluntarily without falsifying our essence in anything or anything that is irreproachable and natural in it, and he deified it with all its properties like a red-hot iron, making it entirely theurgic as he has impregnated it supremely for union and in everything has become one with her without confusion in a single hypostasis. Thus in Him the human differs from ours not by the logos of nature, but for the new way of conception; equal in essence and different in absence of seed […] His will was just as natural as ours, but divinely informed and superior to us. Because it is evident that being generated with or without seed does not make nature different, but what concerns nature, as being unbegotten or generated. the great Gregory the Theologian there appears no demonstration that the Savior's humanity is one thing and our humanity another, as some believe because He says: «we can say that these words are spoken as if by a man, not by him who is considered the Savior (because the will of This has nothing that opposes God, being totally deified), but from him who is like us. Because human will does not always follow that of God, but he often resists and opposes it". He had the Logos himself as his seed, adding the innovation of his mode of birth, obtaining in participation, at the same time as natural being, being divinely founded in Him, so that He would affirm what was ours and be believed superior to us. Because it's necessary in everything, one part, preserve the nature assumed by Him, the Logos of God incarnate and made perfectly man for us, with everything that is natural to it and without which there is no nature but only a vain simulacrum; other parte, their union. The one preserved in its natural otherness, the other, on the contrary, recognized in the hypostatic identity; thus making it appear without confusion and without division, with wisdom and piety, the whole logos of the economy.⁶

San Massimo and us

The reflections and life of Saint Maximus help us closely in this effort to be authentically Catholic. Adhering to the faith of Christ implies welcoming, like Jesus, the will of the Father — with all fears, difficulties, the penalties and suffering that this entails. I think of Saint Maximus in his smelly and terrible imprisonment: without ever hesitating, he never abandoned the Truth of Christ, nor obedience to Pietro. Nello “state of emergency” he was really there, objectively, and he had every reason to fear — for the coherence and purity of the faith, and for your life. But he never thought, not even for an instant, that the true will of the Eternal Father was to create a parallel church, Made of “true Catholics in their own way” versus “fake Catholics” of the Roman Church.

Saint Maximus lived on his own skin what it meant to take on the cup of agony in Gethsemane, to be with Christ the bearer of a greater love that holds together truth and obedience. Let's think about it: if we were like him, we would have escaped from that prison to escape, I do not know, in the Swiss cantons? Or we would have remained to offer our lives in union with God's will?

Let's think about it, this summer, to all those who continue to remain in the unity of the Church despite uncertain times, difficulties, the appearance of victory of the devil. They are not fools or fools, conservatives who damage the Church for not criticizing the Pope's every sneeze as a schismatic or heretical act. Expenses, like Saint Maximus, remains in unity and truth, he forcefully expresses that yes that unites him to the charity of Christ - that charity that loves without hesitation, that overcomes every fear, every fear, any state of emergency, whether subjective or objective. In the strong will of Jesus we always find unity with the Spirit and with the Father. And unity with Mary, the Mother who gave us the Head for the Body. And unity with the Church, Mother who gives us the Body for the Head.

Let's keep thinking about it, this summer.

Convent of Santa Maria Novella in Florence, 18 August 2026

 

NOTE

¹ Maximus the Confessor, Meditations on the agony of Jesus, New City, Introduction by Aldo Ceresa-Gastaldo, Rome 1985, 5-12; B. Of the Angels, Nature, persona, freedom. The anthropology of Maximus the Confessor, Armando Editore, Rome 2002, 11-14.

² Maximus the Confessor, Meditations on the agony of Jesus, cit. [Ceresa-Gastaldo, p. 27; Of the Angels, p. 85, 94].

³ Maximus the Confessor, Meditations on the agony of Jesus, cit., 25, 64.

⁴ B. Of the Angels, Nature, persona, freedom, cit., 56 e 180-181.

⁵ B. Of the Angels, Nature, persona, freedom, cit., 160.

