Our venerable and God-bearing Father John of Damascus was also known as John Damascene, Chrysorrhoas, “streaming with gold,” (i.e., the golden speaker). He was born and raised in Damascus, in all probability at the Monastery of Saint Sabbas (Mar Saba), South East of Jerusalem. He is also recognized as a saint in the Roman Catholic Church.

Now, one who would speak or hear about God should know beyond any doubt that in what concerns theology and the Dispensation [the term commonly used for the Incarnation by the Greek Fathers] not all things are inexpressible and not all are capable of expression, and neither are all things unknowable nor are they all knowable. That which can be known is one thing, whereas that which can be said is another, just as it is one thing to speak and another to know. Furthermore, many of those things about God which are not clearly perceived cannot be fittingly described, so that we are obliged to express in human terms things which transcend the human order. Thus, for example, in speaking about God we attribute to Him sleep, anger, indifference, hands and feet, and the alike.

Now, we both know and confess that God is without beginning and without end, everlasting and eternal, uncreated, unchangeable, inalterable, simple, uncompounded, incorpo- real, invisible, impalpable, uncircumscribed, unlimited, incom- prehensible, uncontained, unfathomable, good, just, the maker of all created things, all-powerful, all-ruling, all-seeing, the provider, the sovereign, and the judge of all. We furthermore know and confess that God is one, that is to say, one substance, and that He is both understood to be and is in three Persons I mean the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit and that the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit are one in all things save in the being unbegotten, the being begotten, and the procession. We also know and confess that for our salvation the Word of God through the bowels of His mercy, by the good pleasure of the Father and with the co-operation of the All-Holy Spirit, was conceived with- out seed and chastely begotten of the holy Virgin and Mother of God, Mary, by the Holy Spirit and of her became perfect man; and that He is perfect God and at the same time perfect man, being of two natures, the divinity and the humanity, and in two intellectual natures endowed with will and operation and liberty or, to put it simply, perfect in accordance with the definition and principle befitting each, the divinity, I mean, and the humanity, but with one compound hypostasis. And we know and confess that He hungered and thirsted and was weary, and that He was crucified, and that for three days He suffered death and the tomb, and that He returned into heaven whence He had come to us and whence He will come back to us at a later time. To all this holy Scripture and all the company of the saints bear witness.

But what the substance of God is, or how it is in all things, or how the only-begotten Son, who was God, emptied Himself out and became man from a virgin’s blood, being formed by another law that transcended nature, or how He walked dry-shod upon the waters, we neither understand nor can say. And so it is impossible either to say or fully to understand anything about God beyond what has been divinely proclaimed to us, whether told or revealed, by the sacred declarations of the Old and New Testaments.

HT: Orthocath

, Chapter 2 of 

© 2011, admin. All rights reserved.

It’s a bit anachronistic to speak of St. Ignatius of Antioch (died about 117 A.D.) and as the doctrine of the Trinity developed in the first centuries of Christianity and its associated terminology was as a reflection of the realities it had experienced. explains that the monotheistic faith Christianity had inherited from Judaism had to be integrated with “the fresh data of the specifically Christian revelation. Reduced to their simplest, these were the convictions that God had made Himself known in the Person of Jesus, the Messiah, raising Him from the dead and offering salvation to men through Him, and that He had poured out His Holy Spirit on the Church” (, pp. 87-88). Kelly’s book is an excellent resource to see how the Church’s understanding of the relationship between Father, Son, and Holy Spirit developed in the early Church.

gives this analysis which shows the high view St. Ignatius had of the Son and Holy Spirit:

Ignatius delves more deeply into some matters than do the other Apostolic Fathers and adds his personal reflections but without developing any systematic theology.1

The core of his thought is the divine ‘economy’ in the universe. God wished to save the world and humanity from the despotism of the prince of this world. And so He ‘manifested Himself in Jesus Christ His Son, who is His Word proceeding from silence, and who in all things was pleasing to Him who sent Him’ (Magn. 8.2). ‘Our God, Jesus the Christ, was born of Mary . . . of the seed of David and of the Holy Spirit’ (Eph. 18.2). He ‘was truly crucified and died. . . and was truly raised from the dead when His Father raised Him’ (Trall. 9).

