Maximus the Confessor - "the meaning of Holy Scripture"

Following recent posts on St Anastasius the Sinaite, St Sophronius of Jerusalem and St John Climacus, here's another on a Seventh-Century Greek-speaking theologian, St Maximus the Confessor (f/d August 13th).

To begin with, a short biography of Maximus:

Maximus the Confessor (also known as Maximus the Theologian and Maximus of Constantinople) (c. 580 – 13 August 662) was a Christian monk, theologian, and scholar.

In his early life, he was a civil servant, and an aide to the Byzantine Emperor Heraclius. However, he gave up this life in the political sphere to enter into the monastic life.

After moving to Carthage, Maximus studied several Neo-Platonist writers and became a prominent author.

When one of his friends began espousing the Christological position known as Monothelitism, Maximus was drawn into the controversy, in which he supported the Chalcedonian position that Jesus had both a human and a divine will.

Maximus is venerated in both Eastern Christianity and Western Christianity.

His Christological positions eventually resulted in his torture and exile, soon after which he died.

However, his theology was vindicated by the Third Council of Constantinople and he was venerated as a saint soon after his death.

His feast day is celebrated twice during the year: on 13 August and 21 January. His title of Confessor means that he suffered for the Christian faith, but was not directly martyred.

His Life of the Virgin is thought to be the earliest complete biography of Mary, the mother of Jesus.

Secondly, an extract from his Gnostic Chapters, which is read in some monasteries at the Monastic Office of Vigils on Sunday of the Eighteenth Week in Ordinary Time (Year 1), and which, among other things, affords an excellent template for the practice of lectio divina:

The meaning of Holy Scripture reveals itself gradually to the higher senses of the more discerning mind when the mind has put off the complex bodily form of the words which are formed in it.

This revelation is like a still small voice.

Through a supreme abandonment of its natural activities, such a mind has been able to perceive the meaning only in a simplicity which reveals the divine Word.

This is the way that the great Elijah was granted the vision in the cave at Horeb.

For ‘Horeb’ means ‘newness’, which is our virtuous condition in the new spirit of grace.

The cave is the hiddenness of spiritual wisdom in which the one who enters will mystically experience the knowledge which goes beyond the senses.

This is the knowledge in which God is found.

Therefore anyone who truly seeks God, as did the great Elijah, will come upon him not only on Horeb; that is, as an ascetic in the practice of the virtues.

He will also encounter him in the cave of Horeb, that is as a contemplative in the hidden place of wisdom which can exist only in the habit of the virtues.

When the mind shakes off the many distractions about things which are pressing on it, then the clear meaning of truth appears and gives it pledges of genuine knowledge.

These are given after it has driven off its recent preoccupations which were like scales on the eyes, just as in the case of the great and holy Apostle Paul.

For thoughts about the mere letter of Scripture and the consideration of those visible things that hinder understanding are indeed scales which cling to the clear-sighted part of the soul and hinder the passage to the pure meaning of truth.