I return to the series of the homilies of Saint Maximus published in print. This one is read in six codices with an inscription of this kind: 'Sermon of Saint Maximus on Lent'; in two Vatican codices, that is 1268, page 81, on the reverse, and Palatine 433, page 390; in the Laurentian I, Plut. xiv, page 110, on the reverse; in the Turin sermon 16, in the Augensis XIV, and in the Lucensis 85. Wherefore it is reckoned among the homilies of Saint Maximus by Gymnicus, page 79; by Galesinius, page 110; by Combefis, vol. II, page 528; by Cumdius, vol. II, page 137; by Raynaud, page 206; by Margarinus in the Bibliotheca Maxima, vol. VI, page 15. What then? Is it not sufficiently clearly perceived from the very manner of writing that Saint Maximus is its author?
That wondrous conflict which took place, as the reading of the holy Gospel now just recited has borne witness to the ears of your charity, between the King of heaven and the tyrant of the heavenly kingdom, sounds forth to us the triumphal mystery of the Lord's incarnation.
For the almighty Lord, with the affection of ineffable mercy, taking pity on human captivity, and at the same time willing to remove the devil's power from the world, sent His only-begotten Son—not degenerate in divinity, not unlike in power, not discordant in will—who, taking our flesh, and scorning the old condition of being born, might be born a new Son by a new law from a woman of incorrupt body, so that the devil, though he should presume to tempt this saving man taken up into the fellowship of the Godhead, might not be able to overcome Him.
And so, when that fierce lion saw the Lamb of God hunger after the longest and continuous fast of forty days and nights, and did not believe that God could hunger, he assailed Him with the craft of a most cunning temptation, saying: 'If you are the Son of God, command that these stones become bread' (Matthew 4). That artificer of so great a deceit, as I reckon, was thinking within himself and saying: 'If this is the very one at whose command manna flowed from heaven for the peoples hungering through the deserts (Exodus 16); if he is the one whom I have known to have brought forth rivers from the rock (Exodus 17), he will now be able to transform stones into bread—if not at my request, yet by his own necessity, since he hungers. And if he does it, I shall prove him to be God; if he cannot, I shall detect him to be a man.'
The devil therefore was awaiting the bread, which he was striving not so much to acquire for himself as to take away from the world. But the Lord of all things, who both could make bread from a stone, and would not have the sacrament of human salvation made clear to one who was probing it, so tempered His holy answer in His mouth that neither He Himself, who was the truth, should speak a falsehood, nor that one, who is a liar from the beginning, should be able to recognize the truth which he was not going to believe. The Lord therefore said: 'It is written: Man does not live by bread alone, but by every word of God' (Deuteronomy 8). The tempter received an answer from the law which he could not contradict; he did not receive the bread, which he was demanding not by the custom of eating, but by the fraud of deceiving.
For in what respect would the Son of God have need of human bread, to whom all substance was proper in His own divinity? Or by what reasoning would Christ make earthly bread of any sort from a stone (John 6), when He Himself, as it is read (Matthew 21), was both spiritual bread and the rock? Mocked, therefore, and derided, the tempter attempts another engine of temptation. For when the Lord, by His secret and hidden counsel, was standing upon the pinnacle of the temple, the devil says: 'If you are the Son of God, cast yourself down.' O how foolish and exceedingly perverse this suggestion, that he should say to the Son of God: 'Cast yourself down.' Would he not more rightly have said: 'If you are the Son of God, ascend into heaven'?
For if the Lord were to do this, He would truly prove Himself to be the Son of God. But the enemy of heaven does not wish, even by tempting, to persuade a heavenly ascent: he provokes downward, and to the depths; because he desires all to fall, who felt that he himself had fallen before all; nor does the blind one understand that he is attempting to persuade ruin to Him who not only cannot fall, but comes to mend the ruins of the fallen. For the Lord, as we read, 'raises up those who are cast down, the Lord looses those who are fettered' (Psalm 145).
He, then, who had come not to be deceived but to save the deceived, empties out the probing one's craft by so great a measure of most cautious response, that the shadowy enemy might not only be unable to see the mystery set forth for our sake, but might more and more, driven about by the Lord's answers, be confounded by a darker uncertainty. For the unconquered warrior of the spiritual battle says to him: 'It is written: You shall not tempt the Lord your God' (Psalm 145). How simple the prudence in this response, and how circumspect the simplicity, through which neither is the truth kept silent, nor can the reprobate prove what things are true. Truly, as it is written: 'The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not comprehended it' (John 1). The devil hears that God is not to be tempted;
yet he does not recognize that the one he tempts is both God and man: for he sees Christ alike both answer the things that are man's, and be able to do the things that are God's. But even these things do not suffice for his wickedness; he still weaves the snares of a third temptation: 'He led him,' it says, 'onto an exceedingly high mountain, and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their honours, saying: All these I will give you, if you fall down and adore me.' Attentively, brethren, observe that whatever the enemy suggests is a falling; for truly he falls down utterly, whoever adores the devil; and truly he falls, whoever pursues the powers and goods of the world through sacrilegious arts, the enemy promising them. But our Lord and Saviour confounded him with His accustomed response, saying: 'Get behind me, Satan;'
for it is written: 'You shall adore the Lord your God, and Him alone shall you serve.' The testimonies of the holy Scriptures are brought to bear upon him, not that the unchangeable one may be taught, but that the shameless one may be refuted. He who will give the kingdoms of the world is commanded to depart behind him, so that he who would not yield voluntarily might be subjected against his will to the command of the Son of God, and might prove worthily to be adored by all Him whom he had shamelessly demanded to be adored by. And what more, dearly beloved? While the tempter speaks unspeakable things, and while he presumes upon things not permitted, he fell silent as though vanquished by a man, and departed as though commanded by God.
And it was necessary that he should depart from tempting Him, in whom, moving himself with all his mass and striving with all his forces, he could not find even a trace of his own will. Astonished and marvelling that after so many ages he had found a man not having human concupiscences, and one born in the flesh having absolutely nothing of carnal corruption—the devil, therefore, departing backward, the angels, as we read, drawing near, ministered to Him. Of how great a glory this triumph is, the services of the angels teach us. Nor is it any wonder if the angels came forth to the ministrations of Him whose victory they marvelled at. And therefore, brethren, if we do not wish to be overcome by the devil, let us cleave to Him who triumphed over the devil;
but to cleave to Christ is to believe both that He has the nature of the paternal Godhead, and the truth of a maternal body. And whoever, sighing after the saving precepts of God, shall strive—with the Lord Himself lending His support—to bow down the swelling pride of his puffed-up mind, hateful to all; to restrain avarice, the root of all evils; to bridle luxury, the enemy of good virtues; to mitigate envy, the foe of holy charity; to avoid the useless and often dangerous conversations of detractors; not to love even the pernicious gains of usury; not to burden justice, the guardian of peace, with bribes; to abhor the harmful devices of factions; to decline the inglorious and sometimes bloody ambition for undue honour—he will be able to overcome the devil.
(He will be able to overcome the devil, whoever strives) to check the curses of an insolent tongue, the incitements to discord; likewise to drive from a Christian mouth the lies which stain life, wound the soul, and dissolve friendships; and to flee, by love of the true God, from all superstitions of demons and the sacrileges of idols, by which above all the kindness of the Almighty is offended. If, therefore, we fast from these and from all wickednesses and vices of this kind, the days of this holy Lent will be duly celebrated, and rejoicing we shall pass the festivals of all our solemnities with the confidence of a gladder conscience and the tranquillity of the times, with the help of our Lord Jesus Christ.