For Ignatius God is Father, and by ‘Father’ he means primarily ‘Father of Jesus Christ’ : ‘There is one God, who has manifested Himself by Jesus Christ His Son’ (Magn. 8.2). Jesus is called ‘God’ 14 times (Eph. inscr. 1.1, 7.2, 15.3, 17.2, 18.2, 19.3; Trall. 7.1; Rom. inscr. 3.3, 6.3; Smyrn. 1.1; Pdyc. 8.3). He is the Father’s Word (Magn. 8.2), ‘the mind of the Father’ (Eph. 3.3), and ‘the mouth through which the Father truly spoke’ (Rom. 8.2). He is ‘His only Son’ (Rom. inscr.), ‘generate and ingenerate, God in man . . . son of Mary and Son of God . . . Jesus Christ our Lord’ (Eph. 7.2). He is the one ‘who is beyond time the Eternal the Invisible who became visible for our sake, the Impalpable, the Impassible who suffered for our sake’ (Polyc. 3.2).

It has been said that for Ignatius Jesus’ ‘divine Sonship dates from the incarnation,’ 2 and that he ‘seems rather to ascribe the divine sonship of Jesus to the fact that Mary conceived by the operation of the Holy Spirit.’ 3 If he did date Jesus’ sonship from the incarnation he did not thereby deny His pre-existence. For he declared very definitely that Jesus Christ ‘from eternity was with the Father and at last appeared to us’ (Magn. 6.1) and that He ‘came forth from one Father in whom He is and to whom He has returned’ (Magn. 7.2). But just how He was distinct from the Father, since both are God, Ignatius does not say. Perhaps he hints at an answer when he says that Christ is the Father’s ‘thought’ (Eph. 3.2).

While Ignatius concentrated most of his thought on Christ, he did not ignore the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit was the principle of the Lord’s virginal conception (Eph. 18.2). Through the Holy Spirit Christ ‘confirmed . . . in stability the officers of the Church’ (Phil. inscr.). This Spirit spoke through Ignatius himself (Phil. 7.1). Ignatius does not cite the Matthean baptismal formula, but he does sometimes mention Father. Son, and Holy Spirit together. He urges the Magnesians to ‘be eager . . . to be confirmed in the commandments of our Lord and His apostles, so that “whatever you do may prosper” . . . in the Son and Father and Spirit’ (Magn. 13.2). And in one of his most famous passages he declares: ‘Like the stones of a temple, cut for a building of God the Father, you have been lifted up to the top by the crane of Jesus Christ, which is the Cross, and the rope of the Holy Spirit’ (Eph. 9.1). Thus although there is nothing remotely resembling a doctrine of the Trinity in Ignatius, the triadic pattern of thought is there, and two of its members, the Father and Jesus Christ, are clearly and often designated as God.

It has been urged 4 that for Ignatius there is no Trinity before the birth of Jesus, but that before the birth there was only God and a pre-existent Christ, who is called either Logos or Holy Spirit. There is, however, no solid evidence that Ignatius either in intention or in words made any such identification either in his letter to the Smyrnaeans (inscr.) or in that to the Magnesians (13.1,2). On the contrary. when Ignatius writes that ‘our God, Jesus Christ, was born of Mary . . . and of the Holy Spirit’ (Eph. 18.2), he seems to indicate that before this birth both ‘our God Jesus Christ’ and the Holy Spirit pre-existed distinctly and that thus there was a Trinity before His birth.

