(the stream is cued up below if you’d like to hear it verbally performed)

And Beyond, O' Beyond! 

This yearning for the distant
The over-the-horizon
In the deep heart
In the depth of prayer;

After all low desires fall
These temptations, overcome,
These tears overflow;
A death to want and false life

This mind kept in Hell
This toward the suffering Heart
This longing lowly Here
So plunge, deep in faith—

And beyond...
O', Beyond!
My Christ, waiting
For we to ask, then it shall be given to us
For we to seek, then we shall find.

Await in silence
Await in the deep heart
Await and despair not—
He is coming...

No bounds can keep His Love away;
My beloved, endure,
The Master is with us
Even until the end of time.

Amen.


To the Unworthy and the Lost

Days of uncertainty
Possibilities lost,
Yet consolation:
This Dawning Star.

Deep prayer
Eternity
Counsels our Lord:
"Follow Me"

To new places 
Facing fearful unknowns
Yet possibility grows,
His arrow proves providential

His glory shines
His benevolence to me
His child, unworthy; 
Such intimate gifts!

Within His hands
We walk together home,
Fortune faced, 
Guided by Him

Fearful and uncertain, still—
Now a well in the Heart,
The birds shriek,
A star in the eye,
The Lord Speaks:
"Be not afraid
I love you, my son."

All coincides:
His sublime gravity,
The deep heart,
The circling bird launching hither.

Astonishment now,
Such is the shock,
I must take a seat,
My heart is full:

Gravity, Love,
And concrete movement;
Christ is my blood,
This heart of mine;
Beloved Christ,
Beloved Christ, Jesus.

Birds sound my way,
Divine bread from heaven,
Following the green 
To find a high church
Inside, intimate graces:
The world resurrected.

To the surface dweller, 
merely Same:
"Just a bird, just a park" 
"Just a parish", ignored.

But for us, clear communion,
This Intimate touch—
Within the face, 
behind the eyes, 
upon my head.

My beloved Panagia, my Jesus
Help me to entrust my whole future
My whole being,
My whole life,
To your guiding hand. 

Holy Holy Holy is the Lord our God. 
Amen.

Every event and image expressed here occurred.

THE OVERWIND GATHERS

Backward goes our gaze, to St. George’s chapel, Windsor. The Queen’s funeral is ending: as the coffin sinks into the abyss of the royal crypt, something seems to rise, drawn by the Scots piper as he walks away from us out the chapel—

—his fading solemn notes lead her, they are her, drawing faint, on rising wind, leaving the bleak on their final journey. Gone.

But not the wind: that remains.

That only gathers in strength.

Backward goes our gaze again, to Holyrood Palace, Scotland. The King approaches the estate: the moment he enters Holyrood’s gate uncanny northern wind throws downward on Edinburgh’s exposed hilltop and ripples across the waiting Scots Guards’ feathered caps—they stand sentinel as the last watch of Her first rest, tribal warriors guarding the head-kin’s dwelling.

What is this strange wind, or more: who?

Wind is a very old English word: for our ancestors it revealed truths about being, about their gods, about themselves—truths that still touch how we see today.

Wind means spirit. Not ‘air’, not ‘weather’, not ‘static substance’—wind only is in action—through wind-ing is spirit’s form revealed. Even now the word carries that echo; even now storms and wind cut beneath our antiseptic ontology and offer a thread to the numinous beyond low material cause.

This over-wind, disembodied, searches for somewhere to gather; It seems to drive and beckon the King—envelop him—but does he hear its call?

Now the King escorts the coffin with ritual troop out of Holyrood in uncanny silence—no trumpets, no idiot BBC commentator, no marching band—just wind and the solemn march-steps of a tribe in the escort of their dead.

It’s dwelling with this silence that speaks most loudly when we let it—no idle oozing mindchatter, no propositions—we simply let it unfold to us in its being, unpolluted by metaphysics.

We notice a sceptre in the King’s hand, at its top: a horseman cast in gold. As the kin-march reaches the end of Holyrood’s consecrated land a golden burst of light rips forth from the sceptre—

Is it a beacon for the gathering of this uncanny wind? Who does it summon to hold-fast outside Holyrood’s consecrated ground?

