IIC 169: St. Maximus the Confessor and Catholic Parts Work

[00:00:00] Dr. Peter: “Do I contradict myself? Very well, then I contradict myself. I am large. I contain multitudes.” This is poet Walt Whitman, Song of Myself, written in 1855, but I bet Walt Whitman, as a human being, still underestimated how large he really was. Walt Whitman may not have known that he not only contained multitudes, but he contained the whole world, that he was a microcosm of the whole world, as the Cappadocian fathers described 14th centuries earlier, that he himself, as Walt Whitman, contained the whole world within himself. Mind-blowing.

[00:00:49] Dr. Peter: The Cappadocian fathers are heavy hitters in the history of Christianity. St. Basil the Great, bishop of Caesarea, St. Gregory of Nyssa, bishop of Nyssa, St. Gregory of Nazianzus, who became patriarch of Constantinople, Nemesius of Edessa, a fourth-century Syrian physician and bishop. Walt Whitman may not have known that he himself, as a human person, was also a macrocosm of the whole world. Microcosm, macrocosm.

[00:01:18] Dr. Peter: This is from an article titled “Maximus the Confessor’s Summation of Early Patristic Thought” by Jean-Paul Juge on August 13th, 2020. He says, and this is describing Maximus’ thought, St. Maximus the Confessor. “The human person is a microcosm, a miniature image of the cosmos, who synthesizes cosmic disparities within his unified and unique substance. Maximus insists that we are microcosms, not simply because we are conglomerations of material elements, but instead because each human is a body-soul composite, the union of body and soul bridges the material and immaterial, the intelligible and the sensible.” 

[00:02:05] Dr. Peter: Father Dumitru Staniloae, I’m sure I’m saying that wrong, at the beginning of his Orthodox Dogmatic Theology, the first volume of which has been translated into English as the Experience of God. He said, “Some of the fathers of the church have said that man is a microcosm, a world which sums up in itself the larger world. Saint Maximus the Confessor remarked that the more correct way would be to consider man as a macrocosm because he is called to comprehend the whole world within himself, as one capable of comprehending it without losing himself, for he is distinct from the world.”

[00:02:50] Dr. Peter: And St. Maximus, in chapter seven of his book Mystagogy sums up his position. He says, “The entire cosmos, consisting of the visible and invisible things, is man. And man, consisting of body and soul, is cosmos.” And then also this by Jesse Dominick, his article “Man in Creation: the Cosmology of St. Maximus the Confessor,” says, “In his vision of this task, man is described by St. Maximus as a microcosm because man is composed of both body and soul, both physical and spiritual, sensible and intelligible natures. He is thus the creation in miniature as creation also consists of both physical and spiritual realities. In this he is following upon the Cappadocian Fathers and Nemesius of Edessa. Man occupies a middle position in creation, straddling the division between the material world that we inhabit and the spiritual world of the angelic powers. Conversely, if man is a microcosm, then for St. Maximus, the universe is a makranthropos — a man distended, and so the universe can be contemplated as a man.”

[00:04:12] Dr. Peter: This is mind-blowing stuff that we’re gonna be getting into today. And Maximus in chapter 41 of his Ambiguum says, “The soul is a middle being between God and matter, and has powers that can unite it with both. That is, it has a mind that links the soul with God and senses that link with matter.” And with that little bit of introduction, I want you to find out who you really are, how large you are, in perfect conformity with the teachings of the Catholic Church, and I have two guests with me. We are going to wrestle with the thought of St. Maximus the Confessor, to help you understand yourself, to help you understand others better, and to help you love yourself, God, and others more deeply.

[00:05:10] Dr. Peter: I am Dr. Peter Malinoski, also known as Dr. Peter. I am your host and guide in this Interior Integration for Catholics podcast. I’m so glad to be with you today. I’m a clinical psychologist, a trauma therapist, a podcaster, writer, the co-founder and president of Souls and Hearts. But most of all, I’m a beloved little son of God, a passionate Catholic who wants to help you taste and see the height and depth and breadth and the warmth and the light of the love of God, especially God, your father, also Mary, your mother, your spiritual parents, your primary parents. I am here to help you embrace your identity as a beloved little child of God and Mary. And also to grip onto this idea of being a microcosm and a macrocosm.

[00:05:53] Dr. Peter: Throughout all of 2025, we are bringing in the insights from Internal Family Systems developed by Dr. Richard Schwartz and other parts and systems models, and we are harmonizing them with the truths of the Catholic faith. Why? Here’s why. To help you live out the three great loves and the two great commandments: to love God, your neighbor, and yourself. And I’m bringing you the best of Catholic professionals in the field as my expert guests to share with you their insights, their understanding, their experience, so that you can thrive and flourish and fully embracing your identity as a beloved little son or daughter of God. And not just with one or two parts of you, but with all of your parts, all of your parts sharing in the bliss of a deep union with God.

[00:06:38] Dr. Peter: This is episode 169 of the Interior Integration for Catholics podcast. It releases on July 7th, 2025, and it’s titled St. Maximus the Confessor and Catholic Parts Work. With me, I have back in the virtual studio with Dr. Christian Amalu and Dr. Gerry Crete. Both were with us for the last episode on Scripture and Catholic parts work. Gerry Crete, dear friend, colleague, LMFT, which stands for Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist, in Atlanta, Georgia. He’s the founder and owner of Transfiguration Counseling, and he co-founded Souls and Hearts with me in 2019. He’s the author of the book, Litanies of the Heart, published last year by Sophia Press. If you haven’t read Litanies of the Heart, you really need to. And also Dr. Christian Amalu. He’s a guest expert with us today. He’s a postdoctoral fellow at the Immaculate Heart of Mary Counseling Center in Lincoln, Nebraska. He’s focused on Internal Family Systems and Catholic anthropology, proposing ways of reconciling and integrating the IFS model with Catholicism. 

[00:07:39] Dr. Peter: It is so good to have you both with us. Oh my goodness. Dr. Gerry, Dr. Christian, we are back together. We are talking about St. Maximus, St. Maximus. And I just want to kind of throw this open right now and let’s see where this goes, because I know much less about St. Maximus than both of you. I’ve read a little, but I know both of you have seen so many interesting and relevant things in his writing, in his thought, that have the potential to be really helpful to our audience, that have the potential to really connect the gold of our Catholic tradition with the silver of these new ideas and parts and systems thinking that are coming from Internal Family Systems, from ego state therapy, from DNMS, from other parts and systems focused types of approaches. And so, yeah, what would you have to say about what St. Maximus’ thought? And maybe we even need to go back a little bit, who St. Maximus was, where he came from, when he lived, any of that stuff.

[00:08:53] Dr. Gerry: Yeah, I am happy to do a little introduction because he needs one for most people.

[00:08:57] Dr. Christian: Yes, yes.

[00:08:58] Dr. Gerry: I was on a podcast last year called Gotta Be Saints and it was about saints and the host, who was great, he asked me, you know, who my favorite saint was? Because he asks all the guests that. And I said, Maximus the Confessor. And he said, I am in the, like whatever percentage, like small percentage of guests that he doesn’t know who their saint is, and he does a podcast on saints. So a lot of people, good Catholics and well-read Catholics, don’t actually know him. I think it’s important even just give a slight little bit of history. I’ll try to keep it brief. I do have an article in the Christmas 2024 Latin Mass magazine where I do kind of do an overview of Maximus the Confessor, if anybody gets that or wants to find that.