Notes:

1. Quasten, Patrology, 1 : 63-76; Lawson, A Theological and Historical Introduction to the Apostolic Fathers, pp. 101-152.
2. J. N. D. Kelly, Early Christian Doctrines (New York and London. 1965), p. 92.
3. J. Tixeront, History of Dogmas (3 vols. St. Louis, 1910) 1 : 123.
4. Wolfson, The Philosophy of the Church Fathers, pp. 184, 191.

Taken from by Edmund J. Fortman, pp.  38-40.

HT:

© 2010, admin. All rights reserved.

Apart from the specific teaching of our Lord regarding the procession of the Holy Spirit (as recorded in John 15:26), the understanding of this Mystery is been seriously muddled by at attempt to defend the Credal addition (and the Son) which is unscriptural, as legitimate over many centuries.  Though this addition has become the theological patrimony of western Christian theology, it is by no means a complicated issue, nor an insurmountable barrier in Christian unity. Return to the Scriptures, and start there – don’t end there attempting to proof-text novel theological concepts.

The Filioque is a heresy, because it confuses the hypostatic properties of the Father, i.e. His being cause, with those of the Son and, as a result, introduces a kind of Semi-Sabellianism. This is the case if the notion of being cause belongs both to the Father’s and to the Son’s hypostasis, but not to the Spirit’s. If the Father and the Son as hypostases are the cause of the existence of the Holy Spirit, then, according to Photios, we have two principles in the Godhead, or, if they think of the Father and the Son as one cause, then, as we said above, we have Semi-Sabellianism, i.e. the identification of the incommunicable, hypostatic properties of the Father and the Son. If the cause is identified with the essence and not with the hypostaseis, then the Holy Spirit is a creature, because the doctrine that the essence is the cause of another person is the doctrine of the Eunomians, since they identified the cause of the existence of the Son with the essence of the Father and attempted on this basis to demonstrate that the Son is a creature.

Consequently, if the Father’s and the Son’s essence is the cause of the existence of the Holy Spirit, then the Holy Spirit is a creature. Again, He is a creature, if the cause of the Spirit’s existence, or His procession, is a common energy of the Father and the Son, of which the Spirit is lacking. This is the case, because, as Orthodox and Pneumatomachians argue, the lack of even one energy common to the Father and to the Son from the Spirit would demonstrate the created nature of the Spirit. The one doctrine leads to Semi-Sabellianism and the other to Eunomianism, or to the heresy of the Pneumatomachoi where the Spirit becomes a creature.

Today, the Latins (i.e., Roman Catholic theologians) are obliged, if they wish to revise the foundation of their theology, not only to take seriously the theology of the Fathers, which constituted the basis of the decisions of the First and Second Ecumenical Councils, but also to revise the Trinitarian terminology, which is based on Augustine’s doctrine.

HT: Mystagogy

Source: An Outline of Orthodox Patristic Dogmatics, pp. 33-35.

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Our father among the saints, Leo the Great was the bishop of Rome during difficult times. He was an eminent scholar of Scripture and rhetoric. During an invasion by Attila the Hun, St. Leo met him outside the gates of Rome. After some short words, to everyone’s surprise, Attila turned and left. Three years later, during an invasion by Genseric the Vandal, St. Leo’s intercession again saved the Eternal City from destruction.

I. The Holy Spirit’s work did not begin at Pentecost, but was continued because the Holy Trinity is One in action and in will.

Today’s festival, dearly-beloved, which is held in reverence by the whole world, has been hallowed by that advent of the Holy Spirit, which on the fiftieth day after the Lord’s Resurrection, descended on the Apostles and the multitude of believers , even as it was hoped. And there was this hope, because the Lord Jesus had promised that He should come, not then first to be the Indweller of the saints, but to kindle to a greater heat, and to fill with larger abundance the hearts that were dedicated to Him, increasing, not commencing His gifts, not fresh in operation because richer in bounty.