KINGSGUARD POSSESSED BY ENGLISH HYPER-AGENCY

Forward goes our gaze now: eight pole-bearers, Grenadier King’s Guard, rush home from active duty in Iraq to Westminster for the state funeral. They down fatigues and don truer colours: redcoats spun of Yorkshire wool made by English hands; now they guard and guide the Queen to her final rest.

These Chads Are My Heroes of the Ceremony, the best of the best of the Queen’s own regiment—no diversity quotas here; It would be deadly to drop this coffin—to have these sacred symbols touch the ground and diminish their power—and they nobly bear that gravity. We see in their tense wide eyed stoney faces an absolute unyielding will that can only be impelled by a people’s sacred; this force to duty is holy; the thing that makes it matter to them—that drives them, that leads them to unyieldingness—is sacred England herself.

They enact their duty with deep authenticity—no media training, no false persona—they’re not putting on a show. As they enter the cathedral this wide eyed concentration yields to divine voices from the heavenly choir: subtle awe fills the major’s gaze as he guides the lads loyally forth; the sacred reveals itself in this face—grace in service of authentic purpose.

As they lift the coffin and link arms to brace it they move as one being—or rather it moves them—they are the monarch in this moment; simple men, fighting men, strong men, possessed in every corner of their being to bear the locus of the people’s spirit safely on their back.

This is our symbol for the whole ritual, it shows us the form of an organism, somehow an aspect of this over-wind.

These are your Englishmen, you English who read my words. They are who this ritual is and is for: they’re possessed by something greater than themselves.

What is it? Or rather, who?

KING AS META-HUNTER & MARKER OF MORTAL TIME

Forward goes our gaze: the queens coffin is placed on a guncarriage outside, the same that held Victoria’s coffin. It’s pulled by the combined force of a unit of the royal navy arm in arm.

Why is this gun-carriage significant—this mount that aims and projects human force with cannon?

A cannon signifies the most powerful of aimed weapons, though it’s not fundamentally different than a longbow. But what is it to aim? The first aimers were our hunters: it’s a basic cognitive act to project (forward-throw) your being into the future at a target or end goal— ‘Hunter, target, projectile’ are microcosms of human temporality and teleology. The leader of a hunt is the meta hunter: he projects that aim out further for the entire tribe and is rewarded for this heroic skill.

The Monarch is appropriately placed on a gun-carriage because they are the arch-meta-hunter. They are the locality of the cognitive act of firing the arrow of a people, of restating its ways of firing—and to speak a vision and direct a purpose is to fire the arrow of English being into the future.

THUMP — cannons boom in the distance breaking the silence—

Hyde park. Ceremonial Artillery crews CLANG shells out of smoking cannon and THRUST in reloads—

THUMP — the cannons mark the mortal hour. What does this mean? An explosion is the mightiest sound Man can make, the mightiest wind he can manifest as an extension of his being. And isn’t all man’s being manifest by and on wind?—does his speaking not ride across it to open his knowing world to another? This wind, then, is the mediator our being, and the cannon thump is a waystone marking English being: It functions to stamp what matters to this tribe, to point at value, purpose, to hold us from anarchy—holding the silence, holding the void—while we wait for this over-wind to gather.

THUMP — The cannons mark each year of the monarch’s reign, heartbeats of mortal time, ticking clock of English epoch. Time isn’t external to us it is within and manifested by being; It is marked and drawn by being’s happening. This is true time in the cognition of a people: not some low Eisenstinian computation—Scientology’s Soothsaying for Calculator Watch Wearing Robots seeking material ends with exactly-inexact-unbeing-of-vibrating-quarts-crystals: object oriented nonsense.

RE-BAPTISED IN ENGLISH SPIRIT

Forward goes our gaze. The funeral procession arrives at Westminster hall. Gentlemen Guard, Kingsguard on horses, Heralds—all are encased in rich ceremonial garb. Nothing in this funeral march is utilitarian; these uniforms take months to make, many are very old and continuously repaired, carefully made and maintained by English hands and sweat.

The brass is English brass, the steel is English steel, cast in Birmingham; the embroidery is English embroidery, sewn in the Westend; the feathers in their caps are from Somerset in Wessex, Alfred the Great’s homeland.

The procession is encased in a physical actual England: like their bodies, made of English earth—English equipment, English men, and English being.