⁶ Maximus the Confessor, Brochure 4, PG 91, 56 (D) – 61 (D), in S. Maximus the Confessor, Theological and polemical pamphlets, the cure of Bernardo De Angelis, Dehonian, Bologna, 2007.

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MAXIMUS THE CONFESSOR: UNITED TO THE FATHER’S WILL AMID AN ECCLESIAL QUASI “STATE OF EMERGENCY”

In this summer season we can devote a little more time to reflection and prayer, without sending God, Mass, and the Church on holiday too — perhaps before a seascape or a mountain view, contemplating the beauty of the truth of Jesus in creation.

— Theologica —

.

In almost “state of emergency” that neither authorizes nor minimizes nor ever exalts the rise of schisms or divisions, this holy monk teaches us extraordinary things about Jesus, through theology and through his life. Saint Maximus the Confessor (580–662 AD) stands at the summit of Eastern patristic speculation, an indispensable point of reference for Christology and for Christian spiritual life. Born, according to the historiographical tradition, in Constantinople — or in Palestine, according to an alternative Syriac biography — he received an excellent humanistic and philosophical formation, which led him to hold the office of first secretary to the Emperor Heraclius. Driven then by a desire for the contemplative life, he abandoned the honors of the palace to withdraw to the monastery of Chrysopolis, of which he became abbot.

Maximus’s life was marked by the great political upheavals of the seventh century and, above all, by the fierce Christological controversies. Fleeing the invasions that threatened the Empire, he took refuge first in Crete, then in Byzantine Africa. It was in this context that Monoenergism and Monothelitism arose, promoted by Patriarch Sergius of Constantinople and supported by the Byzantine emperors in an effort to heal the breach with the Monophysites, according to whom there would be in Christ a single energy and a single will. To understand what was at stake: Monophysitism (from the Greek “one nature alone”) is the doctrine, condemned at the Council of Chalcedon in 451, according to which in Christ, after the Incarnation, there would subsist a single nature — the divine one, which would have absorbed the human — as against the Chalcedonian faith in two natures, divine and human, united without confusion in a single person. Monoenergism, promoted in the seventh century precisely to bring the Monophysites back closer to the imperial Church, sought a compromise: two natures, yes, but a single energy, a single operative principle, in Christ. Monothelitism was its coherent development: if the energy is one alone, it was argued, so too must the will be, because will and action are closely bound together.

Maximus understood that to deny Christ’s human will meant dissolving his real and autonomous humanity. Appealing to the principle of Gregory Nazianzen — “what has not been assumed has not been healed” — he defended the integrity of the human nature assumed by the Word. In 645 he disputed at Carthage with the deposed Patriarch Pyrrhus, masterfully refuting his Monothelite theses; he then went to Rome, where he was the inspiration and the theological point of reference for the Lateran Council of 649, convened by Pope Martin I, which solemnly condemned Monothelitism.

The imperial reaction was merciless: in 653 Pope Martin I and Maximus were arrested and taken to Constantinople. Despite years of imprisonment, interrogation, and political pressure, the monk remained unshakeable in his defense of Chalcedonian orthodoxy. In 662, at the end of the final trial, in order to prevent him from continuing to preach or write, the Monothelites had his tongue and right hand mutilated; worn out by torture, he was deported to the fortress of Schemaris in Lazica, on the Black Sea, where he died on 13 August of that same year, thereby historically earning the title of “Confessor.”¹

The commentary on the Gethsemane episode

The focal point of Saint Maximus’s Christological reflection is concentrated in his exegesis of the dramatic prayer of Jesus in the garden of Gethsemane: “Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me; nevertheless not what I will, but what you will” (Mt 26:39; Page 22:42). For the Monothelites, the request to have the cup pass away either indicated a single divine will moved with a view to the economy of salvation, or else it would have introduced an unacceptable dissension between the will of the Son and that of the Father.