For the Majesty of the Holy Spirit is never separate from the Omnipotence of the Father and the Son, and whatever the Divine government accomplishes in the ordering of all things, proceeds from the Providence of the whole Trinity. Therein exists unity of mercy and loving-kindness, unity of judgment and justice: nor is there any division in action where there is no divergence of will. What, therefore, the Father enlightens, the Son enlightens, and the Holy Spirit enlightens: and while there is one Person of the Sent, another of the Sender, and another of the Promiser, both the Unity and the Trinity are at the same time revealed to us, so that the Essence which possesses equality and does not admit of solitariness is understood to belong to the same Substance but not the same Person.

II. Each Person in the Trinity took part in our Redemption.

The fact, therefore, that, with the co-operation of the inseparable Godhead still perfect, certain things are performed by the Father, certain by the Son, and certain by the Holy Spirit, in particular belongs to the ordering of our Redemption and the method of our salvation. For if man, made after the image and likeness of God, had retained the dignity of his own nature, and had not been deceived by the devil’s wiles into transgressing through lust the law laid down for him, the Creator of the world would not have become a Creature, the Eternal would not have entered the sphere of time, nor God the Son, Who is equal with God the Father, have assumed the form of a slave and the likeness of sinful flesh. But because

“by the devil’s malice death entered into the world (Wisdom 2:24),”

and captive humanity could not otherwise be set free without His undertaking our cause, Who without loss of His majesty should both become true Man, and alone have no taint of sin, the mercy of the Trinity divided for Itself the work of our restoration in such a way that the Father should be propitiated, the Son should propitiate , and the Holy Spirit enkindle. For it was necessary that those who are to be saved should also do something on their part, and by the turning of their hearts to the Redeemer should quit the dominion of the enemy, even as the Apostle says,

“God sent the Spirit of His Son into our hearts, crying Abba, Father (Gal. 4:6),”

“And where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty (2 Cor. 3:17),”

and

“no one can call Jesus Lord except in the Holy Spirit (1 Cor. 12:3) .”

III. But this apportionment of functions does not mar the Unity of the Trinity.

If, therefore, under guiding grace, dearly-beloved, we faithfully and wisely understand what is the particular work of the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, and what is common to the Three in our restoration, we shall without doubt so accept what has been wrought for us by humiliation and in the body as to think nothing unworthy about the One and Selfsame Glory of the Trinity. For although no mind is competent to think, no tongue to speak about God, yet whatever that is which the human intellect apprehends about the essence of the Father’s Godhead, unless one and the selfsame truth is held concerning His Only-begotten or the Holy Spirit, our meditations are disloyal, and beclouded by the intrusions of the flesh, and even that is lost, which seemed a right conclusion concerning the Father, because the whole Trinity is forsaken, if the Unity therein is not maintained; and That Which is different by any inequality can in no true sense be One.

IV. In thinking upon God, we must put aside all material notions.

When, therefore, we fix our minds on confessing the Father and the Son and the Holy Ghost, let us keep far from our thoughts the forms of things visible, the ages of beings born in time, and all material bodies and places. Let that which is extended in space, that which is enclosed by limit, and whatever is not always everywhere and entire be banished from the heart. The conception of the Triune Godhead must put aside the idea of interval or of grade , and if a man has attained any worthy thought of God, let him not dare to withhold it from any Person therein, as if to ascribe with more honor to the Father that which he does not ascribe to the Son and Spirit.

It is not true Godliness to put the Father before the Only-begotten: insult to the Son is insult to the Father: what is detracted from the One is detracted from Both. For since Their Eternity and Godhead are alike common, the Father is not accounted either Almighty and Unchangeable, if He begot One less than Himself or gained by having One Whom before He had not .