Englands way of being is communicated through these equipments and the ritual, even if you don’t realise it.

These costumes are not props: they’re ritual equipment. Normal equipment isn’t present to you while it’s put to work: you see through the hammer, it’s invisible while enacting the task. Ritual symbolic equipment is the opposite: the individual is made invisible here (Man is not himself, he’s ‘Herald’), you wear and become the tool of the ritual and equipment: it’s not of service to the Herald, he’s put in service by it, for our sake and for the sake of something larger (England) of which the equipment is just a part. They are in a sense our equipment; they serve to presence something to the people.

Heralds wear a kind of enacted artwork: it has a working imbedded in it that presences something when it’s interacted with—it discloses a way of being to you. Without examination It’s not noticed propositionally but you feel its attunement and the effect it has on your perspective:

If someone wheres a suit it alters the world perception of the person he’s interacting with, it’s asserting a way of being as an action and you treat him better because of it. If he’s dressed like a thug, he is acting as a thug: your right brain sees the way of a thug without any intervention from your left brain egomind.

Inside Westminster hall now. English order’s founding stone and dwelling. The Queen rests in state, her coffin draped in royal arms atop a podium protected by Kingsguard.

The enemy, the machine, corrupts England’s body, but today England’s spirit has the force to take possession of the whole state apparatus, to throw the false gold and filth down on their knees.

This millennia old structure marks the founding of English order; the old stone retains power to tell us truths of English ways. The past is always with us in our being: it’s an organ of our cognitive ‘body’ ever giving form to action and world. Today it’s unfolding in its strength.

As the King approaches the coffin to stand his final watch gathering wind moves with him, rippling through the feathered plume of the Kings Guard right as Charles reaches the coffin.

The guard point their swords toward the earth: in ancient cosmology the point is the tool of order, of knowledge, of spirit: the ground is earth, chaos, concealer—the nothingness abyss that rises and takes back all mortal things to its cold yet renewing embrace.

Men, encased in English equipment, point the tool of order at the abyss as if to say “this monarch lives and we hold you back, abyss, with our spirit manifest in the sword”, “we hold you back (time, earth) while we properly send off this spirit that persists as a part of our existential being. Only then can you have her, once we have all paid our respects”.

English being is in these equipments, in this building, in any ordered nature made English by English hands: building, text, costume, this is not empty matter, or means to your ends, It has its ends far beyond mere you.

The coffin is set upon square founding stone—the hall: in ancient cosmology, the stone has four points, the pointy tool cuts a border of points which forms a square (order is square, chaos is round) and raises a ‘four walled border’ to hold chaos at bay and hold civilisation inside it. This is the centre of English order and world; the personification of English order is laid to rest on the founding stone, dwelling, of English order.

CLANG CLANG—

The silence is broken by ushers CLANGING steel rods on stone signalling the beginning of the watch. The English snake into the hall in a line miles long. Many yet one. What drives them here? Despite corruption and inauthenticity, something remains that drives them from everyday concerns to this ancient place: a wind of spirit.

What is it? or rather who?

They mark the cross, they bow, they pay their final respects. Notice: there is no glass, no rope, no swat team, placed between the people and the King. This is no idiot museum display with some empty literalist plaque destroying a symbol’s true meaning. This is real; this is alive. The people are touching sacreds directly with their being: the coffin, the crown, the cross, and the King.

The English are directly participating, they breath the same air, unmediated;

they stand on the same ancient rock and dwelling place of Kings of old; an ancient English people gather to remark it as their dwelling place—’this is ours‘—their being stakes its claim.

History is a possession, an organ of your extended being you don’t recognise is a part of your body or you have a false story about. Without this organ nothing would drive these people here in their thousands. Moderns think ‘it’s just a story’ but that history and stone is still imbedded with English form that shapes. They are passing through a historical being that is the grounding and germinator of their own current being. It’s imbued with the being that originally placed it and the being of those who wore down its stone with their footsteps. When you dwell with it, in awaiting silence, you invite it to disclose its true being to you underneath your stale ideas of it.

Baptism means immersion in water, dwelling in holy water. This is a reconsecration, rebaptism, of the English in their own historical being to reground and reknow its true nature. I don’t mean that propositionally. This is beneath that. These people pass through their own ancient dispossessed being. A holy grounding casting out inauthentic confusion to open the authentic truth of the dwelling stone and order that formed who they are today, that formed our language and all of our ways.

