How can one know that the grace of the Holy Spirit has been received? If someone says that each of us believers has received and possesses the Spirit, though he does not know or feel it, he blasphemes.
He makes Christ false, who said, “It shall be in him a fountain of water springing up into eternal life.” He also said, “He who believes in Me, out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water.”
If a spring gushes forth, then surely the river that comes from this spring and flows onward is visible to those who have eyes.
But if, as those who think this way say, this also takes place in us while we feel and know nothing of it in ourselves, then clearly we shall not feel the eternal life that follows from it.
Nor shall we see the light of the Holy Spirit. We shall remain dead, blind, and without feeling in the life to come, just as we remain in the present.
Thus it would follow that our hope is vain and our course is useless, if we are still in death. That is, if we remain dead in spirit and do not receive the perception of eternal life.
But this is not so in truth. It is not so.
What I have said many times I shall say again, and I shall not cease to say it. The Father is light, the Son is light, and the Holy Spirit is light.
These Three are one Light, timeless, undivided, unconfused, eternal, uncreated, undiminished, immeasurable, and invisible, since He is and is conceived as being beyond and above all.
No man has ever been able to see this Light before purification, nor to receive it before beholding it. First one must see it, and afterward acquire it through many struggles.
Many have seen it, but have not acquired it. They are like those counted worthy to see great and immeasurable wealth in royal treasuries, and then depart with nothing, as they were before.
At the beginning, divine illumination and radiance often comes upon those who repent with warmth of heart, but it soon departs.
If they give themselves wholly to struggles, even unto death, and seek this illumination with pain of heart, and present themselves to Christ the Lord as worthy, pure, and blameless in all works, they receive it again.
Then it comes to them again in a more perfect way. But if they become negligent and do not wish to give themselves to greater labors because they love life and ease, they become unworthy of such a gift.
They do not enter eternal life, that is, they do not receive its firstfruits, while still in the body. If they have not entered now, clearly they will not be counted worthy of it after death, in the other life.
If the man who received the talent and hid it was condemned because he did not increase it, how much greater condemnation will fall on one who not only failed to increase it, but completely lost what he received through negligence?
Here, as divine Scripture says, is the marketplace. Here are the labors and contests. Here the pledges of victorious crowns are given to the victors. Here also the beginning of shame and torment is set for the defeated.
Call to mind the forty martyrs and all the other sufferers for Christ. They confirm what I say.
The forty martyrs, while still in the lake, received their crowns of martyrdom from the hands of Christ. But the one who entered the bathhouse seemed at once to melt from the warmth, and went to eternal fire for torment.
Likewise holy Eustratius, a man wondrous in the virtues, when he was tortured for love of Christ, said: “Now I know that I am the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwells in me.
Depart from me, you workers of iniquity.” To the torturer who judged him he said: “If you were sound in mind, and your soul were not all earth and dust because of the passions, I would show you that this crucified Christ is our Savior, Redeemer, and Benefactor.”
Do you see how this saint, when he entered the struggles of martyrdom and began to endure lacerations in his contest, then knew himself to be the temple of God?
He began to see, with the spiritual eyes of his soul, that the Spirit of God dwelt perceptibly in him. What testimony could be clearer than this?
If some say that those were martyrs who endured such sufferings for Christ, and ask how we can become like them, I too will say to such people: You yourselves can, if you wish, pass through martyrdom daily like the martyrs.
You can suffer and endure for Christ every day, every night, and every hour. How can this be? If you establish warfare against our spiritual enemies, the demons, and always resist sin and your passionate will.
They resisted torturers. You must resist the demons and the destructive passions of the flesh. These tyrannically rush upon our soul every day, every night, and every hour.
They compel us to do what is contrary to piety and what angers God. Therefore, if we resist all this, and do not obey the counsels of the evil demons, we too shall rightly be martyrs.
If we do not do the will of the flesh and of thoughts, and do not feed the flesh by satisfying its disorderly desires, we shall be martyrs who fight against sin.
If, resisting the devil, we willingly endure every labor for the commandments of Christ, as the martyrs endured unbearable sufferings for Christ while resisting their torturers, we shall receive crowns like theirs.
If, remembering the torments and wounds borne by the martyrs, we groan and sigh from the depth of the heart, and consider how far we are from their struggles, we shall receive crowns like theirs.
If we grieve that we have not been counted worthy to suffer for Christ as they did, then without doubt we shall be counted worthy to receive crowns like theirs, by the great goodness of God.
He has always shown and still shows this goodness to us, from the beginning until now.
Although in courage we may not be like them, we can in every way be like them in patience and nobility of soul. With these we bear the labors and pains endured for the keeping of Christ’s commandments.
They were sanctified by the struggles of martyrdom. We hope to be saved by good works and struggles undertaken for the acquisition of the virtues, wholly through God’s love for mankind and grace.