V. Christ as Man is less than the Father, as God co-equal.

The Lord Jesus does, indeed, say to His disciples, as was read in the Gospel lection,

“if you loved Me, you would assuredly rejoice, because I go to the Father, because the Father is greater than I;”

but those ears, which have often heard the words,

“I and the Father are One ,”

and

“He that sees Me, sees the Father also,”

accept the saying without supposing a difference of Godhead or understanding it of that Essence which they know to be co-eternal and of the same nature with the Father. Man’s uplifting, therefore, in the Incarnation of the Word, is commended to the holy Apostles also, and they, who were distressed at the announcement of the Lord’s departure from them, are incited to eternal joy over the increase in their dignity;

“If you loved Me,” He says, “ye would assuredly rejoice, because I go to the Father:”

that is, if, with complete knowledge ye saw what glory is bestowed on you by the fact that, being begotten of God the Father, I have been born of a human mother also, that being invisible I have made Myself visible, that being eternal “in the form of God” I accepted the “form of a slave,” “ye would rejoice because I go to the Father.”

For to you is offered this ascension, and your humility is in Me raised to a place above all heavens at the Father’s right hand. But I, Who am with the Father that which the Father is, abide undivided with My Father, and in coming from Him to you I do not leave Him, even as in returning to Him from you I do not forsake you. Rejoice, therefore,

“because I go to the Father, because the Father is greater than I.”

For I have united you with Myself, and am become Son of Man that you might have power to be sons of God. And hence, though I am One in both forms, yet in that whereby I am conformed to you I am less than the Father, whereas in that whereby I am not divided from the Father I am greater even than Myself. And so let the Nature, which is less than the Father, go to the Father, that the Flesh may be where the Word always is, and that the one Faith of the catholic Church may believe that He Whom as Man it does not deny to be less, is equal as God with the Father.

VI. And this equality which the Son has with the Father, the Holy Spirit also has.

Accordingly, dearly-beloved, let us despise the vain and blind cunning of ungodly heretics, which flatters itself over its crooked interpretation of this sentence, and when the Lord says,

“All things that the Father has are Mine (John 16:15),”

does not understand that it takes away from the Father whatever it dares to deny to the Son, and is so foolish in matters even which are human as to think, that what is His Father’s has ceased to belong to His Only-begotten, because He has taken on Him what is ours. Mercy in the case of God does not lessen power, nor is the reconciliation of the creature whom He loves a falling off of Eternal glory. What the Father has the Son also has, and what the Father and the Son have, the Holy Spirit also has, because the whole Trinity together is One God.

But this Faith is not the discovery of earthly wisdom nor the conviction of man’s opinion: the Only-begotten Son has taught it Himself, and the Holy Spirit has established it Himself, concerning Whom no other conception must be formed than is formed concerning the Father and the Son.

Because albeit He is not the Father nor the Son, yet He is not separable from the Father and the Son: and as He has His own personality in the Trinity, so has He One substance in Godhead with the Father and the Son, filling all things, containing all things, and with the Father and the Son controlling all things, to Whom is the honor and glory for ever and ever.  Amen.

© 2010, Fr. John A. Peck. All rights reserved.

In this sermon, Fr. Josiah presents an intriguing idea: What happens if Christians experience Ascension, but do not experience Pentecost.

Introduction: In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, One God. Amen.

The last ten days in the Church have been unusual.  In some sense we have been living between two realities.  On the leave-taking of Pascha we ceased the sustained celebration of the Holy Resurrection of the Lord as well as our saying, “Christ is risen.  Truly He is risen.”  The next day we celebrated the Glorious Ascension of our Savior into the heavens to sit at the right hand of the Father.   For these days between Ascension and Pentecost we have been in a waiting mode.  We, like the Apostles of old, have been heeding our Lord’s ascension instructions to “wait in Jerusalem to be clothed with power from on high” (St. Lk. 24:49).  We have been waiting for the Holy Spirit to come.

Why were the Apostles waiting?

The obvious answer to this question is that they were waiting because the Lord Jesus commanded them to tarry until Pentecost.  There is, however, much more to this waiting than that.  We must understand very clearly the difference between the apostles before Pentecost and after Pentecost.  Something dramatic happened to them that changed them personally.  They were transformed.  Fear turned into martyric boldness; fishermen became the world’s teachers;  doubt was replaced by mountain-moving faith.  All because of Pentecost.

