There are many codices of the weightiest authority that assign this excellent homily to Maximus. First of all we shall mention four Vatican codices, 1267, page 91, and 4954, page 6, Vatican Palatine 433, page 101, and Vatican Reginensis 125, page 78, which the Turin codex follows: On the Nativity of the Lord, homily I; two Novara codices, 27, page 69, and marked I. O, number 11, page 20; Augiensis 16; Casinensis 106, page 12; the Monza codex si. I. E III; the Lambach codex, page 95—all of these, with the name of Saint Maximus inscribed on the homily, offer clear testimony. Relying on these and others like them, Gymnicus on page 12, Galesinius on page 88, Combefis in volume I, page 206, Cumdius in volume I, page 169, Raynaudus on page 195, and Margarinus in the Lyons edition of the year 1677, volume
有許多份最具權威的抄本把這篇卓越的講道歸於瑪西模。首先我們要提到四份梵蒂岡抄本：第1267號第91頁、第4954號第6頁、梵蒂岡帕拉丁抄本第433號第101頁，以及梵蒂岡雷吉納抄本第125號第78頁，都靈抄本亦隨之：論主的誕生，第一篇講道；兩份諾瓦拉抄本，第27號第69頁及標記為I. O、第11號第20頁；奧吉恩西斯第16號；卡西諾抄本第106號第12頁；蒙扎抄本si. I. E III；蘭巴赫抄本第95頁——所有這些抄本都在講道上題有聖瑪西模之名，提供了明確的見證。依據這些及其他類似的抄本，金尼庫斯（第12頁）、加勒西尼烏斯（第88頁）、康貝菲斯（第一卷第206頁）、庫姆迪烏斯（第一卷第169頁）、雷諾杜斯（第195頁），以及瑪加里努斯（里昂1677年版，第……卷）
VI, page 1, published this as the first of the homilies of Maximus on the Nativity of the Lord. Today, dearest brethren, Christ is born, and we are reborn. Today the Savior of the world received through a mother the time of his birth—he who from the Father has no time of his birth. Today, through a man, the Son of God has entered the world—he by whose hand, before man existed, the world was made. Today the dweller of heaven has come to earth, that he might call the inhabitants of earth up to heaven. Wonderful, it says, is God in his saints (Psalm 67). If God is wonderful in his saints, how is he not wonderful in himself?
If he is wonderful in John, whom he commanded to be born of a very old father and a barren mother, how much more is he wonderful in himself, who, that he might put on the flesh of our condition, gave to a virgin a new conception and a new childbirth. The holy prophet Habakkuk says (chapter 3): Lord, I have heard your report and was afraid; I considered your works and was terrified. Who would not be terrified and fear the depth of so great a mystery, seeing that one and the same was born God without conception, and was made man without a creator? We read of two generations in Christ, dearest brethren, but in each there is the power of the incomprehensible Godhead. For there God begot him from himself; here a virgin conceived him by God's working. There without a beginning, here without a precedent.
There he was born to establish life; here he was made to take away death. There he was born to the Father; here he was brought forth for men. By that nativity he made man; by this generation he set man free. That neither of his generations can be recounted, brethren, this one sentence embraces. For the one is before man, the other above man. The one is beyond thought, the other is wonderful. But when we are taught of the two nativities of Christ, it is not asserted that the Son of God was born twice, but it is confirmed that there is a twofold substance in the one Son of God. There, what he was, was born; here, what he was not, was made. Concerning these things the blessed evangelist John says (chapter 1): In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. And again: And the Word was made flesh.
Therefore God, who was with God, went forth, and the flesh of God, which was not in God, proceeded from a woman. Thus the Word was made flesh: not that God should be emptied into man, but that man should be glorified into God. And so God was born to us, but from two nativities—that is, of God and of man—the Only-begotten of the Father willed himself to be one, both God and man. Who then shall recount his generation (Isaiah 53)? Brethren, if the generation of Christ cannot be recounted, it can be believed. If the tongue fails, faith advances. For great is the progress of the mind when it conceives as much concerning its God as speech cannot bring to birth.
Beware, most beloved, lest at any time unbelief concerning these things should move you; for if man cannot explain what he perceives, God without doubt can fulfill what he has willed. And it is utterly absurd, brethren, that we should weigh the ineffable God by the feeblest speech of our frailty. It is a matter of madness that we should attempt to shut up the operations of immeasurable majesty within the paltry words of our corruptible mouth. For how can man comprehend God—the made comprehend the unbegotten, the mortal the eternal? If you strive to investigate how God passed into man, or man into God, first investigate, if you can, how the world was made from nothing; from what source the heaven shone forth; by what principle the liquid of the waters and the solidity of the earth subsist;
how too man came from earth, woman from the male, and again the male through the woman; what that is which, after all things, begets light and darkness, which makes life and death. If, then, O man, you are unable to comprehend yourself and the things that were made for your sake—in what manner, or from what, they were made—by what presumption or what folly do you scrutinize the Creator of yourself and of all things? We confess, therefore, that God was born of God the Father, and that the same was made man of a virgin. But these things, most dear ones, are blind to reason, manifest to faith. For then we shall be able in some part to search out the immensities of his boundless majesty, if we perceive how great and of what sort God is;
but that he cannot be known by us, as the Lord says to Moses: But you shall not be able to see my face (Exodus 33)—that is, one cannot with carnal eyes behold my Deity as it is. For blessed David, straining toward the power of his omnipotence, cried out saying: Wonderful are your works, O Lord, and my soul knows it right well (Psalm 138). For the prophetic soul knew right well that the works of God exceed every meditation of the human mind; wherefore the most wise patriarch, shut in by the narrow limits of mortal perception, marveled at what he could not investigate. Who then of men would dare to scrutinize or search out things so great, which the prophet marvels at? Wonderful, he says, are your works, and my soul knows it right well.
For this very thing—that God is incomprehensible—his soul knew, but his flesh could not perceive. Everyone, therefore, who prefers to examine the works of God rather than to believe them, follows not the perception of the soul, but error. And therefore, brethren, let us not scrutinize how God was born of God, but let us believe; nor let us re-examine the virgin's childbearing, but let us marvel, so that, confessing the Only-begotten of God to be both God and man, we may hold unimpaired the truth of the heavenly faith.