This sermon first comes to light in the Muratorian Anecdota; nor has it hitherto been ascribed to St. Maximus except on the authority of a single Ambrosian manuscript. Now, besides the Turin codex, in which it is sermon 9 with the title 'Likewise also on the Pasch,' we bring forward two Cassinese codices, namely 502, page 7 on the reverse, and 395, page 71, which bear both the name of the holy bishop of Turin and the heading 'On the Pasch.' Although testimonies of this sort are sufficient for St. Maximus to be held its author, yet if anyone should doubt, let him turn his mind to the diction and to the like things he wrote elsewhere. It is nowhere read as attributed to Ambrose or to Augustine.
The venerable Passion of our Saviour, and his marvellous return from the lower regions, bear witness that he possessed both a divine and a human substance. For who could doubt that he is ineffably the Son of God and the Son of man, who was able both to undergo death and, when death was conquered, to raise himself from the tomb? For having taken flesh from a virgin, lest we should suffer any cloud upon the faith of our confession, throughout the whole time of his preaching he revealed himself as true God and showed himself perfect man as well. He wept indeed, as one grieving with our sorrow; but as one mighty by his own power, having pity on the darkness of the blind, he formed eyes for one who as yet had none, and to another he restored those he had lost;
sailing with his disciples, he slept with the sleep of a man in the stern; but by the command of his conscious majesty he straightway stilled with serene tranquillity the masses of the rising waves and the threatening winds. As a man of temporal life he most often testified that he would die; but as the eternal God, when the vital spirit fled back into their bodies, he commanded the dead to return to the light. As reproaches of blasphemers were heaped upon the Son of man, so, that mortality in its ignorance might learn the unshown truth of believing, the Father addressed him from heaven as his only Son. If then, O man, thou believest the unworthy things which Christ endured, why dost thou not rather believe the wondrous things which he wrought?
So indeed, incomprehensibly, is flesh in God and God in flesh, that neither did the Passion separate God from the man, nor was God subjected to human sufferings through the man. But as to what is announced, that the Son of God was born of a virgin—in so great a miracle human frailty ought not to waver, since for this astonishing novelty we confess as author God, to whom every work is possible. For blessed David, by the revelation of the Holy Spirit, sings of the omnipotence of God, saying: 'Whatsoever the Lord willed, he has done, in heaven and on earth' (Psalm 134). He, therefore, who did what he willed, brought it about that a virgin should conceive; he who did all that he willed, did that which would come to our aid. 'All things,' he says, 'whatsoever God willed, he has done.' Did he will to form the world out of nothing?
The accomplishment of so great a work lay for him in the Word. Did he will to fashion man from the dust? Power was not lacking to so great a will. Did he will, at the very beginnings of heaven and earth, to bring forth woman from the body of the man? At once from Adam's side proceeded Eve, the mother of the human race. Did he will that men of both sexes should be born of man and woman? By the law of his will the commanded fruitfulness filled the world. Did he will, as has been said, that a virgin should give birth? And by the overshadowing of his majesty, with no loss to virginal modesty, Christ came forth from Mary.
And hence it is that the philosophers of the nations and the wise men of the world, who wish all things to be established for them by disputation, while they discuss divine matters with an earthly understanding, being made foolish by their own wisdom, do not attain to the fullness of the truth. They who therefore toil to possess this teaching—that, swollen with a proud spirit, they contend that what they themselves cannot grasp, God either does not rightly will or cannot do—are they who, as the Apostle says, 'professing themselves to be wise, became fools'; and again, 'they became vain in their thoughts' (Romans 1). For who is so mad as to seek human seed in that virginal conception, where a heavenly mystery is at work?
With how great madness is the common lot of mortals set up as an objection in that manner of birth, whereby, by the work of the Almighty, a saving offspring blossomed forth for the life of those who were perishing. But perhaps the faithless one comes forward and says: 'No one was ever born so.' No one indeed, because the flesh of none but this was united with God. Why dost thou doubt in vain? He who alone granted men to be born through wedlock, alone willed to come forth from a virgin. Christ was born marvellously, and in faithless obstinacy dost thou not believe God? What wouldst thou do, if he had been conceived by the common law? Empty, then, and foolish is the objection that no one was ever born so; for the sacrament of the fruitful virgin, which is the sole work of God, could neither have an example before it nor left one behind it.