This is an event that remains closed from modern life; closed off from the machine like all sacreds must be. You can’t buy a King’s death experience on Amazon. So when it opens to you, and you accept its call, it re aligns your world showing you what’s truly relevant and matters.

PROCESSION AS DISTRIBUTED COGNITION & NATIONAL ORGANISM

Forward goes our gaze now, the funeral procession snakes its way out of modernist London back to where it was born and where it belongs: in green Windsor we sense the spirit returning home. And you see this green as a hold out wherever monarchical tradition still holds some sway.

Nothing could be more appropriate.

Countryside isn’t raw nature—it’s an extension of the temple: cultivated, tamed, given form by English hands. It carries the people’s being. The coffin makes its way up the mile long road to Windsor castle. Thousands of English watch from either side: like pews in a church procession.

We notice in this march the cascading sway of an organism take form: not content to merely watch the English crowd walk with the procession, they escort it as their own property, their own being, toward their castle—this is a dwelling of the people in the being of the people.

What is this being? Who?

Cognitive science tells us that cognition is extended. That means your being, your parts as a cognitive being, extend beyond your flesh: your speech is a part of you as an organism, an extended body part; as I write these words and you read them this is an extension of my being to you—the original being that I see and know is opened to you.

Cognition can also be distributed to form an overarching Hyperagency: a sports team is an example of such an emergent organism. With this ritual, you see a much larger higher order organism in action, but it works in much the same way: though it’s implicit, hidden, and ancient, It’s a distributed cognition between all the brains of the people. They don’t need to be physically connected beyond receiving a signal, all that’s needed is a feedback loop for the ‘thought form’, if you like, to communicate with its parts across the brains.

Cognitive scientists describe hyperagencies, beings, psychological organisms, memes, that cross many brains. We see empirical evidence that psychological complexes can take possession of your body, like a phobia, and make you shake or feel sick from it—it possesses your body parts outside your conscious control.

If you think the woke parasite is plausible as a mind virus, and its parts communicate to form an organism, it should be much easier for you to see these hyperagencies have existed since the dawn of man.

And I call this ancient English Hyperagency The Over King.

OVERKING VS TRANSHUMINIST DEMONS

Backward goes our gaze: St. James Palace, London. Blair, Sturgeon and other black suited demons front the King in audience at St. James’ palace. They await the King’s statement.

Many of them have worked tirelessly to tare this heirloom down; If the machine could remove the monarchy, right now, it would; Modernism’s will is to destroy any semblance of inefficient tradition; technocrat elites at their core wish to transcend all earthly bonds and become gods, to bow and scrape to no higher spirit.

Their ‘progress’ god is at odds with allowing this to go on, so ‘what’s forcing them?’ We wonder, ‘why are they here? What drives them?’. ‘The monarchy makes more than they cost’ is no explanation. France killed their King, and they make more money on tourism. Ultimately, it’s not being subsidised by foreigners.

Blair and Sturgeon would hate singing God Save the King to this perennialist traditionalist—yet they sing it. No one is paid to be there: it’s voluntary. And we know Sturgeon wants out.

Why is this dragons horde of gold spent, ordered by an unwilling elite, when efficiency drives every other walk of life? What drives of royal warrants to be awarded to English companies to create the steel, the fabrics, the design, of ceremonial equipment in England with English material when they could be made in China?

The the second order effects of power, status, money, that attendance allows aren’t explanations either. It’s the force that grants secondary effects I’m talking about: this spirit’s glow, this spirit’s threat of what it will do to them if they don’t attend. These cosmopolitans feel a pressure, they feel they can’t get away with not participating in and enacting the ritual, with dismantling it here and now, with not singing the anthem in the ceremony.

What is that? Social pressure? And what is underneath the social pressure? The consequences if they don’t? And where do those consequences come from?—

—the English people themselves.

What drives those consequences?: the English know it must be done, that it feels right, which means there is a moral impulsion within. Sturgeon fears this impulsion driving public outcry. That impulsion is emotive data from the value heirarchy in the unconscious which determines what should be done, what should be chosen and rejected. That heirarchy was constituted by the pantheon of our greatest heroes and most distinct figures forming one personality: the Over-King.