The Necessity of Pentecost.

Some of us do not understand the necessity of Pentecost.  Pentecost is many things, and we have spoken about these realities before.  Pentecost is revelation of the Holy Trinity to the world. This is why this Feast is also called “Trinity Day” in the Church.  The Apostles knew the Father.  They had become the disciples of the Son.  And now they were filled with the Holy Spirit.  Pentecost is also the birthday of the New Testament Church.  It is the democratization of the Spirit of God to all believers.  It is the unification of all mankind, and the definitive beginning to the reversal of the chaos of the Tower of Babel.  All of these things we have previously discussed, but today I wish to point out that Holy Pentecost is the evidence that Christianity is not a man-made or earthly religion.  It is not a set of ethical standards.  It is not for moral guidance.  Christianity is a miraculous and divine communion between God and man.  Christianity is the spiritualization or divination of man.

If Christianity were simply a man-made religion, even if it were the best and most beautiful man-made religion, there would be no need for the disciples to tarry in Jerusalem these days awaiting Pentecost.  Why would they need to?  They had for years lived in close contact with Christ, and had been His most intimate students.  They could have simply begun to write and teach and pass on what they had learned.  They had been fully trained, and so it is time to start training.  This is how it is with every other of the world’s religions.  Not so with Christianity.  Christianity is not about ideas, moral guidance, ethical norms, social structures, etc..  Christianity, of course, is not free from these things, but this is not what Holy Orthodoxy is about.  Holy Orthodoxy is about the coming of the Holy Spirit into man.  It is about human transformation and deification, not ideas.  There is no Christianity without Pentecost.  Orthodoxy without the Holy Spirit is not Orthodoxy.

Many Christians tragically live between Ascension and Pentecost.

With that said is it not tragic how often we live with our Orthodoxy as a set of ideas.  We think we are Orthodox because we believe certain things in our heads and were born or converted to a certain family or at a certain time.  If the Apostles had remained in the state they were in between Ascension and Pentecost they would never have brought the Gospel to the world.  They would never have become the great saints they did.  They would never have crushed the demons like they did.  They did all of these things because they were living in union with the Holy Spirit of God.

Sometimes we Orthodox evidence little proof that we are living post-Pentecost.  Our faith is weak. We are bound by sins.  We have little Christian joy.  We read or listen to the Acts of the Apostles and think that the Apostles were living a different way of life.  We pick up and read a book on the life of a particular saint and the saint’s mode of being appears to us to be foreign and almost unintelligible.  Why? Because we are not living in the Holy Spirit.  We are more like the fearful and doubting disciples prior to Pentecost.  Others around us seem to be radiant.  They endure trials with joy.  They don’t worry.  Why?  Because they are in a dynamic relationship with the Holy Spirit.  They are sincerely praying the Prayer to the Holy Spirit,  “O Heavenly King, O Comforter, the Spirit of Truth, Who art in all places and filleth all things, the Treasury of Good Things and Giver of Life, come and abide in us, and cleanse us from every stain, and save our souls O Good One.” The Holy Spirit is in these ones abiding in them, cleanses them, and saving them!

Christianity without Pentecost is Empty Form!

