Eucharist and Church According to St Maximos the Confessor

Abstract The most considered discussion of ecclesiology in Maximos occurs in his Mystagogia which focuses on the Divine Liturgy. From this emerges a sense of the Church as imaging God’s activity in the cosmos, and the structure of the church building, into nave and sanctuary, mirrors the various realms in which the Church’s Eucharistic activity resonates—from the cosmos to the human soul and intellect. His exposition of the action of the liturgy gives an eschatological dimension to his Eucharistic ecclesiology. Alongside this one can set Maximos’ own relation to the institutional Church of his day in which his witness to a true understanding of the Incarnate Word led him to seek support from the bishop of Rome and led him (and Pope Martin) to the way of martyrdom. The essay seeks to lay bare the way in which these dimensions of his ecclesiology coinhere.