This organism, within the English people, amounts to an implicit distributed cognition, as i’ve alluded to. What’s left of its body, what’s still online, is fighting back—and despite efforts to degenerate parts of its ceremony this a real world example of the organism showing itself to us.

We’re paying, the state is paying, because the Over-King is forcing them to. This is His moment: despite every power organ of His body being stolen from him over centuries He still fights for us, and He will demand they enact His ancient spiritual body in the form these rituals: This Is A Last Great Mighty Bellowing of a Horn to His Sons—

He assigns this Charles as the localisation of His form. His authority is the resource that drives them to wait before this mortal; this mortal’s only duty is to live up to Him.

HOW THE OVER-KING DRIVES HIS WILL: SACRED AS VITAL RESOURCE

But how is ‘it’ acting upon them? With what force? Where can we see it?’

The fact that this operates contrary to utilitarian and economic motives shows you it is a separate power, any religion will prove that to you. Divinity, and the holiness and honour it generates, is a sacred resource. Money gets you to move without compulsion, to fulfil your material wants and needs; the sacred gets you to move because it matters to you in itself, it’s what makes mattering possible, it founds what matters.

You don’t exactly know why it matters, because it’s pre your individualist ideas about what matters, this sacred, It doesn’t matter because you say it matters, or think ‘i believe this matters’, it matters without your permission because you feel compelled to pay your respects, to watch. Perhaps you feel it’s your idea, but it isn’t really. You don’t get a choice in this mattering, and it drives you to turn up to the ceremony, it drives you to seek honours, it makes you emotionally moved when a hero displays behaviours that are aligned to this temple’s mattering, to this Over-king.

Honours, the monarchy, the sacred—their currency is ‘the power of mattering’ to the people and to those who want them, and they still operate in the afterglow of the divine which founded their worth. The sacred is at the top of the heirarchy of value, founded by the temple: think of this in terms of primitive pre religious mentality, this is before value itself as mythology emerges in the founding of the the first temple. When you found the temple, you close off a precinct from ‘normality’ and ‘known’: part of being is closed to general use as sacred, it founds value itself (mattering). Now we have a pillar which reveals the highest; and now by contrast a lowest profane is seen: and that makes a scale that all other things begin to get sorted into.

We only see and know anything because of contrast that value reveals—having eyes doesn’t mean you can see; true sight is Being, knowing, and we ‘saw’ nothing before this temple. After the founding you have this thing in mind beyond any one person, beyond animalistic desires: this is top dog, top mattering. It is greater than you, and unifies you with the others that have this closed off precinct within.

Everything at its base is behavioural pattern, and ways of being are in all that we see in this funeral. The rituals, honours, are still imbued with the glow of sacred value founded by the temple, and those ways of being are noticed by you unconscious—you admire, against your will, those who enact the ways. You can have false gold, honours held by fake heroes, but it’s our job to call that out. It’s no reason to throw it out. Despite corruption, tradition’s true purpose survives: it can be used to intuit and disclose the behavioural pattern that they are intended to reward, it’s imbedded in symbols and the equipment and procedure of ritual.

I’ve seen people talking shit about this ritual because of who the royal family are. Forget the mortals. The Over King is the King. And he is visible in what he’s forcing the royals to do, forcing the state to do, despite the machine’s greatest efforts to slay him, to hide him from us. And though he is mostly closed to our eyes, ignored, he shouts today:

Understand: Charles is only our King, if he is enacting the Over-King’s way. That Over-King is the personification of the patterns of action of our greatest heroes. Those patterns of action are the way, they’re revealed by the sacred symbols of England and the mythic narrative order. After The Coronation, the hew of the Over-King will dissipate. It’s our job to search for him, to articulate him, and see any perversions of his way, his ceremonies, don’t stick.

THE DEATH RITUAL: WHAT’S IT FOR? WHAT’S IT DO?

Backward goes our gaze to where we first began, back to St. Georges chapel. The temple of the Dragonslayer.

The end of a story solidifies its meaning; It’s this place of all places that gives form to all we have seen. This is the dwelling place of heroes, the order of the garter, and the values of the dragonslayer and English knights and Kings. Ignore the false gold that wears the true gold, it’s the dwelling spirit we are after to understand the ways.

