To the Clergy and People of Jadera, on Communion with Maximus

Gregory to the presbyters, deacons and clergy, the nobles and the people living at Jadera, who have communicated with the faithless Maximus. [a] It has come to my knowledge that some of you, misled by ignorance or under compulsion, have communicated with men whom the Apostolic See has deprived of communion, as their fault, which you know, required. Others, with wholesome discernment and under the Lord’s protection, have kept away. As much as I rejoice over those who have stood firm, so much do I groan over those who have gone astray, since they have partaken of the mysteries of holy communion, which were granted to us by God’s loving-kindness for absolution, to the harm of their souls instead. And because I feel for your love earnestly and from the bottom of my heart, as I pray Almighty God to make known to you, I adjure and entreat you with a father’s affection: let every one of you keep away from unlawful communion, and shun altogether those whom the Apostolic See does not receive into the fellowship of its communion, so that no one may stand guilty in the sight of the eternal Judge through the very thing by which he might have been saved. [c]

Moreover I have found out that certain men of perverse mind in your parts have tried to hint that I am moved against Maximus by some grudge, and that what I want to carry out is not what the canons require but what anger dictates. But far, far be this from the mind of a priest, that it should be moved in any cause by private animosity. As for me, it is because I am taking thought for the people living in those parts and for my own soul, and because I fear the judgment of Almighty God, that I want the case of this Maximus inquired into, and, with God showing me the way, to decide it according to the canons. Now since I have written to him often that he was not to celebrate the sacred solemnities of the mass until I had been able to learn the facts of his case, he would in any case be deprived of communion. And now his sin of pride is openly shown by this: though he has been warned often, as I have said, to come to us, he refuses with one excuse after another; he avoids coming; he is afraid to come. What is he afraid of, then, if his conscience does not accuse him of the things that have been said? Since, then, you know these things, and can no longer plead ignorance as an excuse, I beg you, I urge you, I warn you: keep away altogether from fellowship in this forbidden communion, and let not one of you presume, against his own soul, to communicate with any priest who communicates with the Maximus named above.

Since, however, I hear, as I said before, that some of you fell through ignorance, and some were even driven by force to communicate, I implore the Almighty Lord to keep under his lasting protection those who gave no consent to this wickedness, and to answer them with the bounty they long for. As for those whom party spirit, or ignorance, or any other cause whatever has drawn into a fault, I implore him to absolve them from all guilt of their sins and from all share in the guilt of others, to give them the full grace of his protection in the present life, and to grant me to rejoice over them in the eternal homeland. So, that this prayer may avail for you with God our Savior, show obedience to our urging for the good of your souls, and receive holy communion from those you know to have kept away, and still to keep away, from communion with this Maximus.