In the treatises devoted to the agony of Jesus (in particular pamphlets 6, 7, 15, 16, and 24), Maximus demonstrates that the request to be freed from death proceeds from the natural will of the flesh assumed by Christ: to fear death, to feel anguish before it, to shrink from it are dimensions proper to human nature, which cannot but recoil from physical dissolution. By assuming a real, rational, and intelligent flesh, the Word made his own all the natural properties of humanity, including pain and fear, without this introducing any opposition between the human will and the divine will. The error of Maximus’s adversaries was to confuse natural distinction with moral opposition: rebellion does not derive from nature, but from sin, which alters its mode of acting (in the tropics) — for nothing that is natural can ever be in contrast with the Creator.²

Thus, in Gethsemane, the human will of Christ first expresses the natural weakness of the flesh before death, but immediately afterward submits and conforms perfectly to the divine will proper to himself and to the Father: “Not my will, but yours be done.” There is no contrariety here, but rather “supreme consent” and “perfect union”: the human will of Jesus, free and immune from sin, is entirely “divinized” through the hypostatic union with the Word. Thus Christ’s obedience in Gethsemane redeems the disobedience of Adam, healing the human will and leading it back to full communion with God.³

Saint Maximus’s Anthropology: Nature, Person, and Freedom

Saint Maximus’s anthropology presents man as a cosmic synthesis and a “mediator” called to recapitulate and unite the whole of creation in himself and to God. According to Bernardo De Angelis, Maximian anthropological speculation rests on the fundamental methodological distinction between nature or substance — οὐσία (ousia) — and person or hypostasis — HYPOSTASIS (Hypostasis).⁴

While nature expresses what is common and universal to a species (the “what it is”), the hypostasis or person indicates the concrete, singular, and unrepeatable existent (the “who it is”). To nature belongs the essential principle — reason of nature (logos physeos) — which comprises all the powers and faculties constitutive of the human being, among them reason, intellect, and the natural will (thelema physikon): an innate power, the faculty of desiring what is in conformity with rational nature and of tending toward the good.

Unlike the natural will, freedom of choice or the gnomic will — γνώμη (gnome), will of opinion (thelema gnomicon) — belongs properly to the person and the hypostasis. The gnome expresses the mode — mode of existence (tropos hyparxeos) — in which the individual person exercises his natural faculty of willing. In fallen man, the gnomic will is a hesitant and uncertain process, marked by deliberation in the face of opposing alternatives, by doubt, by ignorance, and by the tragic possibility of choosing evil, deviating toward self-love (philautia).

Maximian anthropology culminates in the doctrine of deification — θέωσις (theosis). Man was created to become “God by grace,” participating in the divine life. This process does not annul human nature but leads it to its perfect fulfillment.⁵ In deification, the oscillations of the gnomic will are overcome: the deified person, moved by love (agape) — adheres stably and freely to the supreme Good, without further hesitation or inner division.

Within this framework one can understand the excellence of the humanity of Jesus Christ: in him there is a real and complete human natural will, but there is no hesitant or imperfect gnomic will. Since Christ’s hypostasis is that very hypostasis of the divine Word, his human will, moved and guided by the divinity perfectly and without sin, represents the model and the first fruits of true freedom and of the deification of the whole of humanity.

Let us listen directly to Saint Maximus, writing to the priest-abbot of the Monastery of Saint George of Cyzicus:

To the holy priest and abbot Georgius […] full of devotion, I offer a reply according to my powers, saying that the humanity in the Savior is by nature not a thing different from ours; but it is the same and in every way like ours in essence, because he took it from us, assuming it ineffably from the virginal and undefiled blood of the all-pure Mother of God, to whom, as to a seed, the Logos united himself and became flesh without ceasing to be God according to his essence. And he became perfect man as we are, save for sin, which so often makes us rebel and set ourselves against God, in the will, insofar as it makes us waver from two sides. But he by nature is free from every sin, inasmuch as he is not a mere man, but God made man, and has nothing that opposes him, but preserves our nature properly and wholly pure and immaculate, as he says: “now comes the prince of this world, and he has no power over me” […] Willingly, without falsifying in anything our essence nor anything within it that is blameless and natural, he has divinized it with all its properties like red-hot iron, rendering it wholly theurgic inasmuch as he has supremely permeated it through the union, and in every way has become one with it without confusion in a single hypostasis. Thus in him the human differs from ours not in the logos of nature, but in the new mode of conception; equal in essence, and different for lack of seed […] His will was properly natural as ours is, but informed divinely and above us. For it is evident that being begotten with or without seed does not make the nature different, but concerns what belongs to nature, such as being unbegotten or begotten. Nowhere in the great Gregory the Theologian does there appear any demonstration that the humanity of the Savior is one thing and our humanity another, as some believe on account of his saying: “we may say that these words are spoken as by a man, not by him who is regarded as the Savior (for the will of this one has nothing that opposes God, being wholly deified), but by him who is as we are. For the human will does not always follow that of God, but often resists him and opposes him.” He had the Logos himself as his own seed, adding the innovation of his mode of birth, obtaining in participation, at the same time as natural being, the being divinely founded in him, so that he might affirm what was ours and be believed superior to us. For it is necessary in every respect, on the one hand, to preserve the nature assumed by him, the Logos of God incarnate and made perfect man for us, with everything that is natural to him and without which there is no nature but only an empty simulacrum; and on the other hand, their union. The one preserved in its natural otherness, the other, on the contrary, recognized in hypostatic identity; so as to display, without confusion and without division, with wisdom and piety, the whole logos of the economy.⁶

Saint Maximus and Us

The reflections and the life of Saint Maximus help us closely in this effort to be authentically Catholic. To adhere to the faith of Christ means accepting, as Jesus did, the will of the Father — with all the fears, difficulties, hardships, and sufferings that this entails. I think of Saint Maximus in his foul and terrible imprisonment: without ever wavering, he never abandoned the Truth of Christ, nor obedience to Peter. In the “state of emergency” he truly was there, objectively, and he had every reason to fear — for the coherence and purity of the faith, and for his own life. But he never thought, not even for an instant, that the true will of the Eternal Father was to create a parallel church, made up of “true Catholics in their own fashion” against the “false Catholics” of the Roman Church.

Saint Maximus experienced on his own flesh what it meant to take up the cup of the agony of Gethsemane, to be with Christ a bearer of a greater love that holds together truth and obedience. Let us think about it: had we been like him, would we have fled that prison to escape to, say, the Swiss cantons? Or would we have remained to offer our lives in union with the will of God?

Let us think, this summer, of all those who continue to remain within the unity of the Church despite uncertain times, difficulties, and the appearance of the devil’s victory. They are neither fools nor simpletons — conservatives who harm the Church by not setting out to denounce the Pope’s every sneeze as a schismatic or heretical act. Whoever, like Saint Maximus, remains within unity and truth, powerfully expresses that “yes” which unites him to the charity of Christ — that charity which loves without hesitation, which overcomes every fear, every dread, every state of emergency, whether subjective or objective. In the strong will of Jesus we always find unity with the Spirit and with the Father. And unity with Mary, the Mother who gave us the Head for the Body. And unity with the Church, the Mother who gives us the Body for the Head.

Let us go on thinking about it, this summer.

Santa Maria Novella in Florence, 18 August 2026

NOTES

¹ MAXIMUS THE CONFESSOR, Meditations on the Agony of Jesus, New City, Introduction by Aldo Ceresa-Gastaldo, Rome 1985, 5–12; B. OF THE ANGELS, Nature, Person, Freedom: The Anthropology of Maximus the Confessor, Armando Editore, Rome 2002, 11–14.

² MAXIMUS THE CONFESSOR, Meditations on the Agony of Jesus, cit. [Ceresa-Gastaldo, p. 27; Of the Angels, p. 85, 94].

³ MAXIMUS THE CONFESSOR, Meditations on the Agony of Jesus, cit., 25, 64.

⁴ B. OF THE ANGELS, Nature, Person, Freedom, cit., 56 and 180–181.

⁵ B. OF THE ANGELS, Nature, Person, Freedom, cit., 160.