The Queen’s coffin is being lowered into the stomach (where vital force is gathered) the crypt of the temple. This means she’s buried with the good, the narrative order of heroes, the teleology. Those things create vital force. We see here all the symbols of great houses, symbols that represent ways of dragonslaying. The monarch is put to rest in that place where greatness is knighted, raised, and refined, where the value heirarchy is recognised.

The story of the Order of the Garter is founded in Arthurian mythos. The King lifts up that which is scorned by the state, or the people under him. He sees nobility in it, and wears the garter, and those who scorned and derided it now flock to wear it themselves. This shows you part of the monarch’s function: understand the good of English being underneath inauthentic appearance.

See the funeral, all the events surrounding the monarchs death, as a ritual psychotechnology: it’s purpose (the whole ritual’s implicit function) is to reveal purpose itself so a more powerful and authentic future can be forward-thrown and born into the next era. It does that by using symbols and ritual to articulate, reveal, and call you to see the things that are valued: understand good English being.

A mortal is dead that was the localisation for the projection of our common inner value heirarchy, and in the felt absence of that localisation what it was connected to via projection (the value heirarchy in your being) is recognised emotively in ‘feeling’. The severing of the connection between these two parts of being forces us to face our hidden Englishness underneath inauthentic ideas and appearance. This same thing occurs when you grieve a relative’s death: you’re forced to face your own being that was shared with them, and deeper, you are emoting to yourself the thing lost (which you possess as part of your extended being else you’d not grieve anything at all)

Grieving tells you something mattered; Ritual and symbolism, and authentic history, reveal the specifics of the something. It’s presenting this englishness to you because in the coming months that true englishness must be gathered and asserted in the coronation (by the ritual, not commentators with their corrupt propositions).

So ultimately the ritual’s purpose is to help our common being to articulate itself to ourselves, that common being that we try to propagandise away, don’t understand, or ignore—something the machine doesn’t want us to know. It’s a cleansing of inauthenticity to disclose what matters: what your common bonds and values are, but not as a proposition. Because at the end of an era, for the organism to renew, and go on powerfully, brighter than before, it needs this emotional power of the loss of a person, and a funeral, to clear inauthentic bullshit and to call you to yourself, which is also a part of it—to call England to its authentic way being.

It is a gathering of the organism, expressed in ritual, so you notice its parts, and it mediates them to you, and you feel it in emotion (which evidences its parts are already in you). It’s not made visible by those who talk of ‘English values’, nor most of the time by how the monarch is said to have behaved—it is in the ritual and symbolism itself.

The picture is made more clear as the coronation is lead to, and as the sacred symbols are put to use to further show ‘the ideal ways’. The monarch’s death, the funeral, the entire ritual is a beacon that expresses English value in an interpretable form. To start a new era after the coronation, with the true authentic way of being made more clear, means you are enacting the organisms will: english purpose (or more, it’s ways, because you can’t egoise this organism as an individual)

This will become clearer with to people in their personal lives, speaking their experience of events to eachother at the pub, at the chippy, as they notice things in eachother leading up to coronation. This noticing is the expectation of the Over King for how the English, and the mortal king, are to behave.

It’s an opportunity for the mortal King to understand what the spirit of England is, to understand he is not an individual, to understand this spirit and Crown are the true King; It’s an opportunity for us to understand, so we might enact it, and we might drive him to conform to it.

THE OVER-KING SPEAKS

If I were to mediate this Over King from all we have seen, he’s speaking these words through events:

“I am millennia old, I am beyond a will, seeing me is the clearing of an old overgrown path through a thick ancient forest. I am that English path and way.

I have been called many names before by you: Henry, Elizabeth, Richard, Nelson, Drake, Robin, even Thor, but it is Arthur, Over King, who is the clearest gathering of my form.

They have corrupted my body, cut off my limbs—they have hidden me from you. Yet I live. For a century they have gnawed my flesh, your flesh, and sapped our vital force. They will me torn from you to sunder your power to resist—all the easier to enslave—but I am NOT so easily removed; I am NOT so easily waylaid; my riverbed is carved deep in the land, deep in England, deep in you—

These Filthy Hedonistic Parasites With Their Pestilent Black Mirrors—Idle Entertainments and Tranquilliser Chemicals of the Beast—they will Not Extinguish Me.