They were sanctified by the sweats and pains of martyrdom. We are sanctified by tears and the struggles of repentance.
They were sanctified through the shedding of their blood. We are sanctified through the cutting off of our will and through readiness for death.
By this readiness, we would be prepared every hour to die for the Lord’s commandments, not permitting ourselves to transgress any one of them even by a single word.
Therefore we too, my brothers, must despise the present life as the martyrs did. No one can receive the incorruptible unless he counts the corruptible as refuse.
No one can acquire the eternal if he is attached to the temporal. Nor can anyone possessed in his heart by any passion, even the slightest, have Christ dwelling in him by the grace of the Holy Spirit.
For God is Light, as He Himself says: “I am the Light of the world.” If perhaps you think that Christ is light according to the flesh, then according to you, when Christ ascended into heaven and was hidden, the light withdrew from His disciples.
It would also have withdrawn from us, and the whole world would have remained in darkness. But if you confess that He is the Light of the world according to the Godhead, how do you think that He is in you, and yet say that you do not see Him?
If you say that the Holy Spirit in you is obscured by the passions, you make God circumscribed and overcome by the evil and darkness in you. For evil-mindedness and passions, even without sinful deeds, are darkness.
Therefore, whoever says that he has light in his heart, but that it is covered by the darkness of the passions and therefore he does not see it, asserts that the light of God is overcome by human darkness.
He proves that the Holy Spirit lies, who says through the Evangelist John: “The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.”
The Holy Spirit says that the light is not overcome by darkness. Yet you say that in you it is covered by the darkness of the passions.
Know then, whoever you are who says this, that you clearly sin knowingly. If you confess that the darkness of the passions covers the light in you, then first of all you expose yourself.
You testify against yourself, saying with certainty that you sit in darkness and are under the power of the passions. Although you received authority to become a child of God, that is, a child of light and a son of the day, you lie idle in the darkness of the passions.
You do not wish to struggle in the practice of God’s commandments and disperse the darkness of the passions. Rather, you despise Christ, who came down from heaven and became man for your salvation.
You leave Him lying in your unclean heart as in a mire. Therefore the Light, that is, Christ, says this to you: “Out of your own mouth I shall judge you, wicked servant.
I, unapproachable even to the Angels, came, as you say, and dwelt in you. You know this, and yet you leave Me lying submerged in the darkness of your passions and sins, as you again say.
For so long I endured, waiting for you to repent and begin to keep My commandments. But to the very end you did not once wish to seek Me.
You did not once take pity on Me, drowned and oppressed within you. You did not allow Me, by kindling My light in you, to find you, the lost drachma, and to make you behold Me as I look upon you.
Instead, you left Me always covered by your passions. Depart from Me, worker of iniquity, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels.
I hungered for your conversion and repentance, but you did not give Me this to taste, nor satisfy My desire. That is, you did not repent of your evil sins.
I was naked of your virtuous deeds, and you did not clothe Me with them. I was in the cramped, unclean, and dark prison of your heart, and you did not wish to visit Me and bring Me into the light.
You saw Me lying in the sickness of your own negligence and inactivity, and you did not come to serve Me by your good works. Depart from Me.”
This is what the Lord will say. This is what He says even now to those who say that they have the Holy Spirit in themselves, but that He is hidden and covered by the darkness of their passions.
They say He is not seen by the spiritual eyes of their soul. But to those who say that they know Christ, yet do not see the light of His Godhead, Christ says: “If you have known Me, then you have surely known Me as Light.
For I am truly the Light of the world.”
Woe to those who say, “When will the day of the Lord come?” yet do not struggle to attain it here in the present life. For the coming of the Lord has come, and always comes among the faithful.
It is present in all who desire it. If Christ is the Light of the world, and promised His Apostles to be with us until the end of the age, how is He, who is with us, still to come?
No, He is not to come to us in that way, because we are not sons of darkness and night, that the light should come to us. We are sons of light and of the Lord’s day.
Therefore, while we live in the present life, we abide with the Lord. When we die, we shall live through Him and with Him, according to the divine Paul.
Saint Gregory the Theologian says: “What the sun is for things perceived by the senses, God is for spiritual things. He will be the age to come, the day without evening, the Kingdom of Heaven, the bridal chamber, the land of the meek, the divine paradise, the King, and the Servant.
As He Himself said: ‘Blessed are those servants whom the Lord, when He comes, shall find watching. Amen, I say to you, He will gird Himself, make them sit down, and come and serve them.’”
All this, and much more than this, which no one can enumerate, Christ becomes for those who believe in Him. He becomes this not only in the future life, but first in the present life, and then in the future.
Here it is in lesser measure, there in fullness. Still, the faithful already clearly foresee the good things to come, and receive their pledges or firstfruits.
THEOSIS