⁶ MAXIMUS THE CONFESSOR, An essay 4, PG 91, 56D–61D, in S. MAXIMUS THE CONFESSOR, Theological and Polemical Opuscula, edited by Bernardo De Angelis, Dehonian, Bologna, 2007.

 

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MAXIMO THE CONFESSOR: UNITED TO THE WILL OF THE FATHER DESPITE THE ALMOST “STATE OF EMERGENCY” ECCLESIAL

In this summer time we can dedicate a little more time to reflection and prayer, without also sending God on vacation, to the Mass and the Church — perhaps before a marine or mountainous panorama, contemplating the beauty of the truth of Jesus in creation.

— Theologica —

.

In an almost “state of emergency” that never authorizes, minimizes or exalts the birth of schisms or divisions, This holy monk teaches us extraordinary things about Jesus, with theology and with life. Saint Maximus the Confessor (580–662 d.C.) stands at the summit of eastern patristic speculation, essential reference point for Christology and Christian spiritual life. Born, according to historiographical tradition, in Constantinople — or in Palestine, according to an alternative Syriac biography—, He received an excellent humanistic and philosophical training, which led him to occupy the position of first secretary of the emperor Heraclius. Later moved by the desire for a contemplative life, He abandoned the honors of the palace to retire to the monastery of Chrysópolis, of whom he became abbot.

The existence of Máximo was marked by the great political upheavals of the 7th century and, above all, by the heated Christological controversies. To flee from the invasions that threatened the Empire, He first took refuge in Crete, then in Byzantine Africa. In this context, monoenergism and monotelism were born., promoted by Patriarch Sergius of Constantinople and supported by the Byzantine emperors to mend the fracture with the Monophysites, according to which in Christ there would be a single energy and a single will. To understand what was at stake: monophysitism (from Greek “one nature”) is the doctrine, condemned at the Council of Chalcedon in 451, according to which in Christ, after incarnation, only one nature would remain - the divine, that would have absorbed the human, against the Chalcedonian faith in two natures, divine and human, united without confusion in a single person. monoenergism, promoted in the 7th century precisely to bring the Monophysites closer to the imperial Church again, I was looking for a compromise: two natures yes, but only one energy, a single operating principle, in Christ. Monothelism was its coherent development: If the energy is only one, it was stated, the will must also be, because will and action are closely linked.

Maximus understood that denying the human will of Christ meant dissolving his real and autonomous humanity. Referring to the principle of Gregory of Nazianzus — “what has not been assumed has not been healed” —, defended the integrity of human nature assumed by the Word. On 645 He disputed in Carthage with the deposed patriarch Pyrrhus, masterfully refuting his monothelite thesis; He then went to Rome, where he was the inspiration and the leading theologian of the Lateran Council of 649, summoned by Pope Martin I, who solemnly condemned monothelism.

The imperial reaction was ruthless: in 653 Pope Martin I and Maximus were arrested and taken to Constantinople. Despite years in prison, interrogations and political pressure, the monk remained unwavering in the defense of Chalcedonian orthodoxy. On 662, at the end of the last process, to prevent him from continuing to preach or write, The Monothelites mutilated his tongue and right hand.; exhausted by torture, He was deported to the fortress of Schemaris, in Lazica, next to the Black Sea, where he died 13 August of that same year, historically deserving the title of “Confessor”.¹

Commentary on the Gethsemane episode

The focal point of Saint Maximus's Christological reflection is concentrated on the exegesis of Jesus' dramatic prayer in the garden of Gethsemane.: "Dad, if possible, take this chalice away from me; but don't do what I want, but what you want” (Mt 26,39; LC 22,42). For the monothelites, the request that the cup be set aside either indicated a single divine will moved in view of the economy of salvation, or it would have introduced an unacceptable dissension between the will of the Son and that of the Father.