[00:09:44] Dr. Gerry: Anyway, so he is in the seventh century and it’s believed that he was born in Constantinople, possibly born in Palestine. We don’t know a whole lot about his early history, we have different kind of versions, but he actually worked for the emperor in Constantinople as a secretary, and then he left that to become a monk. And so he was trying to escape from perhaps, you know, political intrigue, everything going on in the seventh century. So that’s the seventh century, the Byzantine Empire was kind of like the continuation of the Roman Empire, but it was under a great deal of attack from far Eastern invaders, Persian invaders. And it was also during the same time that Muhammad lived and the rise of Islam. So Christianity was under attack and certainly the Byzantine Empire was under attack for multiple directions.

[00:10:41] Dr. Gerry: And meanwhile, we’ve got Maximus who decides to become a monk. He wants to study, like deeply study, well not just study, but live out the ascetical life of a monk. But he does that and he also writes about that. So he synthesizes in his writings the entire Patristic tradition. So the last 600 years, especially bringing in the Cappadocian fathers. And he writes about, he uses Evagrius and Pseudo Dionysus and Gregory of Nyssa, all these different figures and even Origen, but he corrects some of the perhaps errors of like Origen or even Pseudo Dionysus, some of the more serious errors. And some of it just is something that just needs to be smoothed out. But he’s an amazing synthesizer and he brings all this stuff together.

[00:11:30] Dr. Gerry: But he actually had to escape several times from invaders. And he basically eventually made his way all the way to Rome, and he helped Pope Martin fight the heresy of monothelitism, which is the heresy that Christ only has one will, whereas the Orthodox belief is that Christ has a human will and a divine will, just as he has a human nature and a nature. So that heresy the emperor was promoting and so was the patriarch of Constantinople. And it got so bad that Pope Martin, who’s now Pope Saint Martin, he’s a saint, was kidnapped and in fact he was starved to death. So he’s a martyr and a saint.

[00:12:16] Dr. Gerry: So the Pope was kidnapped by the Byzantine Emperor essentially. And then so Maximus was arrested and tried, a lot of trump charges. He had like several different trials. He was found guilty of like betraying or treason or whatever to the empire, which is totally false. And I have a copy of like his trial, like at least some, I don’t know how historically accurate it is, but like his trial, we have some stories about it, but his punishment was that his tongue was cut out and his right hand was cut off and he was exiled. So he lived the last part of his life and at this point, he was an elderly man, and he lived the last part of his life in what’s modern-day Georgia, the country of Georgia, not Atlanta, Georgia or anything. And then he died. He’s called a confessor because he’s not a martyr directly. He wasn’t killed directly for his faith, but his confessing the faith caused him to be mutilated. And that is why he’s Maximus the Confessor. 

[00:13:12] Dr. Gerry: Just to give a little historical background, fascinating time period, isn’t well known historically. It’s part of that time period that sometimes gets called the Dark Ages. But in my opinion, he was so brilliant. He’s as brilliant as an Augustine or an Aquinas in my opinion, of course. And because he spent so much time in Rome, he really also is kind of a bridge between East and West. I think he spent maybe 20 years, I think, in Rome. And he definitely is a Greek in the sense of like the Greek theological tradition. But he had a great deal of affection for the Bishop of Rome and the East-West unity. 

[00:13:50] Dr. Christian: That’s a very concise history. I was trying to catch up on it myself yesterday. And I can verify that that is a very good, concise history of Maximus. I know there’s a lot of weeds that we could get into, but that does summarize it really well. And I gotta say, Gerry, I really appreciate the description of Maximus as a synthesizer. That’s something that I’ve been getting from everything I’ve been reading on Maximus, because he really was not only immersed in everybody that came before him, but really tried to reconcile it and create a complete vision. And it is so beautiful seeing his writings, because he’ll mention Dionysius the Areopagite, or he’ll mention Gregory of Nyssa or Gregory the Theologian. He’s trying to reconcile things that don’t exactly make sense to him, but finds a way to almost elevate that thought to the next level. It’s just fascinating stuff that he does.

[00:14:39] Dr. Gerry: I think also, because we were talking about this before we started this podcast and the challenge of some of his writings and how do you make it practical? How do you make it useful? But the reality is can’t just put him in one bucket. A number of his writings, like the chapters on love or charity are in the Philokalia, that pretty famous collection in the East of Desert Fathers and fathers of the church and their writings. His chapters on love are in there. And if you read those, it’s all about living an ascetical life. So it’s extraordinarily practical it’s very much about how to cultivate virtue and all this. But then you have other writings like his Ambiguaa, which he’s answering difficult questions. A lot of other examples of his writings that get into the entire cosmology of the universe, you know, get into these deep metaphysical questions. So he’s difficult to pin down because he writes on multiple topics. It’s almost like he’s five people sometimes. So that’s part of his brilliance in my opinion, is he touches on so many things.

[00:15:51] Dr. Gerry: One fascinating book by him is the Mystagogia, and he talks about the liturgy, in this case, he’s talking about the divine liturgy, so the Eastern liturgy, St. John Chrysostom. And he connects that liturgy to what happens during what’s essentially the mass or the divine liturgy, to what is happening almost in the heavens, but what’s happening in a cosmic way in the universe.

[00:16:13] Dr. Christian: He also ties that into the spiritual life. I think that’s something that I found continuously intriguing about Maximus, is that he does go everywhere. I’m trying to think of a domain that he does not touch on. He’s nothing if not comprehensive. But throughout the Ambiguaa, the Mystagogy, everything, you still have this centralizing theme. I would kind of encapsulate that, not that I should encapsulate necessarily, but I find three things that are constantly at the center of everything that he’s talking about. He’s always trying to bring things back to the incarnation. And because there’s so much that came before him that was very theoretical and focusing on like the rational or the intellectual aspect of human life in almost this disembodied way, and I could see in a lot of Maximus’ writings this effort to bring things back to the incarnational. It’s like really realizing that Christ is bringing together the divine and the material through the incarnation and bringing a recapitulation of the material fallen world to heaven, in union with God. And Maximus is also then focusing on the human being, as the human being is this almost central kind of convergence point between all of these different things that he’s talking about. It seems that even from the very practical, the ascetical, all the way up to the cosmological, the human being is kind of at that center point.

[00:17:45] Dr. Gerry: Yeah, I think you did a concise job there as well, because that’s a pretty heavy conceptual thing to kind of grasp. I think he would say Christ himself is that central point of the unity, between the spiritual realm, if you will, and God and the material world.

[00:18:01] Dr. Peter: It’s interesting that you say Christ and not the Second Person of the Trinity or the Word, but it goes back to the incarnational, it’s the second person incarnated. 

[00:18:12] Dr. Christian: Which is why I said the incarnation, it’s throughout Maximus’ writings.

[00:18:14] Dr. Peter: Right. And what struck me about my reading of his work is how much of a systems thinker he is. Like how he talks about systems, and systems nested within systems. And we’ve been talking about those in episodes 163 and 164 and this podcast, but, going back to that word synthesizer, like there’s this integration and a holistic understanding that really gets to be kind of mind blowing, if you start to unpack what his implications are, it’s like I’ve never seen this written this way, and I kind of am like a little frustrated, like why have I never seen this before? Been a Catholic for a while. Like, how come I never ran across this?

[00:19:05] Dr. Gerry: Well, he wasn’t translated well, first of all. Eriugena translated him in, what would that have been? The ninth century or something. So the West writers didn’t have many copies of his writings, and the translation was not yet strong. So he was kinda lost a little bit to history and it was really in the 20th century that Von Balthasar wrote his book on Maximus that blew everybody’s mind. Now there were some Eastern Orthodox scholars living in their little scholarly palaces that woke up when Balthasar wrote his thing and it got all this attention and actually commented on Balthasar and Balthasar actually made corrections because of that. But this little world of Maximus scholarship really didn’t happen until like maybe the 1960s, 70s, 80s, that he started to get noticed in a more regular way, like more regular people. And he kind of got picked up a lot by the kind of 70s, 80s, kind of new age kind of movement, unfortunately. He is as orthodox as you want to ever get. I mean, he literally died for orthodoxy. In any case, so I think that he’s being looked at more. I think he’s being seen more, his life is being better, his writings are being understood better. He’s not an easy read. I’ll that. Like, try reading the Ambiguaa. It’s not easy.

