On Acquiring the Grace of Pentecost
The Lord’s Passion and Resurrection, which we recently celebrated, won for us eternal life. The content of this life, its actual substance, is the grace of the Holy Spirit, Whose coming we will remember and hope once again to meet on the Great Feast of Pentecost, Trinity Sunday.
Our venerable father, St. Seraphim of Sarov, in his famous conversation with Motovilov, defined the entire purpose of the Christian life as the acquisition of the Holy Spirit. All of the efforts of Christian life – prayer, fasting, almsgiving, and their concomitant activities – are directed to this end: that the energies of the All-Holy Trinity, mediated by the Holy Spirit, may come to inhabit our human organism and raise it to divinity.
Among other wonderful and powerful teachings, the saint said the following:
‘Then, on the day of Pentecost He solemnly sent down to them in a tempestuous wind the Holy Spirit in the form of tongues of fire which alighted on each of them and entered within them and filled them with the fiery strength of divine grace which breathes bedewingly and acts gladdeningly in souls which partake of its power and operations. And this same fire-infusing grace of the Holy Spirit which was given to us all, the faithful of Christ, in the Sacraments of Holy Baptism, is sealed by the Sacrament of Chrismation on the chief parts of our body as appointed by Holy Church, the eternal keeper of this grace…
‘And if we were never to sin after our baptism, we should remain forever saints of God, holy, blameless, and free from all impurity of body and spirit. But the trouble is that we increase in stature, but do not increase in grace and in the knowledge of God as our Lord Jesus Christ increased; but on the contrary, we become more and more depraved and lose the grace of the All-Holy Spirit of God and become sinful in various degrees, and most sinful people. But if a man is stirred by the wisdom of God which seeks our salvation and embraces everything, and he is resolved for its sake to devote the early hours to God and to watch in order to find his eternal salvation, then, in obedience to its voice, he must hasten to offer true repentance for all his sins and must practise the virtues which are opposite to the sins committed. Then through the virtues practised for Christ’s sake he will acquire the Holy Spirit Who acts within us and establishes in us the Kingdom of God.’
What are the cardinal points of this teaching?
1. That the baptismal grace makes us saints, that is holy and without blemish, capable of living with God forever in heaven.
2. That by not preserving it, we lose the grace of the Holy Spirit. .
3. That we can regain this grace by repentance and the practice of virtue.
The saint characterises repentance in a very specific fashion: he says that a man is ‘stirred by the wisdom of God…and he is resolved for its [salvation’s] sake to devote the early hours to God and to watch in order to find his eternal salvation.’ This recalls a passage from the Book of Wisdom:
She [the divine Wisdom] runs to meet them that desire her, in making herself first known unto them. Whoso seeketh her early shall have no great travail: for he shall find her sitting at his doors. To think therefore upon her is the perfection of wisdom: and whoso watcheth for her shall quickly be without care. For she goeth about seeking such as are worthy of her, sheweth herself favourably unto them in the ways, and meeteth them in every thought. For the very true beginning of her is the desire of discipline; and the care of discipline is love; and love is the keeping of her laws; and the giving heed unto her laws is the assurance of incorruption; and incorruption maketh us near unto God; therefore the desire of wisdom leadeth to the Eternal Kingdom.’
Wisdom of Solomon 6:13-20
It is instructive to note that both St. Seraphim and the sacred author give a specific activity as inseparable from repentance: to ‘watch early’, that is, to rise early in the morning and seek God in prayer. This concrete and specific action, if done faithfully, does lead the soul to God. Its omission disables and erodes all of our spiritual efforts. This is characteristic of all truly Orthodox writings, of all the Scriptures and Fathers: they do not dwell always on the heights, but soon after lifting our minds to heavenly things, they give us simple instructions on how to proceed. If we wish to be saved, that is, to acquire grace, we must rise early and keep vigil for the Lord.
Let us then, imitate, the prophets, apostles, and holy fathers, and so discipline our minds and bodies so as to dispose them to receive that which Christ came to give us: the grace of the All-Holy Spirit.