Fortune did not smile ungraciously upon our labors. For when we had first unrolled the codices of the Laurentian library, from which we gathered one or another sermon of St. Maximus, while we surveyed codex 169 of the library formerly of the greater church of Florence, this new sermon occurred, adorned with the name of St. Maximus. Exempt therefore from all dispute, since it is found neither among the sermons of Ambrose nor of Augustine, we have with willing mind given it to be enjoyed by the light; the more so, because it is read in the codices Vaticanus 4222, p. [ ], and IV Pluteus 23, p. 70 on the back, of the library formerly of Holy Cross of the Minor Convent, now the Laurentian, which display the name of St. Maximus inscribed. The text is from the Vatican codex.
Your holiness retains in mind that in the days before we discussed how, through this care of holy Lent, a certain restoration of the human race is wrought, so that through this most sacred time the fragility of our condition [is restored], when Christ by His indulgence restored the grace of immortality which Adam had lost by transgressing, and that he who had sinned by eating contrary to the prohibition might here, according to the precept, be justified by fasting. For this is the whole cause of Christianity and of me [as preacher]: that what had perished should be saved, what had erred be recalled, what had already fallen be reborn. For the offence of the first generation became the occasion of the second birth, and from the transgression of that first announcement arose the grace of this justification.
For there would have been no need for man to be reborn anew, if what had been had not perished. But someone says: God could have so forgiven man the sins which had been contracted through Adam, that it would not have been necessary for him to be reborn anew. Hear therefore, and understand the reason: God, as we know, is truthful and just, and can never lie. When therefore He had formed Adam, and had established for him in paradise a law of this kind, that he should by no means taste of the tree of knowing good and evil, on the day he tasted it he would surely die; therefore, since man was held by a commandment of this kind, transgressing the commandment, he ran into the law, and by his transgression sought the death which God had foretold.
Therefore, as we said, because it is impossible for the statutes of the Godhead to be torn down, and man ran into the snare of the law; therefore it was not fitting that he be pardoned without a second birth, because the order of the precepts could not be dissolved, but He willed man to be reborn, and in a certain way to become another, and, because the sentence of the law could not be changed, that the person bound to the law should be changed, namely that in one and the same man the [old] condition should bind the one, and grace set free the other, the old man should satisfy severity, the new man should grow unto goodness, so that both the precept should retain its force in man, and another census should rescue the man. For he who is reborn has fulfilled the condition of the former generation, and takes the origin of the second birth;
He who, I say, is born again has ceased to be what he was and begins to be what he was not; he is dead to the old things, made new for the things to come. How good, then, is our Lord: thus He established the law that He might not forgo mercy; thus He shows mercy that He might not violate the statutes of the law. For as one who is just He has carried out the sentence, and as one who is merciful He has bestowed pardon. For that we die is the enactment of the earlier decree; that we rise again is the gift of the grace that follows after. Therefore, brethren, I speak to you catechumens: hasten to the grace of the second birth, that in you Adam may come to an end and Christ may begin; that death may be emptied out and life succeed, that the sentence of severity may be abolished and the grace of renewal follow after.
For the severity of the Judge is abolished when, renewal intervening, the sentence no longer recognizes its own God as an offender. But unless our old man be changed, and the penalty of the precept follow the new person, he will not be able to escape the condition of death who has not fled for refuge to the Author of that condition. For Christ the Lord says: Unless you believe that I am He, you shall die in your sins (John VIII). And so let us thus believe in Christ, and thus faithfully clothe ourselves in grace, holding true what He says: Unless a man be born again of water (John III), and the rest. Let us therefore put on the Lord, both by grace and by His precepts; for death shall not hold fast those who, when Adam has seen it, are found to be with Christ, who is life.
Above all, he says, let us keep His precepts, and especially those concerning the fasts of Lent. For as very many, to whom this most sacred number of days for fasting is here enjoined, violate the divinely appointed season by eating during the weeks set between, not understanding that by tasting against the prohibition they are guilty of no lesser transgression than that Adam who ate against the forbidden thing; but Christ's Passion redeemed the transgressions of that man—these people, who are transgressors after the Lord's Passion, who shall redeem?