[00:20:28] Dr. Peter: Seventh century, different style of writing.

[00:20:32] Dr. Gerry: The guy’s a genius though. You think like we’re always evolving or something. No. Like sometimes some of these earlier writers are just so bright. Anyway, but that’s why we don’t know about him.

[00:20:43] Dr. Christian: Yes, I would think also to Peter’s point, because it’s not only difficult to read, you then think about, okay, what is the accessibility? And I imagine many people just don’t quite know how to do that and how to apply that. So there’s maybe a temptation to leave it alone, which is really unfortunate, because, I don’t know. I mean, I err on the super nerdy side, and I know both of you have parts that are probably very nerdy as well, and I read through this and even the conceptual is very, very helpful on my end for especially for that more theoretical systems thinking. And I think the difficulty with Maximus is you can’t just read one thing. I think you have to read a good sampling of his works, which I actually happen to find that in this one book that has a little bit of the Ambiguaa, some of the Mystagogy, and there’s something when you can actually look at how he looks at the liturgy or how he looks at the cosmos, and then how he looks at the ascetical life. Yeah. I think it gets much easier to bridge a more cohesive vision together. 

[00:21:46] Dr. Gerry: I would add also, you just made me think of this, one reason why he isn’t read that much now too is that he’s one of the last writers in this sort of Greek tradition, philosophical, I don’t just mean in Christianity, but the philosophical tradition. I think that, if you don’t have any understanding of Greek philosophy, which how many of us do? I at least took a Greek and Medieval philosophy class, two of them in my undergraduate program years ago. Maybe that was helpful. But people don’t, do people read Gregory of Nyssa? Do people read Gregory of Nazianzus? Do people read St. Basil the Great? Like, do people read St. John Chrysostom? These are all Greek writers. Some of them are coming from a Platonic kind of Greek tradition, some of them are correcting, they’re still using it, but correcting a Greek Platonic kind of tradition. But Maximus has access to some of Aristotle, more of Aristotle than some of the earlier ones did. And you see that in his writings. But Aristotle isn’t really fully recovered until like 13th century or something. So what I’m saying is most of us will have a difficult time understanding him, because we don’t understand Greek philosophy very well. Most moderns.

[00:22:59] Dr. Christian: Just on the language alone, it could get us into trouble. Yeah.

[00:23:02] Dr. Gerry: Yes. Language and concepts. Like, for example, we talk about Christ, like he’s called in Greek, like the Logos, like even in the Gospel of John and the Greek, it’s, you know, the Logos. Do most people know what that even means? Most people don’t, I don’t think. And Maximus talks quite a bit about the logoi, L-O-G-O-I, is usually how it’s spelled in English.

[00:23:22] Dr. Christian: The logoi, I think it’s the logoi.

[00:23:23] Dr. Gerry: Logoi, thank you, which is like our essence, or it’s sort of like connotes wisdom. It connotes an essence. It’s like, again, I have to say connotes, because there aren’t English words that capture these Greek words. Again, that’s why he’s so hard to understand. So he’s getting at this, like you’re talking about nested systems. mean, the idea that on some level, the Logos, Christ, the Word. The Word again doesn’t even translate well, right? It doesn’t capture everything that’s involved in Logos. But within the Logos is all the logoi on some level. Right, or at least the logoi have an aspect of Logos somehow.

[00:24:08] Dr. Christian: All of the intelligibility comes back. Yeah.

[00:24:11] Dr. Gerry: Yeah, he’s talking about this unity and plurality. He’s talking about how there’s this unity in the world and we are all parts, then within each of us is a whole that parts. So we’re talking nested systems. Like there’s nested and nested and nested. Okay, something that I was just thinking about earlier that I just think is brilliant was that he says, kind of gets at this idea that parts contain all the whole.

[00:24:41] Dr. Peter: Yeah. This is really interesting. This microcosm, macrocosm.

[00:24:46] Dr. Gerry: Think about it, think about our bodies. They wouldn’t have known this way back when. But DNA contains everything about our one cell or whatever, one little tiny DNA contains everything of our whole body. Isn’t that like mind-blowing? And Maximus is kind of saying that, obviously not talking about DNA, but he’s basically saying every part contains the whole, every bit of us contains a whole.

[00:25:13] Dr. Christian: But that DNA carries almost a transferrable lesson then that there is something, because that’s the logoi at the physical level. At the material level, the DNA is the logo. And there is a correspondence in the Catholic faith. We hold onto the hypomorphic form of Aristotle that the soul is almost like this blueprint for the body. And so the idea that there’s something that corresponds, if there’s something in the physical world, there’s a correspondence of a more true form in the spiritual and essential, getting at that essence nature thing that you’re kind of pointing at. So this idea that there’s actually something essentially complete, then, within the soul.

[00:25:55] Dr. Peter: Well, here’s a quote from Maximus, from chapter seven of his Mystagogy. He says, “The entire cosmos, consisting of the visible and invisible things, is man. And man, consisting of body and soul, is cosmos.” I just like, whoa. And he goes on a little bit after that. He says, “For the intelligible things participate in the substance of the soul as the soul has the same reason as the intelligible ones. And the sensible things bear the image of the body as the body is the image of the sensible things. The intelligible things are the soul of the sensible ones and the sensible things are the body of the intelligible ones.”

[00:26:43] Dr. Peter: So he’s connecting all these things together and there’s a unity and a distinction and that the whole is in the parts and that the parts are in the whole. And this is where maybe the new age attraction came in, because there seems to be kind of a desire for this kind of unity and distinction in the new age as well. But yeah, that was like, wow. I have not spent a lot of time sort of considering what the implications of this are. But when I couple this with what his ultimate desire is, what Maximus was really going for, which was the deification of all things. Oh wow, like this is much bigger than sort of the ground I’ve been walking.

[00:27:30] Dr. Gerry: Yeah. So one way to look at it too would be that with the fall, man, we were disconnected in a sense, obviously from God. But in our essence, in our logoi, we no longer were naturally attuned to God. We are now redirected, if you will, to pleasure, he would probably say pleasure. We were redirected to things that were against our essence. And he talks about that as like our gnomic will versus a divine will. So the restoration of all of mankind and, like you were alluding to, all universe, though, but at least in mankind is our will being restored toward God. Our entire nature, our essence, our logoi being reoriented back to God. And so he has actually very practical ways to do that. And it’s a combination of aesthetic, no, ascetic behaviors, not plastic surgery. Ascetic behaviors. And also, calls it pure prayer, at least translated that way, which I think is more like contemplative prayer, deep prayer. And so he a path that’s actually relatively practical, in the Chapters on Love. It’s detailed. It’s not easy. You know, think about like programs like Exodus 90 or whatnot, trying to get at ascetic practices. I mean, Maximus was talking about that, but he didn’t invent that stuff. He was incorporating all of from the earlier writers, the Desert Fathers and so on, adding, obviously his spin.

[00:29:09] Dr. Christian: I really like that you brought that up, because there’s actually a component of that that I was reading last night, because a lot of the ascetic tradition Maximus is pulling from Evagrius and Maximus ends up having a different take on the end that Evagrius has in his journey. Because Evagrius, the end that he was going for is a state called apatheia. You might even hear in that the kind of the root for the word we have in English of “apathy.” And it has been, according to the writer that I’m reading from, he said that this often gets mistranslated as without passion or passionless. And he said it’s actually closer to serenity. That apathy is more of a serenity, a calmness of stillness that comes in.