If our Orthodox life is not permeated with the presence of the Holy Spirit it is all in vain!  Consider first that the Holy Sacraments or Mysteries of the Church are all dependent completely upon the Holy Spirit.  Baptism saves us because we are not born of the water alone, but of water and the Spirit (St. Jn. 3:3-5).  Chrismation itself is an individual’s personal Pentecost.  The seal of the gift of the Holy Spirit.  Ordination is the special bequeathal of the Holy Spirit to men, and the substance of the priesthood is that priests bear the Holy Spirit in the community.  This is why our Lord gathered the twelve together and breathed upon them and said, “Receive the Holy Spirit.  Whoever’s sins you remit are remitted.  Whoever’s sins you retain are retained” (St. John 20:23).  Marriage is simply temporal and earthly if it is not consecrated by the Holy Spirit and bound together in His love.  Holy Unction without the Holy Spirit is simply a complex skin treatment!  It is the Holy Spirit in the sacred oil healing our souls and bodies!  Confession is insincere and pointless unless it is a Spirit-inspired compunction and a Spirit-empowered absolution.  And think of the Mystery of Mysteries and the Sacrament of Sacraments:  the Holy Eucharist.  The existence of the Holy Eucharist is completely dependent upon the Holy Spirit.  It is the Holy Spirit Whom the priest calls down upon the Holy Table in the epiklesis:  “changing them by Thy Holy Spirit.”

This liturgical reality is beautifully evidenced in many different saints’ lives, especially those saints who were bishops or priests responsible for the celebration of the eucharist.  The story is told of St. Basil the Great that he had hanging over his altar a beautiful oil lamp made in the form of a golden dove. Always at the time of the transformation of the gifts the dove would begin to swing.  A similar story is told about our Holy Father John of San Francisco and Shanghai.  St. John would see the Holy Spirit descend as fire into the holy chalice at the epiklesis as he served liturgy.  On one occasion the liturgy was delayed because St. John would not go on since he saw no fire.  Wondering why he turned to his deacon and saw his face was covered over in a black cloud.  Asking the deacon what was wrong the deacon confessed that he had not prepared for the liturgy properly.  Once the deacon divested and left the altar the fire came and liturgy could continue.

All of the Holy Mysteries are empty forms without the Holy Spirit, and this may be said about all matters of our faith and practice.  Fasting is simply dieting if it is not an attempt to acquire the Holy Spirit.  It is not a coincidence that our Lord went into the desert to fast for forty days “led by the Holy Spirit” (St. Lk. 4:1). Sin is not overcome except by the Holy Spirit.  He is One Who enables us to “mortify the deeds of the body” (Rom. 8:13).  We could go on and on. There is no prayer without the Holy Spirit praying in us.  There is no church without the Holy Spirit.  There is no Church Temple without the Holy Spirit. This is why when we erect a true church temple the bishop chrismates the altar and the temple itself.  The Temple has its own Pentecost for it truly becomes not simply a functional gathering place, but the House of God and Temple of the Holy Spirit.  The Holy Spirit lives there.  If He does not then the Temple become a Temple of Satan (Rev. 2:9).

Our Goal is to Acquire the Holy Spirit.

In the light of truth we see then that St. Seraphim was correct when he was asked by someone, “What is the purpose of this life?”, and he answered, “The acquisition of the Holy Spirit.”  “If a son shall ask bread of any of you that is a father, will he give him a stone?  Or if he ask a fish, will he for a fish give him a serpent?  Or if he shall ask an egg, will he offer him a scorpion?  If ye then, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children: how much more shall your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to them that ask him?” (St.Lk. 11:11-13).  All of our Christian effort and spiritual struggle is guided toward this one thing: obtaining an increase of the Holy Spirit.  This is what it means to become spiritual.  This is the goal of Christianity:  the union of man with God by the Holy Spirit.  Let us not betray the true nature of our religion by living as though Orthodoxy was about ideas, morals, etc.  Nonsense.  Christianity is about becoming one with the True God: by grace becoming what He is.  Now some of you may be thinking, “But how do we experience Pentecost? What do I do if I feel stuck between Ascension and Pentecost?”  An answer to these questions will be given in next Sunday’s homily.

Now to God the Father, and to the Ascended Lord Jesus Christ, and to the Holy Spirit poured forth today be all glory.Amen.

Fr. Josiah Trenham is the pastor of St. Andrew Orthodox Church in Riverside, CA.

© 2009, Fr. John A. Peck. All rights reserved.