“...for once you were darkness, but now you are light in the Lord; walk as children of light (for the fruit of light is found in all that is good and right and true), and try to learn what is pleasing to the Lord.” (Ephesians 5:8-10)
The day after Pentecost Sunday is called the Day of the Holy Spirit in the Orthodox Church. It is God’s giving of the Holy Spirit to us humans which restores to us our full humanity – in other words, the Holy Spirit being sent upon us and remaining on us is our salvation. This is why in the early Church Pascha and Pentecost are understood as the same act or event – together they show humanity united again to divinity which is the undoing of sin and the salvation of every human.
Jesus says in John 14:15-17: “If you love me, you will keep my commandments. And I will pray the Father, and he will give you another Counselor, to be with you for ever, even the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees him nor knows him; you know him, for he dwells with you, and will be in you.” The words “for he dwells with you” – really mean the Spirit remains with you unto the ages. The Spirit will not be taken away from us for God has given the Spirit back to us to restore our fully humanity – to make us into the beings that God wanted us to be when God created us. We lost that Spirit due to our own sins (Genesis 6:3). When we are in the Spirit, Christ becomes incarnate in us and we become His body, the Church. Pentecost completes what Christ began in rising from the dead: the salvation of the human race.
“If our human nature is not kept pure or else restored to its original purity by the Holy Spirit, it cannot become one body and one spirit in Christ, either in this life or in the harmonious order of the life to come. For the all-embracing and unifying power of the Spirit does not complete the new garment of grace by sewing on to it a patch taken from the old garment of the passions (cf Matt 9:16).” (St Gregory of Sinai, THE PHILOKALIA Vol 4, p 220)
Great image from St Gregory. Salvation is not patchwork. Salvation is not a matter of patching a few holes or wounds, or covering holes, faults, foibles and sins. Salvation is the remaking of humanity, making all things new, renewing everything, a new birth from on high. Salvation does not involve hiding faults but healing them, not putting band-aids over spiritual wounds but completely healing them, not applying cosmetic changes but rather creating substantial change to give eternal life to mortal beings.
Fraternized 