[00:29:56] Dr. Christian: But Maximus kind of takes that further because the idea in Evagrius is that that is for its own sake. So that once you are still, you can now contemplate God. But Maximus takes it to a new level because he says it’s not just about stillness in front of God and being able to contemplate. But it’s ultimately about love. It’s about communion with God, not just about beholding God in this almost static way that is implied from Evagrius’ work. And I say the word implied because I can’t actually say if he actually intended it that way.

[00:30:29] Dr. Christian: But what Maximus does is, what he seems to do is that he takes this idea, especially of the passions, and he makes some distinctions. You already kind of alluded to it with what, when you talked about the gnomic will versus the natural will, because he says the human beings have natural wills. That is tied to our nature, our essence. God created that. It’s all good, but this kind of gets hijacked by the gnomic will, which he distinguishes as inclination. I don’t know where else is distinguished in the tradition in that way, but he tries to distinguish inclination from what our natural wills are looking at. And that inclination is turned toward disordered things, and it clouds our judgment. We can’t know what you were talking about earlier, the logoi. It’s not geared toward the truth.

[00:31:17] Dr. Christian: And so it creates this disorder. And Maximus actually does talk about recapitulating the passions. He says instead of apatheia, this contemplation of God, that those desires, the passions, are meant to be healed. They’re meant to be recapitulated. There’s a verse, I think it’s in one of the Ambiguaa, I think it’s difficulty 41. I could be wrong on that. I have a few notes hanging around here, but he says something to the effect of, he describes the beautiful passion that then gets taken up in our contact with God. So instead of doing away with the passions, rather the passions are then brought into order with God. Almost this fiery desire then comes in when you connect with God and it goes beyond that mere contemplation, but it becomes almost this ecstatic love.

[00:32:09] Dr. Gerry: Wow. I love it. That’s beautiful. I love what you said there and I think you’re right. I think like when I was talking about correctives, almost he smoothes out things. It’s not always that he’s correcting a heresy. Sometimes he is, in the case of Origen. But with Evagrius, and not just Evagrius, but others before him, focused on the ultimate connection with God and they referred to the nous, but by nous, they tended to understand it as knowledge of God. So the ultimate thing was intellectual and knowledge. I mean, they might go better than just intellectual and be about wisdom, but it was still like knowledge/wisdom was the ultimate. And I think Maximus brings in love and I mean, he gets it from other places. I’m sure he didn’t invent that concept, but he brings all these different things together.

[00:33:00] Dr. Gerry: And he’s ultimately saying that God’s choice in incarnating as Christ was an act of divine love, and he focuses on that love. And so the reunion with God, if you will, is about a return to unity and deep loving unity with God. And so even though we’re working on virtues or ascetical behavior, it’s all in the service of divine love, divine unity, reconciliation. It’s not just knowing God.

[00:33:34] Dr. Peter: This is like intimacy in relationship. This is like intimacy in a personal relationship.

[00:33:41] Dr. Gerry: I’ve got a quote here from, I think it’s the passages on love. “All the virtues assist the mind in the pursuit of divine love, but above all, does pure prayer. By it, the mind is given wings to go ahead to God and become alien to all things.” I just love the image of the wings and pursuing divine love, and I feel like that happens in prayer. So that happens when we are in deep prayerful contemplation. Again, it’s this tradition that continues among the mystics of our church that we go inward to go upward, if you will.

[00:34:20] Dr. Peter: Well, I wanted to float a quote to you both from Lars Thunberg’s 1999 book A Microcosm and Mediator. Got the book here.

[00:34:34] Dr. Gerry: Great book.

[00:34:35] Dr. Peter: And then I wanted to see what you would think of an idea that came to me, which could be totally off base. So I’m kind of putting myself out here. But he says, this is Thunberg and he’s basically summarizing some of Maximus’ thought. He says, “Man is first of all presented here as being in all respects in the middle, between the extremes of creation to which he has a natural relationship. He was brought into being as an all-containing workshop, binding all together in himself. As such, he has also been given the power of unification, thanks to his proper relationship to his own different parts. Man was further brought into being as the last of God’s creatures because he was to be a natural link between all creation, mediating between the extremes, through the elements of his own nature.” Okay. So that’s a lot to take in. Even those that summarize Maximus can take a little unpacking, but this idea of man as a mediator between the spiritual and the natural and this idea of man being an all-containing workshop binding all together in himself, like all of creation, like bound together in any human being, any one of us. I mean, that’s how I’m understanding that, that each one of us has this capacity to bind all things together in himself or herself. And so I’m just curious, do you think I’m tracking correctly on that? Because if I’m not, then the next part wouldn’t make any sense.

[00:36:39] Dr. Christian: Well, if it helps, as you said that, that jogged my memory of another quote. The book that I’ve been reading from is Fr. Andrew Louth. It’s from the Early Church Father series, it’s done by Oxford. And so he actually has his own synthesis and introduction of Maximus, but also has significant excerpts from the Ambiguaa, the Mystagogy, the Letters on Love. And what you just said, this quote right here, he doesn’t say workshop, but he says this. So this is from Father Andrew Louth. He is quoting Maximus directly in a couple of these spots. He says, “But the human being is not just the last stage in the structure of the hierarchy of the cosmos.” As he says. ” The human being is,” as Maximus says, “the laboratory in which everything is concentrated and in itself naturally mediates between the extremities of each division. For human beings are found on both sides of each division. They belong in paradise, but inhabit the world. They are earthly and yet destined for heaven. They have both mind and senses, and though created, they are destined to share in the uncreated nature by deification. All the divisions of the cosmos are reflected in the human being. So the human being is a microcosm, a little cosm. As microcosm, the human person is able to mediate between the extremes of the cosmos. He is a natural bond and constitutes the great mystery of the divine purpose.”

[00:38:13] Dr. Gerry: Yeah, that is a quote I actually used in Litanies, but it’s a footnote. Because I thought it was a little heavy, but I wanted to put it in this whole idea of the workshop. 

[00:38:22] Dr. Peter: Litanies is Dr. Gerry Crete’s book, Litanies of the Heart by Sophia Press, published in 2024. Yeah, just for those that might have missed the reference, wanted to make sure we got that in there.

[00:38:34] Dr. Gerry: The whole idea of microcosm and macrocosm is what blew my mind in terms of uniting the Catholic faith with any kind of parts work approach. Because the way I saw it was that the system within us, when we look at the kingdom within, the temple of the Holy Spirit within us, all these kind of concepts, biblical concepts we have, but when we look inside, we are a workshop. We are a place internally where something needs to get worked out, where needs to be healed, where something needs to be transformed. And the whole purpose of this inner transformation is that we are to be transfigured. We are to become deified, as you put it, we are to become other Christs. And so Maximus, his whole point is that from the fall we were fragmented, but he doesn’t mean we were fragmented into parts that need to be brought together. It means that our inner system was fragmented from God and fragmented within. And so the work that has to happen within is a unity, bringing together all of our parts into a beautiful unity, into a beautiful harmony. When we do that internally, then we’re able to participate in the world. We’re able to participate in this larger work of Christ that is to transform the entire world into the kingdom of God, which is the church’s job.

[00:40:05] Dr. Gerry: We participate in the Church’s job and the Church is the Body of Christ. And so, nested systems again, and I’m using hand motions today because it’s just such a big concept. I can’t help but wave my hands around if you can see the video. So it’s exciting that this idea of this inner workshop, that we need to do this inner work, corresponds so well with also this external work that also we need to do with neighbor, works that we do in our church and so on. But it all connects.