Whence thou also, brother, if wisely thou searchest into things incomprehensible, believe that to be divine which thou perceivest to be singular. In fine, when the Saviour asked his disciples who he was and who he was believed to be by men, then most blessed Peter answered with a hallowed voice, saying: 'Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God' (Matthew 16). Behold, brethren, the tongue of a man speaks what the heart of a man knew not. The apostle speaks what he learned not by meditation but recognized by revelation. For whence should an earthly and mortal man know the secret of an incomprehensible generation, unless the Father himself, whose true Son he was, had revealed it from heaven? As the Lord says to him:
'Blessed art thou, Simon Bar-Jona, because flesh and blood has not revealed it to thee, but my Father who is in heaven' (ibid.). For in that the chief of the apostles calls the Redeemer of all the Son of the living God, he confesses the substance of the paternal deity in him; and in that he pronounces the same one to be Christ, he asserts the truth of a maternal body to be present. Thus indeed most blessed Peter embraced both natures in Christ under a single appellation, so that, sipping in briefest speech the sacrament of the ineffable mystery, he neither divided what is twofold nor confounded what is united. And that we might more fully perceive that in the Saviour neither is the man to be separated from God, nor God from the man, the most glorious master of the faith, Paul the apostle, says:
'God sent his Son, made of a woman, made under the law' (Galatians 4). The Son of God was assuredly not made in order to be sent; but for that for which he was sent, he was made the Son of man. For, the divine property of his nature being preserved, he took up in himself the human nature, no confusion being made, but a perfect union. 'He sent,' he says, 'his Son'—sent one not subject to any created condition, but concordant in natural love. For the Lord himself says: 'I and the Father are one' (John 10). They who are one, therefore, cannot stand apart from one another with unequal power. The Father sent his own Son, not departing from himself, but coming to us for our salvation.
Now the Son of God came, not only to carry out the command of the sending Father, but to accomplish a common will. The Son of God came, not passing from place to place, but fulfilling in whatever place he willed the office of his purpose. And indeed God, since he is always everywhere and encloses all things in the bosom of his majesty, is nevertheless believed to go or to come thither where he deigns to reveal himself. These things, brother, unless thou follow them by faith, thou wilt by no reasoning of worldly sense grasp. For the understanding of a mortal mind is as far removed from the works of God as mortality can be distant from eternity. But the best course of reasoning for man is this: that in those things which he cannot comprehend with his mind, he yield to the author of his mind.
We ought therefore to know, most beloved, that it was not his condition but his will that gave us the Lord's nativity and passion. For our cause, forsooth, demanded that Christ the Lord should not shun the shame of a woman's womb, should endure an infancy sordid with swaddling-clothes, should await through delays a growing childhood, should pass a youth gaining strength with the seasons, and with all patience should endure the injuries and slaughters of Jewish fury. Nor indeed was it of a superfluous or empty will that the Son of God should die on earth amid the disgraces of such great sufferings, through the substance of humanity—he who was living in the heavenly kingdom with paternal deity—had not the necessity of our remedy demanded that he be born. What has God to do with flesh? What has the immaculate one to do with the cross?
What has the eternal one to do with death? The words and wounds and all the reproaches of the Passion inflicted upon him would indeed have to be reckoned against the Son of God, had not the resurrection, following soon after, healed all that he suffered. Who then is so foolish as to presume, by his cavilling, to blacken the fact that Christ was crucified—he who by so many powers and so great miracles was made more wondrous by his Passion? Who would dare to reproach him with a three-day burial, whose eternity, abiding with the everlasting Father, is proclaimed? Nay, who would not marvel with utter astonishment that he deigned to enter the lower regions—he who by his own power was able both to return to life after death, and did not hesitate to ascend to heaven after the netherworld?
And therefore, brethren, this one thing is salutary for us: that, measuring ourselves and chastening the narrowness of our own breast, which offers itself beyond measure, we follow in all things the will of the true God, by whom we prove his power; who lives and reigns unto ages of ages. Amen.