Why doesn't the Holy Spirit descend upon us today?

Pentecost. Photo: myslo

“O Heavenly King, Comforter, Spirit of Truth, Who art everywhere present and fillest all things, Treasury of blessings and Giver of life: come and abide in us, and cleanse us from every impurity, and save our souls, O Good One…”

But He does not descend. We hear neither the rustle of fiery tongues above our heads, nor the gentle stirring of the breeze of God’s grace in the soul, nor the luminous murmur of Living Water in the heart. Why is this so?

The Book of Acts and the Epistles of the Apostles tell us how the gifts of the Holy Spirit were distributed in the Ancient Church, how abundantly He acted in the souls of the first Christians, what fruits He brought forth in the hearts of the faithful. But if the Giver of grace has not changed, then it means that something has changed in us.

The Holy Spirit is always one and the same, undergoing no alteration whatsoever. Something has changed in man himself…

The world in which we live today is gradually turning into a combustible mixture of infernal malice, blended with madness and hatred of people toward one another. Lust, greed, anger, fear – this is the air breathed by the wretched bearers of the image of God, who have finally lost their minds in their godlessness. Where will the insanity of proud rulers lead mankind? Will they burn the earth? Will they unleash a nuclear winter upon it? Will they destroy billions of innocent people merely to prove – I do not know to whom – their superiority and strength?

The world is ruled by possessed men. They ruled it before as well, but then they did not have the kind of weapons they have now. Whatever mind, knowledge, or intellect these people may possess, there is one thing they do not know: the thoughts born in their heads do not, in fact, belong to them, but to those powers that distribute and suggest thoughts. These powers have one goal – to turn the earth into hell.

But no forces of hell can have power over those who do not give them the right to rule them.

In order to connect us to the satanic control center, demons need access to our socket. It is located in our head – with no fuse, completely open to any connection. Man neither feels nor understands that thoughts, feelings, and desires are forcing their way into his head from outside powers that have turned us into weapons of their evil will. The higher a person’s social status, the more the future of the world depends on his decisions, the more “professional” the demons who work with him, directing his will in the direction they require.

The only place where this socket can be reliably hidden is the human heart. But to keep the mind in the heart requires no small labor and the resolute will of the person himself.

Those who have succeeded in this have done so through unceasing prayer and watchfulness – that is, through attention to themselves. Such souls are hidden from the omnipresent demonic radar; the demons do not see their minds on their display and therefore have no access to them. The infernal matrix forever loses those who have replaced thinking with grace and uncovered the essence of the devil’s game with man.

A wise man has understood something essential: everything that surrounds us, this entire world, is a picture painted by our imagination.

Our understanding of what is happening, our value judgments, the emotional background of the soul, and the like – all of this is formed and selected by our mind, which is manipulated by the enemies of the human race. God gave us spirit, soul, and body, which man was meant to transfigure into light, but we have wrapped our mind in a veil of things and images that our heart has passionately loved.

Thoughts, like spiders, have entangled every object, every person, every thing in their sticky web, cementing our life into patterns of thinking and models of behavior imposed from outside.

Each of us is called to become a light to the world. This light has its beginning in the transfigured spirit and is kindled within us when a person rejects his egoism and rises above the ceaselessly agitated sea of worldly thoughts. Only he who has drawn out of the world his proud mind – enslaved and entangled in thoughts – can rise above this abyss.

Before the skylark soars into the heavens, it carefully cleans and shakes out its feathers. So too the soul, before it can fly up to heaven, must cleanse its heart of passions and shake from its mind the clinging, intrusive thoughts.

We have become like a wild drake whose homeland is the open lakes, whose path is the blue sky among the clouds, but which has strayed from the flock and landed on a meadow, never noticing the snares and the hunters hidden in the bushes. Now the bird’s feet are bound, and its final journey leads to the kitchen, where the stove is already lit. Such is the fate of every soul that has lost its bond with God and rushed off to frolic on the lawns of this merciless world. Birth is the beginning of earthly ordeals; departure is the beginning of ordeals beyond the grave. Yet for some reason man is in no hurry to direct his mind toward Christ, so that the merciful Lord may loose his infernal bonds.

One cannot live by the meaninglessness of everyday existence. Life is the soul’s unceasing search – the search for its true being in Christ: a life without mental anguish, without pain and disappointment, without monotonous and exhausting thought that drains the soul of all its strength. This is precisely that state of eternal and blessed being of which God said: “I AM.” Christ is the Way, the Door, and the Truth leading to this life-affirming “I AM.”

What we have is a strange picture. Priests, parishioners – everyone expects that sometime later, after death, things will become good for us. But for now, we will live “like everyone else,” that is, in the current of graceless, false, and unstable thoughts. We will live not according to the will of God, but according to the will of man. In that case, it is unclear how this muddy river is supposed to carry us into the Kingdom of God.

If our mind, instead of being saturated with Christ, is flooded up to the crown of the head with impure thoughts, then what good are we expecting after physical death?

The devil has only one way to bind us to the world and to himself – our thoughts. He has no other way. The old man, who fights within us against us, is the heart filled with egoism. That is why we ask God in the words of King David: “Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me” (Ps. 50:12).

Where should we begin in practice? How do we free ourselves from these intrusive thoughts? We must begin with the remembrance of God – that is, by striving never to lose sight of Him, living constantly in His presence. Unceasing remembrance of God gives birth to unceasing prayer, and the reverse is also true. When we remember Christ at all times, we are united with Him, saved by Him, existing through Him, abiding inseparably in Him. But as soon as we turn our inner attention toward the world, the mind seizes upon it and immediately loses the remembrance of God.

Complete forgetfulness of God is called spiritual death and leads to eternal falling away from divine being. The mind comes under the power of impulsive thoughts “from its own head.” These impulses are the cause of all our misfortunes – from a word spoken in the heat of the moment to decisions that begin a world war. Every tragedy, whether of one person or of millions, began with just such an impulse in someone’s head. The Holy Spirit, however, speaks to us not through thoughts, but through spiritual intuition, which is born not in the head, but in the heart.

“The things of this world are like swirling clouds: they draw near, surround you, and in the same instant vanish into space. When the world seems beautiful and good to you, you clap your hands, irritably brushing aside the search for salvation. Then ailments and illnesses appear. God is constantly knocking at this door. Every illness is a direct summons from God to your salvation. Therefore everything external, everything worldly, is disappointment again and again. Yet each disappointment inevitably draws you toward the search for salvation, toward the search for spiritual freedom. The heart finds this freedom only in Christ, when it surrenders itself entirely to Him. Into such a free heart comes that heavenly joy of which the holy apostle said: ‘Rejoice always’ (1 Thess. 5:16). Entrust everything to God, and joy will never leave you” (Elder Simon Bezkróvny).

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