Sayings on the Sundays of the Pentecostarion
—Arch. Zacharias (Zacharou)
The man who conceives the Holy Spirit in his heart becomes double. Just as the woman with child knows that she carries a new life and feels the movements of the infant in her womb, so also he who bears the Holy Comforter, feels in the depths of his soul the leapings of Him Who ‘bloweth where He listeth’. The continual changes in his heart testify that he bears the Treasure of goodness, that he bears an abundance of life in his earthly vessel. As the mother subjects herself to any hardship in order to preserve the life of her child, so also the man in whose heart blows the breeze of the Spirit, does everything so as not to grieve the good Comforter with the slightest negative thought.
Let us approach Pentecost, the great and last feast, trusting that the Lord Jesus Christ will not forget us, but will visit us and send us the gifts of His goodness. As He says Himself in His Gospel: ‘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?’, that He may lead them ‘into the land of uprightness’. Having the Lord’s promise and His truthful word ‘as an anchor of the soul, both sure and stedfast’, let us surrender to the earthquake of the energy of His Spirit, shaking off the scales of sin and the corruption of death so that, with our whole heart turned to the Lord, we may also receive the ‘burning and refreshing’ gift of our Great God, which will lift us from things temporal and deceiving to things eternal and true. Then we will know that we are children of the Heavenly Father and that He has prepared for us a great inheritance, the Kingdom of Heaven.
