Today, on this week after Pentecost, the Church celebrates the fruits of the coming of the Holy Spirit to mankind, in remembering the lives of all of the Saints, known and unknown men and women throughout the centuries that have achieved the one and only goal of the Christian life.
Every year, around this time, I spend an afternoon reading from the famous work written by a man named Motovilov, who had an incredible conversation with St. Seraphim of Sarov about what the Holy Spirit does in our lives. At the very beginning of this marvelous text, St. Seraphim tells us plainly what the one and only goal of the saints is when he says: “Acquiring the Holy Spirit of God is the true aim of the Christian Life.” It is the very reason that we do the things that the Church instructs us to do! Prayer, fasting, giving alms…all these things St. Seraphim says, are a type of “Divine Currency” that allows us to acquire the Holy Spirit.
Motovilov then brings up a fascinating question…one that perhaps shows the difference between what the Saints have accomplished, and what all of us have yet to get to. “Father,” he says, “…you speak about the acquisition of the Grace of the Holy Spirit being the aim of the Christian Life, but where and how can I see it? Good deeds are visible, but can the Holy Spirit be seen? How am I to know whether He is with me or not?”
What a fascinating question! How often do we hear in the Scriptures about the visible manifestation of God working in the midst of His people? In the very beginning of the Bible, Adam sees the Lord walking in paradise! Jacob physically wrestles with God! Abraham had back and forth conversations with Him. Moses and the Israelites saw God when Moses received the tablets of the law on Mount Sinai. God moved with them as a pillar of cloud and a pillar of Fire as they were being guided to the desert. People saw God not during sleep, in dreams, or in their imagination…but right out in the open! Why does this seem so foreign to us today, living in the world in which we live?
St. Seraphim answers by saying: “At the present time, owing to our almost universal coldness to our holy faith in our Lord Jesus Christ, and our inattention to the working of His Divine Providence in us, and to the communion of man with God, we have gone so far that, one may say, we have almost abandoned the true Christian life.”
St. Seraphim said this over 200 years ago…imagine how much further away we as a people have distanced ourselves from the true Christian life! “…we have departed from the simplicity of the original Christian knowledge…Under the pretext of education, we have reached such a darkness of ignorance, that the things the ancients understood so clearly, seem to us almost inconceivable”.
There is a reflection that I want all of us to ponder on, but it cannot be done on a Sunday. When we are participating in a Divine Liturgy, whether we are attentive to it or not, we are receiving the Holy Spirit through our communal prayer, and through the Body and Blood of God Himself. In these moments, our minds are clear. However, on a day where we are not attending a Divine Liturgy, perhaps when we are in the middle of a big project at work or a task in our home, if I were to ask what our goal is for the day, how many of us would respond without thought or hesitation: “The acquisition of the Holy Spirit.”?
In order to return back to the Divine Knowledge of our ancestors, and to have the same relationship with the Holy Spirit as Holy Men and Women we celebrate on the feast of All Saints, we have to first want it in our own lives. We have to place it at the very top of our priorities, making everything else in life seem insignificant. After we establish this goal as our true aim, we spend every waking moment doing virtuous deeds for the sake of Christ. We fast not to lose weight or to feel better physically…but for the sake of Christ. We give of our money and our time not to show others how generous we are…but for the sake of Christ. We pray (which St. Seraphim says gives us the most grace of all) not because it’s what we are supposed to. Prayer isn’t an obligation…it is done for the sake of Christ, as a means of acquiring the Holy Spirit.
I was reminded of an incredible saying of Elder Thaddaus of Vitovnica, who said that “every type of work on earth and in all the universe is God’s work, and as such it should be performed from the heart, without reservation.” Every breath we take, job we do, prayer we offer, fast we undertake, person we take care of…all of these are for the sake of Christ.
On this feast of All Saints, we look to our hall of fame: Those men and women who have achieved what we say we are striving for in EVERY SERVICE when we say: “…Let us commend ourselves, each other, and all our life, unto Christ our God”. This part of the Liturgy isn’t referring to the two hours we are in Church on Sunday, or the moments of prayer that we have at home or throughout the day. It speaks to our needed commitment to commend our entire life to God! The Saints are the ones that have achieved that goal. We celebrate them, we read their lives, and we look to them as shining examples of how we can once again resurrect the True Christian Life within ourselves, so that we too can be counted worthy to be among the Saints in the Kingdom of Heaven.