With what remains of my power I force our enemies in the State to move in this time of transition. And in the same way, through distributed cognition, I move you: I am the reason you take interest, I am the reason you read these words, I am the reason you care about a monarch, I am care itself, your primordial value heirarchy that makes care possible. Despite the enemy’s hate of my form I possess the state apparatus in this moment and I force them to enact my ancient body. I am these rituals, they express my spirit. And is this not true, my English?

A spirit needs a body to gather, this is the mortal Charles’s function: Be The Gathering Point Of My Being, from you to him, and him to you; be a manifestation of my form. He is only me, your King, insofar as he manifests, articulates, and enacts and imitates my form. Only then is he King of England; only then is he YOUR King.

How can he be my form, if he is to pander to Incompatible Gods of far off lands. This is not your King—I am your King, I am his King—I am Over King by divine right through our lord Jesus Christ. This is my land, for my people—you are MINE, English, remember this. Only If Charles follows me, and our lord Jesus Christ, is he King of England. It is not for them, nor this mortal, to pervert, to distort, to disobey my form.

No matter what horrors they perpetuate, my people, I live as inspired fire. I am your fire, and I’ll defend you in the mortal plane. I’ll be your shield, I’ll be your sword, I’ll protect the Kingdom, I’ll protect you, THROUGH you.

Whilst one Englishman draws breath and speaks my resistance, I live.”

(the stream is cued up below if you’d like to hear it verbally performed)

The End of Strife

Alongside touch behind vision,
His touch deep in the heart,
One-and-the-same, resting in essence,
My head on the shoulder 
Of my beloved Christ;

This gift of tears,
This savoured Word
This heart of mine
Filled with His freshness;

This rich glory
In Christ's return,
Let it last forever,
New being now me;

This cool tranquility,
This billowing life,
This coming home,
This end of strife.

All is forgiven, be healed;
My son, nothing of love is lost;
Come home, rest your head:
Drink in my peace-filled waves
Drift in my pool of re-lief

This watchful silent exaltation, 
Burning-cleansing off of low; 
Physician's Pregnant silence awakens
A coming to birth of deeper grace

Born again, His birds send His joyous glory now
Born again, His words teach and guide now
Born again, yet remember, be ever vigilant my son,
The devil apes, even in grace.

Hold the watch, check all words;  
Nevertheless, be not afraid, my dearest
He has returned.
Glory to our physician and healer, Christ Jesus. 

Amen.

Dormition of the Breath of Life 

The deep want of breath,
The dormition of the soul,
The narrowing-closing in of all;
Downward to the deepest heart;

The darkening in mourning,
The death before return—
Then His thrusting breathing in!—
Awake! Find thick and encompassing
A cool fresh peace that overflows 
Fills and rests our being, all;
Sweet Master, 
Holy tranquility in the sky-blue. 

Dormition comes complete
On the Lord's day pilgrimage,
Yet this dying breath continues
Now surrounded by new grace;

Christ acting in us, 
Fasting of breath,
Cleanse and purify,
Die to become;

This suffering fasting,
Yet safe in Him; 
Governing this breath,
Governing heart's beats—
Our master of hearts.

Long have we followed 
His grace in the breath,
In growing confidence of service,
In growing worship and concentration.

Your flock of birds greets us, Master
At the setting of the sun.
We love you, dearest; 
Glory to you, our Lord.

Lord of all.

Amen. 

(the stream is cued up below if you’d like to hear it verbally performed)

The Divine Standing-under

This sharp silence,
This exalted dark,
This pregnant awaiting:

Like the feeling of a brewing 
Unseen storm not yet struck
The ground of I
Primordial sense knows
A heightened atmosphere.
Not any sense
Of surface we possess

This essential under-standing
Deepest standing that us 
This Soul overshadowed
This Reformation of the under 

Deep incorporeal wisdom
Meets the Master:
This Hallowed, Holy, struck-dumb,
Quiet astonishment.

Faculties darken,
No fear, no psychology,
Some part of I in the deep
Is away some where
In union with the heights.
And then—

That flower of deepest potentiality
That pregnant silence births
That intuition born into grace
Unfolds to miracle...

And the Master is met
In the glorious Love of His New Day,
Amen.