In the tracts dedicated to the agony of Jesus (in particular the Opuscles 6, 7, 15, 16 and 24), Maximus demonstrates that the request to be freed from death comes from the natural will of the flesh assumed by Christ: temerla, feel anguish before her, avoiding it are dimensions of human nature, that cannot but withdraw in the face of physical dissolution. By assuming real flesh, rational and intelligent, the Word made all the natural properties of humanity his own, including pain and fear, without this introducing any opposition between human will and divine will. The mistake of Maximus's adversaries was to confuse the natural distinction with the moral opposition: rebellion does not derive from nature, but of sin, that alters their way of acting — τρόπος (in the tropics) —; nothing that is natural can be in contrast to the Creator.²

So, in Gethsemane, The human will of Christ first expresses the natural weakness of the flesh in the face of death, but immediately afterwards he submits and adapts perfectly to his own divine will and that of the Father.: “My will not be done, but yours". There is no contradiction, but “supreme consent” and “perfect union”: the human will of Jesus, free and immune from sin, is totally “divinized” by the hypostatic union with the Word. So, Christ's obedience in Gethsemane rescues Adam's disobedience, healing the human will and bringing it back to full communion with God.³

The anthropology of Saint Maximus: Nature, Person and Freedom

The anthropology of Saint Maximus presents man as a cosmic synthesis and a “mediator” called to recapitulate within himself and unite all creation with God.. According to Bernardo De Angelis, Maximian anthropological speculation rests on the fundamental methodological distinction between nature or substance — οὐσία (messenger) — y persona o hipóstasis — hypostasis (hypóstasis).⁴

While nature expresses what is common and universal to a species (the “what is”), the hypostasis or person indicates the concrete existent, singular and unrepeatable (the “who is”). A la naturaleza pertenece el principio essencial — reason of nature (logos physeos) —, which includes all the constituent powers and faculties of the human being, among them the reason, la inteligencia y la voluntad natural — natural will (thelema physikon): an innate power, the faculty of desiring what is in accordance with rational nature and of tending toward good.

Unlike the natural will, freedom of choice or gnomic will — γνώμη (gnome), will of opinion (thelema gnomikón) —is characteristic of the person and the hypostasis. The gnome expresa el modo — way of being (tropos hyparxeos) — in which the singular person exercises his natural faculty of willing. In the fallen man, the gnomic will is a vacillating and uncertain process, marked by deliberation in the face of opposing alternatives, for the doubt, by ignorance and by the tragic possibility of choosing evil, diverting towards self-love — φιλαυτία (philautía).

Maximian anthropology culminates in the doctrine of deification — θέωσις (theosis). Man was created to become “God by grace.”, participating in divine life. This process does not cancel human nature, but leads it to its perfect fulfillment.⁵ In the deification, the oscillations of the gnomic will are overcome: the deified person, moved by love — ἀγάπη (agape) —, adheres stably and freely to the supreme Good, without more hesitation or internal splits.

In this framework the excellence of the humanity of Jesus Christ is understood: in Him there is a real and complete natural human will, but there is no wavering or imperfect gnomic will. The hypostasis of Christ being the same as that of the divine Word, his human will, moved and guided by divinity in a perfect and sinless way, represents the model and the first fruits of true freedom and the deification of all humanity.

Let's listen directly to Saint Maximus, writing to the egumenous priest of the Monastery of San Jorge de Cícico:

To the holy Egumenan priest George […] full of pity, I propose an answer according to my strength, saying that humanity in the Savior by nature is nothing different from ours; but it is the same and in all things similar in terms of essence, because He took it from us, assuming it in an inexpressible way from the virginal and uncontaminated blood of the all pure Mother of God, to which, like a seed, the Logos united and became flesh without ceasing to be God according to the essence. And he became a perfect man like us, save sin, which often causes us to rebel and oppose God, in the will, as it makes us oscillate from two sides. But He by nature is free from all sin, as he is not a simple man, but God made man, and there is nothing that opposes it, but preserves our nature properly and in everything pure and immaculate, as he says: "Now comes the prince of this world, and has no power over me." […] Voluntarily, without falsifying our essence or anything that is irreproachable and natural in it., He has deified it with all its properties like a red-hot iron, making it entirely theurgic in that it has been supremely impregnated by the union, and in everything he has become one with her without confusion in a single hypostasis. So, In Him what is human differs from what is ours not because of the logos of nature, but for the new way of conception; the same in essence and different in the absence of seed […] His love was as natural as ours., but divinely informed and above us. Because it is evident that being generated with or without seed does not make nature different., but what concerns nature, as being unborn or generated. In the great Gregory the Theologian there is no demonstration that the humanity of the Savior is one thing and our humanity another., as some believe because He says: "We can say that these words are uttered as if by a man, not by Him who is considered the Savior (because His will has nothing that opposes God, being totally deified), but for him who is like us. Because human will does not always follow God's will, but it is often resisted and opposed.”. He had the Logos himself as his own seed, adding the innovation of its birth mode, obtaining in participation, at the same time as the natural being, being divinely founded in Him, so that he would affirm what was ours and be believed superior to us. Because it is necessary, throughout, on the one hand, preserve the nature assumed by Him, the Logos of God incarnated and made perfectly man for us, with everything that is natural to it and without which there is no nature but only a vain simulacrum; besides, their union. The one preserved in its natural otherness, the other, instead, recognized in the hypostatic identity; so that it is manifested without confusion and without division, with wisdom and mercy, all the logos of the economy.⁶

Saint Maximus and us

The reflections and life of Saint Maximus help us closely in this effort to be authentically Catholic.. Adhering to the faith of Christ means welcoming, like Jesus, the Father's will — with all fears, difficulties, hardships and suffering that this entails. I think of Saint Maximus in his pestilent and terrible prison: without ever hesitation, He never abandoned the Truth of Christ, nor obedience to Peter. In the “state of emergency” he was truly present, objectively, and had every reason to fear—for the coherence and purity of the faith, and for his own life. but never thought, not even for a moment, that the true will of the Eternal Father was to create a parallel church, formed by “true Catholics in their own way” against the “false Catholics” of the Roman Church.

Saint Maximus lived in his own flesh what it meant to assume the chalice of the agony of Gethsemane, to be with Christ the bearer of a greater love that keeps truth and obedience together. Pensémoslo: if we had been like him, Would we have fled from that prison to escape, I don't know, to the Swiss cantons? Or would we have remained to offer our lives in union with the will of God?

Let's think, this summer, in all those who continue to remain in the unity of the Church despite uncertain times, of the difficulties, of the devil's appearance of victory. They are not stupid or naive, conservatives who harm the Church for not having dedicated themselves to criticizing every sneeze of the Pope as a schismatic or heretical act. Who, like Saint Maximus, remain in unity and truth, expresses with force that yes that unites him to the charity of Christ — that charity that loves without hesitation, that overcomes all fear, all fear, all state of emergency, sea ​​subjective or objective. In the strong will of Jesus we always find unity with the Spirit and with the Father. And unity with Mary, the Mother who has given us the Head for the Body. And unity with the Church, Mother who gives us the Body for the Head.

Let's keep thinking about it, this summer.

Santa Maria Novella in Florence, 18 of August of 2026

NOTES

¹ MAXIMO THE CONFESSOR, Meditations on the agony of Jesus, New City, Introduction by Aldo Ceresa-Gastaldo, Rome 1985, 5-12; B. OF THE ANGELS, Nature, persona, freedom. The anthropology of Maximus the Confessor, Armando Editore, Rome 2002, 11-14.

² MAXIMO THE CONFESSOR, Meditations on the agony of Jesus, cit. [Ceresa-Gastaldo, p. 27; Of the Angels, p. 85, 94].

³ MAXIMO THE CONFESSOR, Meditations on the agony of Jesus, cit., 25, 64.

⁴ B. OF THE ANGELS, Nature, persona, freedom, cit., 56 and 180-181.

⁵ B. OF THE ANGELS, Nature, persona, freedom, cit., 160.

⁶ MAXIMO THE CONFESSOR, Booklet 4, PG 91, 56 (D) – 61 (D), and S. MAXIMO THE CONFESSOR, Theological and polemical tracts, by Bernardo De Angelis, Dehonian, Bologna, 2007.

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