On the Holy Spirit by The Spirit-bearer

Abba Poemen acclaimed of him: Every time I met Abba Macarius I did not say a single word without his already having knowledge of it because he was a Spiritbearer and possessed a prophetic spirit, like Elijah and all the other prophets, for he was clothed with humility like a cloak through the power of the Paraclete who dwelt in him. He alone possessed foresight and was filled with the grace of God; the glory of the Lord shone on his face; the consolation of the Consoler, the Holy Spirit, which was with him, came down upon everyone sitting around him.

1- “ For God desired to have communion with the soul and espoused her to Himself as the King’s bride. He cleanses her from pollution and, washing her, maker her bright from her blackness and shame and quickens her out of the state of death. He heals her of her shattered condition and gives her peace, reconciling her enmity. For even though she is a creature, she has been espoused as bride to the King’s son. By His own power God receives her to Himself, gradually changing her until He has increased her with His own increase. For He enlarges her and leads her to and endless and immeasurable increase, until she becomes a bride without blemish and worthy of Him. First He begets her within Himself, and increases her through Himself, until she receives the full-grown measure of His love. For being Himself a perfect bridegroom, He takes her as a perfect bride into the holy, mystical, undefiled fellowship of marriage; and then she reigns with Him unto endless ages. (47)

2- For our Lord came for this reason, that He might change and transform and renew and recreate the soul which had been overturned by the passions…mingling with it His own Spirit of divinity… to make new men, anointing them which His own light of knowledge, that He might put in them the new wine which is His Spirit

3- For the dwelling-place and repose of the Spirit is humility, love, and weakness, and the other commandments of the Lord (19)

4- Whatever a person seems to do by himself and whatever care and pains he may take relying only upon his own power, if he thinks himself able to bring about a perfect success by his own powers without the co-operation of the Spirit, he is greatly in error. He becomes unfit for the heavenly places, for the Kingdom. Such as soul supposes that it can achieve perfect purity of itself and by itself alone, without the Spirit. Unless the man who is under the influence of passions will come to God, deny the world, and believe with patience and hope that he will receive something good yet foreign to his own nature- namely, the power of the Holy Spirit- and unless the Lord shall drop down upon the soul from on high the life of the Godhead, such a man will never experience true life. He will never recover from the drunkenness of materialism; the enlightenment of the Spirit will never shine in that benighted soul, or kindle holiness in it; that soul will never awake out of that deepest sleep of ignorance and so come to truly know God through God’s power and the efficacy of His grace. (24)

5- We are to have no earthly care, but night and day to stand at the door and wait for the time when the Lord shall open the closed hearts and pour upon us the gift of the Spirit… The lord know that this is how Satan prevails over thoughts, by dragging them down into anxiety for material, earthly things. (11)

6- Let us therefore beseech God, and seek and beg of Him, to bestow on us the treasure of His Spirit, and that thus we may be able to walk in all His commandments blamelessly and purely, and to fulfil all the righteousness of the Spirit purely and perfectly, by means of the heavenly treasure, which is Christ. For he that is poor and naked and needy and famished in the world can acquire nothing; his poverty restrains him; but the possessor of treasure, as I said, easily acquires such articles as he fancies, without painful effort. Thus the soul that is naked and destitute of the fellowship of the Spirit, and lies under the horrible poverty of sin, cannot, if it would, produce any of the fruits of the Spirit of righteousness in truth, before partaking of the Spirit (18)

7- Let us the beseech God, and believe with love and much hope, that He may give us the heavenly grace of the gift of the Spirit, that the Spirit Himself may govern us also and guide us into all the will of God, and refresh us in all the variety of His gifts… The Lord has promised to bestow on everyone who believes in Him and asks in truth the mysteries of the ineffable communion of the Spirit. Let us therefore devote ourselves entirely to the Lord and hasten to obtain the good things we have spoked of. Dedicated in soul and body, and nailed to the Cross of Christ, let us become fit for the eternal Kingdom, glorifying the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit. (18)