[00:40:34] Dr. Christian: Absolutely. I think that’s what makes Maximus more accessible is realizing even when he’s talking about all nested systems or the hierarchy, because he really presents all of reality as an outward and inward hierarchy. It’s realizing that thread of how do you participate in that hierarchy and he really links it to the ascetic life centered on love. When you see that, you can see more of the applicability of that larger view that he’s talking about.

[00:41:03] Dr. Gerry: And when we’re transfigured, so to speak, when we’re deified, then we become another Christ, as we hear in obviously in the New Testament. And insofar as we can then do work in the world as a mediator, we can suddenly become Christ’s presence in the world. And when we’re all doing that, wow, what a fire. Like what a change that will happen in the world. And that our liturgy is us coming together as these people being transformed into Christ and we’re coming together transformed into Christ to celebrate that or to express that, and to live that. And then we’re to go out again, into the world again, and continue. So there’s this like flowering, if you will.

[00:41:45] Dr. Peter: So would it be accurate, you guys have hinted at it, but like if I want to make life better for Christians in the Sudan or someplace where there’s hardships. Like, I don’t necessarily have to become a missionary or whatever, but if I really tend to what’s going on in my own workshop, if I’m really working internally to become this alter Christus, ipse Christus, right, to partake of the divine nature. That’s gonna lift up all of us, in being one body, the Church. So I’m just curious if that makes sense.

[00:42:26] Dr. Peter: Because I think sometimes people can, I know I’ve had this happen with clients for example, or potential clients that say, “I don’t have time to do my own internal work. There’s too many other responsibilities. I have too many other obligations I have. I’m a parent.” It’s whatever. But I’m thinking, if we really are taking the time to go inside and to really focus in on what we need on a natural level, on a spiritual level to become whole, to be able to live out our destiny, like this is going to benefit all of the world.

[00:43:09] Dr. Gerry: Yeah, I can only speculate in what Maximus might say.

[00:43:12] Dr. Peter: Right, it’s a speculation. I’m just playing with this.

[00:43:14] Dr. Gerry: Or have thoughts on that. I mean, he chose to live his life in a monastery. I think he would’ve been happy to have been left alone and not have been drawn into the politics of his day or certainly the ecclesial politics of his day. So what did he see there? Like he didn’t see a disconnection between his choice and other monks’ choice to live this ascetic life and to enter into a life of pure prayer. He didn’t see a disconnection between doing that and transfiguring the universe. So if there’s war going on somewhere, it isn’t like he’s doing nothing when he is praying. And sure, he’s not a missionary, and there’s role and calling for that within the body of Christ, but he’s not actually going and being a peacekeeper. But he wouldn’t have seen himself as not helping that in some way. That different parts of the body of Christ are meant to do different things. But he is participating in this transfiguration by choosing a life of holiness.

[00:44:22] Dr. Christian: I would agree with that. I definitely think Maximus would go that direction because again, when looking at his grand vision, the vision of the human person is microcosm. Any transformation within the human person has an effect then, being that bridge point between all the realities, if the human person grows in that holiness, grows closer to theosis or deification, that that will have an effect on the world around them very immediately. That has an ordering effect, and if you order the system within you, that’s going to affect the other systems that you are in communion with and in connection with.

[00:45:02] Dr. Christian: And then that will have a ripple effect. And I think the answer that I would have, if a client’s like, I don’t have time to do this inner work is, first of all, I would get curious about that and see what would they see as that inner work, because that’s not going to look the same across the board. And I think Maximus and everyone in the ascetic tradition would probably agree with that. Your vocation and your role in life is going to inform what that inner work looks like. So when you actually, in love and in pastoral care with other people, realize, what does the internal work look like for them? I would still think that Maximus would see this as essential as breath. If you have time to breathe, this is internal work, doing this work, growing in holiness, this is essential for our spiritual lives. And we, especially after Descartes, we tend to think about our spiritual lives separate from our natural physical lives, and it’s just not true. That’s a false dichotomy. So I would say working on that inner life is paramount. It’s on par with breath. If not, I want to say more important, but you do physically die if you don’t breathe. But I’d say it’s up there. This is critical to do.

[00:46:15] Dr. Peter: Right. It strikes me in this conversation, and what I’ve read from Maximus, about Maximus, is just how interconnected everything is, and how much more interconnected everything should be, and how there is this grasp of both unity and distinction. Like he’s able to make these distinctions, but yet there’s a unity that undergirds it all. That’s what’s really mind-blowing to me about this is like, wow, there’s a lot here as far as appreciating how we are members of one body, for example. I really appreciate you, Gerry, for bringing this to my attention because this is something we’ve been discussing for a few years now. And I’m wondering how we might come to a greater sort of appreciation within our own hearts, within our own systems, of how we might be able to connect in even better? What would you be sort of thinking about recommending, if somebody’s listening here and they’re wondering, okay, this is great, I love thinking about these things, but I’m wondering like, how can I make a difference? How can this information make a difference for me? I don’t imagine we’d start by saying, pick up a good translation of the Ambiguaa and let’s start there, or even Andrew Louth, whose stuff is really clear. Lars Thunberg, great, but I still think there’s a gap, right? So if we’re thinking about our listener, our viewer. How can we start to bring this into something that has an application in the here and now? What would you guys be thinking about that? 

[00:48:02] Dr. Gerry: I would say, I think I was getting to it earlier, is, on one hand, this aspect of apatheia, that Christian was mentioning, and so the ascetic process of learning to have what Francis de Sales and St. Ignatius of Loyola refer to as holy indifference. And so it’s practicing to be disconnected from our passions, if you will, in order to be connected with God. And so we become more self-aware. Now, Maximus follows the tradition and talks about self-love in a negative way, but because he means it as focus on self, and just focusing on my pleasure and what I want. So he’s talking about a negative self-love. But he really is talking about a proper self-love when he talks about turning our attention. Christian, you said natural will, but continually disconnecting in a way from the things that are holding us down or enslaving us, our struggles in life, and turning our will over to God basically.

[00:49:02] Dr. Peter: So he is talking about constraints there.

[00:49:04] Dr. Gerry: Yeah. Constraints. So ascetic practices, he would be big on that. As nice as all his global stuff sounds. He would be big on fasting, he would be big on choosing to give up things. He would be big on all the kind of traditional things and that the church teaches. And in terms of giving up things, not to torture ourselves or to punish ourselves, but to be free. So there’s that aspect. And the other thing is prayer again, like deep prayer. There was a psychologist who was talking, Michael Baker, I think his name is, who wrote some articles on Maximus and he connects Maximus’ concept of the unconscious. And of course Maximus never says the unconscious mind. But he does say some interesting things about it. And I think what we’ve been trying to do in Souls and Hearts is to connect the unconscious mind, if you will, the going deep within in our minds, I guess, in order to connect with, to do whatever healing that needs to happen, to be able work with parts, to be able do all that workshop stuff, then also to be able to find Christ within. And Maximus kind of gets at that. There’s a little quote from the Ambiguaa 10, 71. “Every intellect, because of its invisible nature and depth and multitude of its thoughts, is to be compared to an abyss.” It’s kind of cool, think. “Since it passes beyond the ordered array of the phenomena and comes to the place of intelligible reality.” So we’re really, the two things, if want practical, is ascetic practices and prayer. Not just saying your prayers, but going deeper into this contemplative prayer.

