https://youtubetranscript.com/?v=U2TNHM6GMyg
And so, St. Maximus explains that all things have a logos, which are, which is its reason for existing, its purpose, and its origin all at once, and even its end. So it’s all those things at once. And on top of that, each thing has a multitude of logi. That’s a word you’ve probably never heard before. The logi is the plural of logos. And so the logi, they’re like the different qualities of things. So the blueness of the blue, or the slowness of the slow. And all of these logis are brought together. They’re woven together, we could say, to sustain the existence of the world. It’s really a map of meaning, to use Jordan’s words. Now these logi, these essences, let’s say, of things, they don’t exist independently in the same way that scientists believe things exist out there. Rather, they exist as they come together, as they are joined together in our encounter with the world, in a pattern, we could say. So we could say, for example, that a sunset has a certain amount of logi. Maybe even an indefinite amount of characteristics of a sunset. But as they come together to be the experience of the sunset, that’s how we experience reality. That’s how we come into contact with reality. So all these qualities that say light, color, vertical, horizontal, and the things, the sun, the sky, the earth. All of these things, and I could go on, there’s an indefinite amount of them. What’s important in making that experience real is how all those logis are united. And in a way, they’re united within us. And human beings, for St. Maximus, are seen as this laboratory where the whole world finds its cohesion. And he expresses it in the sense that the human being is a microcosm. You could say a condensation of the cosmos. The place where the cosmos comes together to make sense. And a good way to see it is that human beings actually participate, being in the image of God, they participate in creation. We see that in the book of Genesis. In the book of Genesis, God tells Adam to name the animals. And so by his logos, participating in a limited way, in the same manner that the divine logos was the source of everything. And the human participation in this process is not a relativistic thing. It’s not an individual thing. I mean, though it is flexible, it’s nonetheless the most objective of processes, as Father Ted mentioned. And so we need to be cautious, though, because St. Maximus warns us that it’s not just a philosophy, or it’s not just a technical description of the world. This is important because thinking that religious stories are exactly the same kind of encyclopedic knowledge of modern science is the wrong way to go with this. These logos, these truth about things are categories of our engagement with the world. So maybe today we might call them phenomenological categories. So the discovery of truth, of logos, it’s a personal journey. It’s simultaneously a refinement of our understanding of the world, but at the same time it becomes a refinement of our person. So to discover the true nature of things is to walk on a path of truth. So food is a wonderful thing and it’s useful for life, but gluttony leads to our destruction. Wealth is useful to accomplish important things, but avarice rots the soul. So you see, it’s not just a description of the world, it’s a path that we walk as we discover the world. And so sin in this vision of the world, that horrible world, that horrible word that no one wants to hear, sin isn’t just the breaking of arbitrary rules, but it’s in the misuse of the world. And that misuse of the world ends up being an untruth, ends up being a lie or something that’s false, something that separates things from each other. It’s found when things are not aligned with their purposes. So for example, a person is not only a tool for my own gratification, a person is not just a tool so that I can advance myself in the world. And if I treat a person exclusively like that, then I will inevitably sin against that person. I mean, of course it doesn’t mean that a person cannot act as a tool for my gratification. If I go see the baker and I get bread from him, he’s the method by which I get my bread. But the baker is not just a baker, he is a full person just as myself. So when we steal or we lie or we cheat, it’s because we’re not considering the person facing us to be a full-blown person, to be what they are according to their logos. We see them only as limited things, only as tools. So this is true of people, of things and of actions. So I was thinking about, I was trying to think about the best example that I could think of to show this in terms of action and I thought of giving the example of sex. So we did the metaphysics of Pepe, so I think we can get away with the metaphysics of sex, but it’s a question that definitely needs to be answered today in our topsy-turvy times, let’s say. So what is the logos of sexuality? Well it has many logis, many purposes. It’s for the propagation of the species. I hope at least a few of you still think that, despite what many people would want us to believe. It creates families and communities, it brings two people together in a type of communion, in an expression of love, and it brings pleasure. So those would be some of the logis, I’m sure we could find more, but those would be some of the logis that sex exists, and there could be more, but the idea and the vision of logos is that all those things need to be brought together in a pattern of some sort, for them to be a path towards logos. So if we think of the different logis and we bring them together, trying to think of the word, what is that word? When all those things are together? I think we have a word, sacrament of the church. I’ll let you figure it out what it is when all those things come together. And so each of the separate purposes of sex that I mentioned, they’re not wrong, they’re fine, but they become alive when we bring them together. If we don’t, then each separate purpose appears as a kind of falsehood, it appears as a kind of lacking. But that’s not enough. Let’s say for a truly traditional or a truly complete vision of sexuality, it cannot end there. It has to move towards the infinite. It has to move towards God. And so the ultimate logos of sexuality is to be an image of the mystical union with God. I mean, it’s to be an image of our union with what is beyond us. And I mean, in that image of the mystical union of God with the soul of Christ, with His church, the marriage of heaven and earth is a completely traditional image that we find in the Church Fathers or in our tradition. And so that image of the ultimate union, the highest union with the infinite, then it comes back down into the multiple lobe, all those other reasons for sexuality that I mentioned, and it fills them, it makes them participate in a transcendent purpose and becomes the very relationship that binds them together. And everything in our life can follow that process, work, food, sleep, beauty. And to engage the world in that frame is to find light everywhere, to see life everywhere. The world is no longer made of the dead lifeless dirt, the dead lifeless material that we use to make things with. And as we become better as people, more truthful, more grateful, more free, as we come closer to one another in love, and by the way, that’s what love is. Love is the manner in which all different things, all different people, all different intentions can join together and exist in communion and can become one while at the same time preserving the multiplicity. So as we follow this path, the hidden logy in creation, they shine through the world. And today we might say that they re-enchant the world, and the world appears bright and full, and not the gray and dead shadows we often live in. So that would be, I hope, a summary, let’s say, of that path of logos.