Homily 24: On How the Holy Spirit was Manifested and Shared Out at Pentecost

And about repentance

By: St. Gregory Palamas

Narrated by: Virtual Voice

Length: 35 mins

Publisher's summary

Homily XXIV from the corpus, in Saint Gregory Palamas: The Homilies (2009 and 2014), with introduction and detailed notes. Also published in The Saving Work of Christ: Sermons by Saint Gregory Palamas (2008). Excerpt:- "Those miracles accomplished by the Lord in the flesh, which bore witness that He was God’s only-begotten Son in His own person, united with us in the last days, came to an end. On the other hand, those wonders began which proclaimed the Holy Spirit as a divine person in His own right, that we might come to know and contemplate the great and venerable mystery of the Holy Trinity. The Holy Spirit had been active before: it was He who spoke through the prophets and proclaimed things to come. Later He worked through the disciples to drive out demons and heal diseases. But now He was manifested to all in His own person through the tongues of fire, and by sitting enthroned as Lord upon each of Christ’s disciples, He made them instruments of His power. "Why did He appear in the form of tongues? It was to demonstrate that He shared the same nature as the Word of God, for there is no relationship closer than that between word and tongue. It was also because of teaching, since teaching Christ’s gospel needs a tongue full of grace. But why fiery tongues? Not just because the Spirit is consubstantial with the Father and the Son – and our God is fire (cf. Heb. 12:29), a fire consuming wickedness – but also because of the twofold energy of the apostles’ preaching, which can bring both benefit and punishment. As it is the property of fire to illuminate and burn, so Christ’s teaching enlightens those who obey but finally hands over the disobedient to eternal fire and punishment. The text says, “tongues like fire” not “tongues of fire”, that no one might imagine it was ordinary physical fire, but that we might understand the manifestation of the Spirit using fire as an example. Why did the tongues appear to be divided among them? Because the Spirit is given by measure by the Father to all except Christ (John 3:34), who Himself came from above. He, even in the flesh, possessed the fullness of divine power and energy, whereas the grace of the Holy Spirit was only partially, not fully, contained within anyone else. Each one obtained different gifts, lest anyone should suppose the grace given to the saints by the Holy Spirit was theirs by nature. "The fact that the divine Spirit sat upon them is proof not just of His lordly dignity, but of His unity. He sat, it says, “upon each of them. And they were all filled with the Holy Ghost” (Acts 2:3–4). For although divided in His various powers and energies, in each of His works the Holy Spirit is wholly present and active, undividedly divided, partaken of while remaining complete, like the sun’s ray. They spoke with other tongues, other languages, to people from every nation, as the Spirit gave them utterance. They became instruments of the divine Spirit, inspired and motivated according to His will and power. Anything taken hold of by somebody outside itself, sharing in the energy but not the essence of the one acting through it, is his instrument. As David declared through the Holy Spirit, “My tongue is the pen of a ready writer” (Ps. 45:1). The pen is the writer’s instrument, sharing in the energy, though obviously not the essence, of the writer, and inscribing whatever he wishes and is able to write. "In what sense is the Holy Spirit the promise of the Father? He foretold Him through His prophets, saying through Ezekiel, “A new heart also will I give you, and a new spirit will I put within you: and I will put my spirit within you” (cf. Ezek. 36:26–27). Through Joel He proclaims, “And it shall come to pass in the last days, that I will pour out my spirit upon all flesh” (cf. Joel 2:28). Longing for the Holy Spirit, Moses cried out in anticipation, “Would God that all the Lord’s people were prophets, and that the Lord would put his spirit upon them” (Num. 11:29)…"