[00:50:50] Dr. Christian: I would also really emphasize specifically that Maximus doesn’t just look at disconnecting from the passions for the sake of freedom just on its own, but the passions are being denied for the sake of their own rejuvenation and later joining to God. You have the freedom so that you grow closer to God and you can be able to bring those passions into right order. So it’s not an outright denial of the passions. And I think a practicality there is that it can shift from a condemnatory or self-hatred attitude toward the passions. And it can give a person, I think, a more flexible tool of, not now, not now. The end for which you want, it might be ordered towards something that’s not going to fulfill it right now, and it needs to be denied because that’s not going to be for your good, but it’s ultimately for the proper fulfillment. And I think Maximus, he does actually introduce something like that. So I feel like it’s almost, you get notes of that in Evagrius, you get some component of that, as well as some other writers. But I think Maximus hits it on the nose way more explicitly, and I could see that as some form of a next step in the ascetic process that he brings out more explicitly.

[00:52:12] Dr. Peter: I also had this, I’m gonna take this in a little different direction. Gerry, you told me once, I believe, if I’m remembering this correctly, that Maximus believes that we have the virtues already inside us, that they’re not something that we have to work through. And I’m not talking about the infused virtues here, which obviously have to be given to us by God, the theological virtues.

[00:52:40] Dr. Gerry: Faith, hope, and love. 

[00:52:41] Dr. Peter: But that the virtues already exist within us. And it’s a matter of sort of releasing the impediments or the constraints to those virtues. I don’t know what the word would be, like being realized or being fulfilled or, I don’t know, being accessed or whatever it would be. So this is a really new idea when I heard this from you and I wonder if you could share that a little bit with us.

[00:53:04] Dr. Gerry: It is what I was saying before, like what he is saying with the logoi, we are essentially have all that virtue within us. That is an aspect us is Christ, that is Christlike. The way he sees ascetic behaviors, and apatheia is around removing obviously disturbing thoughts and disintegrated approaches to life and everything else, to enter into a simplicity perhaps, but is a deep relationship with God, of course, part of it. That as we move our will this way, away from our gnomic will toward a divine will, maybe one could say natural will, like Christian was saying. The virtues, we created an environment where the virtues will simply blossom. The virtues will be allowed to blossom. Maybe because of the or whatnot we have impulses, we have inclinations toward pleasure. I think he would say pleasure, toward selfishness, what have you. Vice, I guess. And through this process of our own work, which is ascetic work and pure prayer, which is deep connection with God, our whole lives being transformed and we become more more like Christ. And it isn’t a works, righteousness thing with the ascetic stuff. It’s not just about earning our way to heaven. It’s about clearing the way for freedom and to allow those virtues to simply be able to grow.

[00:54:36] Dr. Peter: I really like that because at least in the way that a lot of virtues-focused spiritual development things land with me. It’s almost like it could devolve into a self-improvement project. It could be not very relational. It could be like the virtue becomes the end. And I like how this is in a relational context and that these things are in us. We’re not just sort of alienated and isolated and disconnected. But that we belong in the universe. We belong in relationship with God and with everybody else.

[00:55:24] Dr. Gerry: I think it’s funny that Maximus, although a monk, was living in communities though, I mean, he lived in communities with other monks. So there was relationality there. It wasn’t just a hermit. I shouldn’t say just a hermit, because hermits are important in their own right. He spends a lot of time talking about not holding grudges against other people. And I think that’s kind of fascinating. I got a passage here, again from his writings, the Centuries on Love. “If you bear a grudge against anyone, pray for him and you will stop the passion in its tracks.” It’s a very practical kind of advice. “By prayer, you separate the hurt from the memory of the evil which he did you. And in becoming loving and kind, you completely obliterate the passion from the soul. On the other hand, if someone bears you a grudge, be generous and humble with him. Treat him fairly and you will deliver him from the passion.” I mean, whatever you may think of that approach, like it’s a very relational approach. It’s very much dispassionate. So that’s the apatheia. But when I just talk about it, I feel like it’s sort of clinical when I just sort of say apatheia and describe that. You read a little passage like that, you get the feeling behind it. You hear the person in there and he’s talking about, how do I let go of stuff and be more kind and generous?

[00:56:46] Dr. Peter: Well, it’s almost like you could take his description of a passion and substitute “part.” You know, I think there’s a kind of analogy or equivalency even there. Because I think from an IFS perspective, for example, a part blends and takes over, that’s sort of being dominated by a passion, in some of the traditional ways that Catholic writers, Christian writers have described the phenomena over the centuries. And so when we bring IFS, when we bring other parts and systems approaches that are coming up and becoming available to us in more recent decades, we’re trying to also harness all the good from that and harmonize it with what we know to be true by divine revelation, by our tradition, Scripture and so forth. So I like that, because yeah, it is very relational and it’s not just relational between you and the other person, but it’s also like relational within you and helping the other person to be relational within himself. So again, there’s that concept of nested systems. I and another person are two systems that are in this system. So nested in our system, like our group of three here today, three people, three of us, we’re a system. And then we’ve got our own systems.

[00:58:12] Dr. Gerry: Oh yeah. I love that. One thing that’s interesting too is he doesn’t come out, at least that I’ve seen so far. I haven’t seen anything where he would directly kind of say, you have to look at your parts and that they have good intentions. But he does talk about what it means to actually love people and Maximus challenges everyone to love others equally.

[00:58:40] Dr. Peter: Okay.

[00:58:41] Dr. Gerry: And I know that he’s responding a little bit to Evagrius who says we can’t, I think, but what it means to love people equally, even when they are doing something extraordinarily harmful. And of course I think some that is he also emphasizes the imitation of Christ, but I think that you love people without judgment, you will start to see that whatever bad behaviors they’re doing, you almost see it as a sickness, you’ll see it as something wrong in them and it becomes something you can love in some way. And I feel like back in the seventh century to say that, I don’t know, I think was somewhat radical. I don’t know if sounds radical to you to right now, but he’s sort of saying you can’t control whether somebody does something that’s gonna win them glory or punishment, but you can choose to love everyone equally, or at least aspirationally being able to do that. And I feel like underlying that is this idea that everyone is broken and even our sinfulness is a distorted attempt to get some kind of good, which comes up later in other theologies.

[00:59:55] Dr. Christian: And what’s helpful understanding ourselves as systems is realizing that, while other people might hurt us, another system might act against us, what can we do to change that system? I think Maximus would have a big focus on, work on your inner system, work on your microcosm, ordering your universe, that that’s really what’s in your hands. That’s the change that can actually take place. That’s the growth, that’s where love can happen is starting to foster that within and being able to then spread that to everyone else.

[01:00:33] Dr. Gerry: Because when we love our parts, we see past their different issues or their different burdens or their different strategies protect, and this kind of thing. And we can love through that. And I feel like, I don’t know if I expressed it very well a moment ago, but I feel like that’s kind of what Maximus is tapping into with others. And that is part of his idea of the incarnation, is that Christ came into the world to bring love to everybody. And it’s our job to bring love to everybody, to that. No matter what maladaptive things they may be doing or harmful things. And that’s a pretty high-level challenge.

[01:01:13] Dr. Peter: And to carry that out, consistent with our vocation, our state in life. I’m thinking of St. Therese of Lisieux. Like sweeping the steps, or something like that. Something seeming very insignificant in the grand scheme of things. But little things done with great love, and how that can lift up the whole world. I’m reminded of some of her sisters in her Carmel thinking, well, what would we write for her obituary? She didn’t do anything. Because there wasn’t anything seen as outstanding or extraordinary or even noticeable about her life to them. But they weren’t aware of what was really going on within her system and the impact it had on the much bigger system. So moms that are changing that 12,776 diaper of their mom career or dads that are putting in another day at the office and whatever we’re called to do for our duties of state.

[01:02:11] Dr. Gerry: Therese, I remember being fascinated. She wasn’t my favorite saint when I was younger, although I appreciate her better now. But I do remember being fascinated by the fact that, wasn’t she made patron of missionaries?

[01:02:23] Dr. Peter: Yep.

