The saint that we celebrate today, St Maximus the Confessor, was a very wealthy person, born into one of the great families of Constantinople in 580. He was serving as Chief Secretary to the Emperor Heraclius in 610 when he resigned his post and became a monk. For the next 12 years he lived a quite solitary life, deeply committed to prayer, aiming at union with God on a level beyond images, concepts and language. St Maximus was a quite remarkable person. Introducing the book, Selected Writings: Maximus the Confessor, Jaroslav Pelikan has pointed out that St Maximus is “a member of that small and select group of saints of the Church who belong almost equally to the Western and Eastern traditions of Christian spirituality.” He sought to understand what God was doing in three quite different places: in people, in the cosmos and in the Church. In people, St Maximus believed that human beings had been created by “God, who is Love so that [they] might share in the divine condition itself.” In other words, God created each of us so that we could share life in all its fullness and purposes with Him. In the cosmos, all creation was to be brought “into oneness in the communion” with the Holy Trinity. In the Church, everyone was to be changed, to be “inspired in the transformation of their beings through … the Crucified and Risen Christ.”

The Synaxarion: The Lives of the Saints of the Church tells us that “in the silence of his cell, gazing into [his own] heart, [St Maximus] considered within himself … [how] the Word of God [Christ], moved by His infinite love for mankind, has … [united] Himself to our nature, which is separated from God and divided against itself by self-centred love.”  Let’s try this morning to understand the beauty of the theology of St Maximus. God loves humanity as a whole, and every person within humanity. Furthermore, as human beings we begin life “separated from God” as persons who are “divided against [ourselves] by self-centred love.” If we focus solely on ourselves and our own needs, we will remain separated from God, and unable to truly love other people or to love God.

Christ urged us in the Gospels to love our neighbour as ourselves-to treat others as we treat ourselves. So, it’s good to love ourselves; and I believe that it is from the launching pad of respecting and loving ourselves that we are raised up into the orbit of loving God and loving other people. Learning how to look after and love ourselves is an important step toward loving others. Just as when young children take their first steps, they then want to walk faster and for longer distances. So it is for us: once we have learned how to love ourselves, we can keep on loving-loving others and loving God.

In a very real sense then, once we have learned how to respect and love ourselves as we are, with our very own strengths and weaknesses, we are on the launching pad for a life with purpose. We can blast off that launching pad as spiritual astronauts, leaving the biosphere of an earth-limited Self for the outer space of loving others and loving God. Now, this is a dangerous journey in which we might well be blown up on the launching pad, because we may not yet be fully ready to give up our focus on ourselves. That’s OK. We can start again; and we can pray and learn how best to be launched into the space of caring for others and being at peace with God.

When Neil Armstrong became the first person to walk on the moon, he told his friends and family that his objective was simply to “be the first person who tried to walk on the moon.” One of his friends, a fellow astronaut, thought he had only a 50-50 chance of coming back alive. When we blast off in our personal spaceships from the Planet of Self to the outer space of loving others and loving God, our chances of success are far higher than 50-50. Why? because the Lord wants us to join Him in His life. It may be that we have to blast off several times before we have “LIFT OFF!” But it will happen, because we and God both want that “lift off” to happen. Furthermore, when we attempt to land in our new God-oriented lives, we may well find, as Neil Armstrong did, that many boulders prevent us landing in our planned destination. We may have to change our plans, just as Neil Armstrong did as he piloted the Lunar Space Module to land on the moon.

The Synaxarion suggests that during the 82 years of his life, St Maximus “nourished the intellect through prayer.” That’s quite an idea. As we pray, our ability to think improves, because prayer draws us closer to the nature and purposes of God. We learn to trust the Lord to guide us in prayer to what is important in life. Prayer nourishes our intellects. Through prayer we experience that God loves us. We are drawn closer to God. That is the Orthodox meaning of deification-to become more and more like God Himself. Father John Antony McGuckin has written in The Westminster Handbook to Patristic Theology, that because of the Incarnation-because the Divine Christ became a human being-“all humankind [can now] be lifted up into the mystery of His divinity.” The lives of Zacchaeus and St Maximus do indeed prepare us to be lifted up into life with God. We too can be launched as spiritual astronauts now into life with the Lord.

And so, we ascribe as is justly due all might, majesty, dominion, power and praise to God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, always now and ever and unto the ages of ages. Amen.