Orthodoxy is one continuous
experience of the resurrection. To be a practicing member of the Church
is to participate in the life of the Risen Christ.
Once the believer emerges
from the trine immersion of the baptismal font, he enters the realm of
the Paschal glory. The Bible speaks of it as the "newness of life" that
comes with faith in Jesus Christ and with the dying and rising with Him
in baptism.
Renewed Infusion
of the Spirit
By becoming a "new creature" each believer becomes a member of His Body, the Church. He is new, because his birth and life are new. The old man is destroyed with its lusts and passions. Born of the Spirit, he is Spirit now and walks in the Spirit.
No longer the child of the flesh, he is the child of Light.
To live the life of the resurrection is to have the soul flooded with the fullness of the Logos and the Spirit. "Receive ye the Holy Spirit", said Jesus to His disciples after His resurrection,
breathing upon them. The victory of life over death that came with the
Cross released the Holy Spirit. The initial in-breathing that once created
man now is renewed to recreate man "in the image and likeness of God." While Adam’s disobedience alienated man from God’s Spirit, the obedience of the New Adam restored man to the koinonia of the Holy Spirit. St. Basil teaches that the pre-existent Logos who originally infused the Spirit into the first man now infuses it anew (Against Eunomius V).
Similarly St. Cyril of Alexandria says that "the Holy Spirit which left us is restored to us by Christ Who breathed upon His Holy Apostles, saying, Receive ye the Holy Spirit." It is a "renewal of that ancient gift and of the inbreathing which was given to us" (Adversus Anthropomorphitos II). In His baptism Jesus of Nazareth, was anointed by the Spirit that indwelt in His fullness. Being sinless, He received in His human nature, the Spirit to the measure that Adam would have, were he not to have sinned. He represents man in his normal growth into the "image and likeness of God" without the need of the expiatory shedding of blood.
By vanquishing death by His own death Christ made every man a participant of the Spirit. He re-infused the Spirit "that by becoming remade again in the original image we would appear conformed to Him Who has created us by participation in the Spirit" (Liber Thesaurorum XXXIV).
This means the fruits of the Spirit, as enumerated in the Bible, are now available to those born again in water and the Spirit: love, joy, peace, long-suffering and goodness.
A Paschal
Mystery in the Eucharist
The Easter experience of the indwelling Spirit is made continuous by means of the Eucharist. Each time we participate in the offering of the Divine Liturgy we rediscover the "newness of life", that is, the inner perception of the resurrection.
When we sing "We have seen the true Light!" at the close of the Liturgy, we are expressing this rediscovery of that deeper life hidden in Christ. "We have found the true Faith!" does not state a first-time discovery,
but a renewed discovery. "We have received the Heavenly Spirit!"
expresses the soul’s receiving anew what it had initially received at baptism.
To eat of the Body of Christ and drink of His Precious Blood is to replenish our fullness of the Holy Spirit. The doctrine of grace in the western Churches unfortunately displaced the sacramental teaching of Spirit indwelling, which has always remained in the Orthodox Church.
The priest at the consecration prays "That to those who partake thereof, they may be... unto the fellowship of Thy Holy Spirit". When he pours the hot water into the Chalice, he says: "The fullness of the Cup of Faith and of the Holy Spirit". In the post-communion prayers Christ is invoked to "Show me as Thy habitation of the only Spirit and no longer as a habitation for sin." This is why it is rather foolish to question whether the tripartite view of man is Orthodox, that is, that man consists of body, soul, and Spirit. The Spirit is an essential element of man without which he cannot be what he was created to be: in His image and likeness.
The Spirit is not a super added grace. Indeed the oversimplified dichotomy of soul and body, which posits and polarizes two absolutes (the material and the spiritual) is Greek, western, and heretical, totally ignoring the psychosomatic dimension
of human existence and the teaching of both Scripture and the Fathers.
But we cannot pretend that all Orthodox receive the Holy Spirit unto salvation. Too many of them, clergy, as well as laity, receive the descending Spirit in the Paschal life of the Church unto damnation, actually being guilty of the Body and
Blood of Christ. They are so close and yet so far from Christ. This proximity brings about the greater judgment, because there are too many really not born again
of the Spirit. They have remained simply "flesh" just as they came out
of their mother’s womb. "That which is born of the flesh is flesh", teaches Christ. "and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit". But "flesh and blood cannot inherit the Kingdom of God".
The Hour of Mercy or
Judgment
One must be blind not to see the "works of the flesh" in the Church. And these are not necessarily and exclusively sexual sins. They are "hatred, variance, emulations, wrath, strife, sedition’s, envying.. ." These are ever more disruptive of the Church when found among bishops and priests, although "fornication and adultery" lead to such divisiveness. They receive frequently at the altar of Holy Communion, but the "fruit of the Spirit" is rarely to be found:
"love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, meekness, temperance..."
The Easter experience is one of reconciliation and unity. "Let us embrace one another", we sing throughout the Paschal season. After St. Paul enumerates the "works of the flesh", he teaches: "Let us not be
desirous of vain glory, provoking one another, envying one an-other" and "They that are Christ’s have crucified the flesh with the affections and lusts" (Galatians 22). Yet, hypocrisy and double-dealing and envy still take their toll in the Church in terms of peace and unity.
But now is the time for mercy and God’s longsuffering. "I have come not to judge, but to save the world," Christ told us. His love redeems, but it also condemns in the last analysis. His infinite condescension is present in the Paschal experience of the Church.
But how long will God put up with our continuous blasphemy of His Holy Spirit? Easter is the time for supreme joy, but it is the precious gift of only those who live in faith and repentance. To those who mock Easter with their sins of disobedience it is but the pledge of the impending day of divine wrath.
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