[01:02:24] Dr. Gerry: And that she never herself went very far. So, I mean, again, it speaks to the power, well, of prayer, but of this microcosm. Her inner transformation has an effect on the whole. We may not fully understand it, but it does.

[01:02:41] Dr. Peter: Yeah. Well, I remember towards the end of her life saying, I want all vocations. She wanted to be a priest, she wanted to be a missionary. She wanted all vocations. She was telling God, I want it all. And she figured out that her vocation was to love, and so what I saw as her vision statement was, I shall become love. And in that she saw it all wrapped up. So I think she caught a glimpse of this or if she saw it in more of the fullness than a glimpse of how this is all integrated, how it all came together, this entire macrocosm-microcosm. I think she was actually describing that in her autobiography.

[01:03:21] Dr. Gerry: Just to bring in as much psychology as I can to it. Not that I agree with his conception of it completely. But like Carl Jung in bringing in the collective unconscious to me is kind of a fascinating thing because obviously that wasn’t accepted by everyone, other psychologists at the time and everything else, and was sort of seen as a radical thing. And I do kind of think that this microcosm, macrocosm at least speaks to some truth in that kind of that concept. And the idea like there’s so much spiritually that we have access to that isn’t just my little brain and my own little experience in this little space. That’s my life in this time period, in this little part of the world. But we are actually able to access something greater. Maximus would say the cosmos itself and God and the spiritual world itself, which is beyond even the material world. So I think Carl Jung was getting onto something, even in his natural world exploration, sort of natural world. Sort of a spiritualist in a way. Anyway, I just thought I would bring that up. I don’t know, Peter, you have thought, or Christian, thoughts on Jung.

[01:04:30] Dr. Peter: Well, I think there’s a hunger for this. I think sometimes that Catholics can be dismissive of others’ attempts to try to find something that they need. You know, I wonder if the neglect of this macrocosm microcosm and the fact that it hasn’t been incorporated well yet into the church, we don’t think about it that way, led to folks being attracted to the new age, for example, like if we’re missing something that’s really important, for example, in the seventies or the eighties or the nineties, can we offer what’s real, what’s true, what’s beautiful, what’s loving? So that there’s not a pull to try to find it in something that’s not of God, you know? We have to do our homework and we have to like lay it out there. I don’t know of any other different therapeutic approach or approach to understanding human formation that was grounded or that was started from a secular position. You know that anybody’s putting as much effort as we are into really harmonizing it with a Catholic understanding of the human person, with a Catholic anthropology. I think that’s really, really critical. I think what happens is sometimes people decide that they’re not going to consider anything that doesn’t have a Catholic origin, and wasn’t specifically Catholic from the outset, but I think if we do that, we’re going to lose so much of what God would have us have. And it wasn’t the approach that Augustine took, it wasn’t the approach that St. Thomas Aquinas took. It’s not the approach that Maximus took. These are all synthesizers, these are all ones that are wanting to bring in everything that our God wants us to have. And I want that for you, our listeners.

[01:06:34] Dr. Gerry: To look at the philosophy, Christian philosophy in its development, this is what I was saying earlier, like you can’t not understand like Greek philosophy to some extent, especially Platonism, because that was what early Greek fathers were connecting with. Yes, they had the Hebrew tradition, Hebrew way of thinking, but they were meeting a world, a Roman world that was influenced by Greek philosophy. And everyone understood Greek philosophy. And so they took those concepts and re-engineered them and integrated them with Hebrew thinking like Old Testament thinking. And in places where they didn’t do that re-engineering, you get heresy. So that’s the gnostics and the Manichees and the different heresies. And even have the complete rejection of the Old Testament in Manichaeism and it predates certain gnostic groups, same thing where they would see the Old Testament God as a separate kind of bad God or something, the demi-urge or whatnot. And there were moments in time where Platonic thinking or some forms of Greek thinking were dominating Christianity. That was rejected as heresy. And then there were ways in which the good things in Greek philosophy were appropriated, transformed, used some of that language, because that’s what people understood, but explained in a Christian way. And it actually was fairly profound. And that’s what we get in the Greek fathers. That’s the Cappadocian fathers, and that’s ultimately Maximus. These were all revered saints. These are foundational orthodoxy of the Catholic faith, both Eastern and Western.

[01:08:15] Dr. Peter: I see us trying to carry that on in a sense, in Souls and Hearts, because this cuts kind of two ways. One is for Catholics who have found something in Internal Family Systems or in some other parts and systems way of thinking to not have to choose between staying “faithful to Catholicism” or finding the benefits that they have through IFS. So how can we provide a Catholic understanding of parts work, but also for those that might be seeking and have already found a lot of good in parts work to know that, wait, there’s a place within the church that appreciates this and values it as well. Being able to retain the good that you already know, that that isn’t something that you’re just going to have to leave behind because it’s alien in the church, for example. So it kind of cuts both ways that way. That’s something I’m really passionate about.

[01:09:16] Dr. Gerry: I am super passionate about this and not just in finding a parts psychology perspective in the ancient Christian writings, because that’s fascinating as you can find it, because it’s tricky, because language and everything. But also just as I’m doing all this, discovering this richness in our faith and that people are not actually accessing it because A) it’s either written in a language they don’t quite understand, it isn’t translated well, or it’s only academics that are writing about it and so on. But to actually explain it in a way for the modern mind requires a modern psychological approach to some extent. But once translated, it’s like beautiful and amazing and life-changing and rich. And so I get really excited about doing that because I’m nerdy enough to read the original sources and I’m nerdy, and as long as they’re in English.

[01:10:14] Dr. Peter: I don’t notice any papyrus scrolls in your library.

[01:10:17] Dr. Christian: Give him time.

[01:10:19] Dr. Gerry: But I’m nerdy enough to read the academics that are writing about it, and the philosophers and theologians are writing about it in a way that nobody’s ever going to read. And I get that, and I’m happy for them because I love to read stuff. So I’m working hard to try to translate that into a regular way that people can access. I’m doing some of that, I hope, in the Kingdom Within.

[01:10:39] Dr. Peter: In Kingdom Within. Yeah. No, I think that’s a huge gift that both of you have, Dr. Gerry, Dr. Christian, is to take these concepts that are so important and so relevant. I might say especially relevant to our modern day and age, and make them more accessible, more digestible, more readily somehow applicable to our audience. You mentioned your Kingdom Within, that comes out every month for those that are signed up and registered with us at Souls and Hearts. And in that, you talk about this kingdom that we have within ourselves, our inner world.

[01:11:14] Dr. Gerry: And Maximus talks about, so many others do. Obviously, all of the mystical saints of our church talk about this kingdom within, in different ways that they describe it. Like we were talking about Maximus in this laboratory or this workshop, and he’s talking about our inner world. He’s not talking about a physical lab. talking about that’s inside of us. This concept of the heart as a place that is kind of like we’re accessing the unconscious. And we’re able to explore and go deeper and ultimately connect with God. I mean, I haven’t gotten as modern as Theresa of Avila yet in my Kingdom Within, so I haven’t made it to like the 16th and 17th centuries. But Theresa of Avila talks about that in the Interior Castle. I mean, the name of it is so amazing, interior castle, and the whole thing is to go deeper and deeper within this castle. So taking these physical metaphors to understand our interior world. And of course, what do we find at the center for Theresa? It’s the bridal chamber, it’s union with God. Like this should be taught in Catholic schools, like not just taught the concept of it, which isn’t taught, at least not to my knowledge. And maybe more and more these days, but wasn’t taught to me in Catholic school. Not just the concept of it, because that’s amazing and mind-blowing, but the practice of it. I wasn’t even taught the rosary in my Catholic school. 

