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 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

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

3- Whoever wishes to please God in truth and receive from Him the heavenly grace of the Spirit and grow and be perfected in the Holy Spirit ought, therefore, to force himself to keep all the commandments of God and to subdue his heart, however unwilling it may be, according to the saying, “Therefore I observe all thy commandments, and all false ways I utterly abhor (Ps 118:128).

Just as a man forces and compels himself to persevere in prayer until he succeeds, so also, if he is willing, he forces and compels himself to practice all of the virtues by asking and praying the Lord to accomplish this. He obtains his petition and receives a taste of God and becomes a partaker of the Holy Spirit, causing the gift that was bestowed on him to grow and thrive, resting in his humility, love and meekness.

The Spirit Himself bestows these things upon him and teaches him true prayer, true love, and true meekness, to which before he forced himself and sought to possess them.

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)