This discourse accords with the other homilies of Maximus, not only in its manner of style, but also in the arrangement and shaping of its thoughts. Therefore there is nothing to prevent it from seeming that it ought to be ascribed to Maximus himself. On this point we do not doubt that those skilled in the critical faculty will fully agree with us. This very oration, or homily, was furnished to us by a most ancient codex of the monastery once called of Apannae, in which codex it is thus inscribed: Likewise on the Epiphany of the Lord, homily 8. There is added the Turin codex, in which the same homily stands as number 31 in the series of Maximus's homilies on the Epiphany.
Venerable, brethren, is the sacrament of our redemption, whereby the immortal God had mercy on the human condition; it shines with such majesty of its own that no human mind can comprehend it. For who could explain why the only-begotten Son of God, who with the Father and the Holy Spirit has one and the same divinity and omnipotence, and for whom to will and to be able are one and the same, should nevertheless have deigned so to honor our nature, that, taking up what he did not have, and not laying aside what was in himself, he joined the divine nature so inseparably with the human, that he was at once both God and man?
But if in the investigation of these things all human understanding is thrown into confusion, and all the philosophy of the Gentiles vanishes away, yet in the mystery of today's solemnity, by which the incomprehensible God willed to manifest his own rising to the Gentiles by the sign of a gleaming star (two lines are missing here). For today Christ our Lord willed to show his glory to all. And although, born among the Hebrews of the Hebrews according to the flesh, he seems to have loved them above the rest: yet since at his rising he made a new star to gleam in the heavens, the Gentile world itself also has cause to rejoice.
For that star seems to me to have been given especially to the Gentiles, that the Gentiles too might recognize as born the Redeemer, him whom that Balaam, once a priest of the Gentiles, had prophesied would one day come into the world from the seed of Jacob. And in truth the Jews had their sacred volumes, in which were contained both the proclamations of the patriarchs of that nation and the prophecies of their prophets, testifying that Christ the Lord, the Redeemer of the age, would one day come. They knew from these that he was to be born of a virgin, of the lineage of David according to the flesh: the place too of that same nativity they read marked out in them; for Bethlehem, that city of David, was declared to be honored with the birth of so great a divinity:
and finally the wondrous things that were to precede his nativity were announced; but only the pitiable Gentile world had until then remained in the west (in darkness). He therefore who had come to restore all in mercy, lest even it should abide forever in its lamentable blindness, gave to it also a sign which the Jew too could see in the star, which proclaimed the rising of so great a king, and made known that the author of the present redemption had come. This star the Magi see gleaming in Chaldea with brighter, more joyful rays. They recognize that it signifies the birth of a new king. They follow the guidance of its light; and truly they find him, to venerate whom they had come from so far. They offer him their gifts: gold, as it is read, frankincense, and myrrh.
Precious gifts indeed, by which both the divinity of the newborn king and the humanity united to it are declared. Then, returning by another way, they went back into their own country. As Gentiles they came to adore; as Christians they departed from him; before their adoration they served idols; having seen the Savior of the world, they detested the idols. They returned into their own country. Let us too, therefore, brethren, imitate the Magi. They see the child in the stable, and venerate him as God. We too see him with the eyes of faith reigning in heaven; let us therefore venerate him, and cleave to him always. For just as he delivered those three men from the blindness of idols, so he has delivered us also, even from eternal death. The end.