[01:12:39] Dr. Peter: They weren’t big on the ascetical practices either. Did you get taught about like fasting? 

[01:12:45] Dr. Gerry: No contemplative prayer and no rosary.

[01:12:48] Dr. Peter: The most memorable thing I had from my Catholic education, first through eighth grade, was, the thing that stands out above all other things is we did this lifeboat exercise where we all got assigned a role on a sinking ship, and we had to figure out who we were gonna throw off the lifeboat. That was the most memorable thing I had. Yeah, I was a gambler, but I had knowledge of the sea. I got thrown off the lifeboat anyway.

[01:13:13] Dr. Gerry: So you went, Peter, you went to Catholic school?

[01:13:16] Dr. Peter: Yeah, first through 12th grade. Yeah.

[01:13:18] Dr. Gerry: And Christian?

[01:13:19] Dr. Christian: Homeschooled K through 12.

[01:13:21] Dr. Gerry: Okay. So you probably actually learned things about the faith.

[01:13:24] Dr. Christian: Yes.

[01:13:25] Dr. Gerry: Now to be fair to my Catholic school, they really did emphasize the Gospel. So I knew the Gospel and it was Good News Bibles, mind you. But I did read a lot every year, it seemed like, of the Gospels. So I did get that. New Testament emphasis was there. And we did sing songs, like pieces, Flowing like a River. And If the Devil Doesn’t Like It, He Can Sit on a Tack.

[01:13:49] Dr. Peter: Yeah, I remember that one. Yeah, I remember that one. I do appreciate the difficulties that schools have in bringing together an integrated curriculum, especially when it comes to, how do we pull this together? So I don’t want to be overly, I don’t know, cavalier about those difficulties. 

[01:14:07] Dr. Gerry: I think that catechesis has improved.

[01:14:10] Dr. Peter: Yeah, definitely.

[01:14:12] Dr. Gerry: Schools are intentionally being Catholic.

[01:14:15] Dr. Peter: You know, I was going to Catholic grade school in the mid-seventies.

[01:14:23] Dr. Gerry: And I was in Canada. Just saying. 

[01:14:29] Dr. Christian: Grass is always greener. 

[01:14:32] Dr. Gerry: Christian, you lived in a different world, I’m sure, if you were homeschooled by a Catholic mom.

[01:14:36] Dr. Christian: Oh, very much so. Very much so.

[01:14:40] Dr. Peter: Yeah. So as we bring this home, as we are coming to the end, I just want to invite you to think about what is like one important point or one takeaway that you would really like our audience to remember about Maximus? What one thing really sort of stands out to you, as something to take home?

[01:15:09] Dr. Gerry: For me, I mean, it’s just so hard cause there’s so much.

[01:15:12] Dr. Peter: There’s so much. Yeah. Yeah.

[01:15:15] Dr. Gerry: This is a saint that we can learn from. Like this one podcast is we’re just touching the surface. He’s, like I was saying before, he’s a synthesizer. So he brings together so many things. People have been talking about him as this sort of mediator, which is what he’s calling us to be, as human beings, to be mediators like Christ. Like Christ is obviously he’s the ultimate mediator between God and mankind. But we participate in that mediation in some way. But he did that. I mean, he unites east and west. He unites the Latin tradition and the Greek tradition. He united a divide between the Alexandrian Church and the Antiochian Church in terms of their entire approach. The Alexandrians were more metaphorical and they were more about looking for types and stuff like that, typology. And the Antiochian church was a lot more literal, a lot more probably wanting to understand the faith in a much more practical way maybe. But he bridged those. He did a beautiful, he brought someone like Evagrius and his focus on virtue and vice and all this kind of thing, and Pseudo Dionysus with his angelic concepts and these beautiful kind of grand concepts. And he brings ’em together. So he’s an example of unity that our church, our world, desperately needs. So I don’t know. I’m just simply inspired by him. I hope that what I would give, what I hope that maybe listeners will kind of appreciate is this synthesizing and unifying energy that Maximus has.

[01:16:52] Dr. Peter: Yeah. And harmonizing.

[01:16:54] Dr. Gerry: Harmony. Yeah.

[01:16:55] Dr. Peter: And sanctifying. Yeah. I mean, those are the words that come to mind. Beautiful. Thank you. Thank you, Gerry.

[01:17:02] Dr. Christian: I love that. I really love that, Gerry. Thank you. I think, yeah, choosing a takeaway for Maximus is not an easy task, but I think what struck me so much in reacquainting myself with Maximus’ writings is just how much love is at the center of it all. Particularly just when holding the grand vision, the cosmic vision, the hierarchy, all of these things that Maximus is pointing toward. It can sound fancy, but I think the piece that pulls it all together is this emphasis on unification with God’s love, growing in love yourself. I think that’s the thing that gives life to what he talks about when he sees man as this bridge point, that man is supposed to be unifying and bringing together the extremities of reality and offering it all to God. That love is the key to that. So I hate to sound like a Beatles song, but all you need is love. I mean, I think there’s something to that. Maybe not the love they were talking about, but I think Maximus is pointing us to this grand vision. You participate in it and you bring the fullness of what God means for your life together when you unite with love.

[01:18:29] Dr. Peter: Oh, that’s awesome. Yeah, like that emphasis on love and that there’s an order to the cosmos. There’s a hierarchy and there’s a place for every single one of us. Like there we all belong and we were meant to be. And I think in our age where we’re so disintegrated, not only internally, but also at a societal level or a cultural level or kind of a relational level. We can so easily lose track of that and get caught in only what we can see in our immediate surroundings and then not know what is beyond our field of view. And so that’s the thing that I really took away from my exposure to Maximus, is like, whoa, there are whole fields that I have not seen yet. And it’s a humbling thing to kind of stand before him and like hear what he has to say, and then to realize how narrow my vision is compared to what he’s describing and how significant each human person is, how precious each human person is in the eyes of God, how beloved each human person is in an environment, and a culture where human beings are, I think, being degraded or devalued, what St. John Paul II referred to as the Culture of Death. So that’s kind of what I took away from him as well. So much appreciation to both of you, Dr. Gerry, Dr. Christian, for being here today. So grateful to have you on. So grateful to you, listeners and viewers for being here and staying with us.

[01:20:18] Dr. Peter: Okay, so for our announcements, reach out to us on YouTube. We love to hear from you and connect, answer questions, engage in conversation. Check us out. Interior Integration 4 Catholics. Our upcoming episode, number 170, will be on St. Bonaventure, IFS and parts work. We have just closed the Resilient Catholics Community to new members. It’s open every February, June, and October. We’re looking forward to meeting our new members. There is still space in the Formation for Formators Retreat. The theme is Being at Service, and that will be August 11th to the 14th, 2025 in Bloomington, Indiana. Those who accompany others, formators, there are so many obstacles in our own human formation. I want you to check out that retreat. I want you to check out the Formation for Formators Community. We’ve got new groups also starting up in August and September. It’s all at soulsandhearts.com/fff. Remember that my conversation hours are every Tuesday and Thursday from 4:30 PM to 5:30 PM Eastern time. You can reach me on my cell phone at 317-567-9594, 317-567-9594, and we can have a conversation. I can’t do any clinical consultation or diagnosis or anything like that with you, but we can certainly have a conversation about what you’re experiencing in this podcast or in the semi-monthly reflections or any of our Souls and Hearts materials. And I’m going to invite you to check out those Souls and Hearts materials. Go to soulsandhearts.com/toc. It stands for Table of Contents. That is our resource page, and we have almost everything that we offer there in alphabetical order by topic. And with that we’ll bring this to a close by invoking our patroness and our patrons. Our Lady, our Mother, Untier of Knots, pray for us. St. Joseph, pray for us. St. John the Baptist, pray for us.