The Secret Gardening

This ever-plague, demonic tune,
In every marketplace;  
This dancing scarlet-she, 
A toxic pseudo-agency.

Demons culled to silence
By plateaus of falling leaves,
By the call of ancient mountain
And the winds of Lordly breeze 

He calls His secret sweetness 
Through the birds of solemn paths
A crimson blue-bird gardens treetops
Dropping leaves for us to find.

Now this cleansing of the soul
Now this thumping sacred heart
Now the Master in the blood
Now this cave of hidden peace.

Lord Jesus Christ, son of god, 
Have mercy on me, a sinner,
True music, cleansed and free; 
An ever-song to purify

Always, to the winds of silent music,
Always, waves to find the path
Always, always,
Even until the end of time. 

Glory to your sovereign peace, Christ Jesus
Amen.

(the stream is cued up below if you’d like to hear it verbally performed)

The Rich Bread

High hallowed saints 
Silence the demons,
Make safe the bridge
With prayers to our Lord

Bourn by His Breath, 
Peace, Holy Spirit,
Rising made safe
In His loving care

Now this rich bread,
This foretaste of union,
High sorrows felt
Deep in the heart

Dart in our centre,
Groans of man mourning,
Drawn deep inside
A'live wounded heart 

Lord's resurrection, Master of death,
Master of sorrows, Master of life—

All Hallowed God. 
All Hallowed God.

Amen.


House of Silence

This Cunning thought seeks prime place
This hierarchy of idols
This will to cover love for Our Lord,
This Passion provokes, Cycling type

Searing spears until we come
To the seat of the heart
To His crowning hight
In this lowly place.

Intimate Home
Found in the silence
After the culling,
A grave solemn peace

Seek and ye shall find
Ask and ye shall receive
Knock and the door will be open
My lowly, humble, intimate hearts

These loving waves
Divine Breath that opens the way
Homeward bound we go,
Hither come, my son.

The Master's waiting
With open arms
Safe at last
Peace from False Gods

This solemn miracle, this gift
For unworthy sinners, such as us
Thank God, have mercy on us Lord.
You and this Sovereign Sacred Time
Are the light of my life

Abandon me not, Master
Grant and increase
This Divine Love
Grant deeper union
This Sacred Heart.

Glory to your long suffering, Lord.
Amen.

(the stream is cued up below if you’d like to hear it verbally performed)

Calling Whispers

A causation ex nihilo
A felt sending breeze
Drifts and flows down 
From these living trees.

A bird swoops
The Master calls
I dwell to depths
To meet him in kind.

"It is I, be not afraid
I, In the depths of the wind
I, sending scents of wood fire
I, calling whispers, meaningful to you,

You who I know better than 
You yourself do;
You, my son, come now and follow me—
Onward now, yonder, begin this new day".


Providential Threshold

This High Touch,
This boundary felt and joined,
Meeting Him, a revelation,
In the light of His beauty.

That Uncreated Glory
Following His breath
Rejecting temptations of soul
Following His Love.

This Holy spirit,
This serene breeze—
Incense from the throne of God,
Raising to Him. 

Enlivened now is the world,
Relaying His sovereign message;
Full of glory is the sun
The true Son now within it

The spring morning of youth
Returned with greater glory
Casting from its original source
Calling in His Name.

In Christ's light, Purified;
Here now is true childhood,
Former youth only an echo
Of the true innocence.

Now full of hope, 
Somehow in a future to unfold
Life-to-come flowering hither from Him,
Providential, in the now.

CONCLAVE GROUP TALKS ARE THIS WEEK

1): Europe FRIDAY 31st 9am London time

2): United States: THURSDAY 30th 9pm New York City time

3): Australia: FRIDAY 11am, FRIDAY 6PM Sydney time

I’m hoping to see you all there, important spiritual impulses are granted in these meetings.

To join us live on the discord, pledge here on Substack or at https://scottmannion.com/fellowship

God Bless you,

Scott Mannion

ONE: Europe FRIDAY 3rd 9am London time.

TWO: United States: THURSDAY 2nd 9pm New York City time.

Lord’s blessings to you all. Hoping to see you there. AUSTRALIA TIMES FOR THESE: 6pm SYDNEY TIME FRI to join with the EU, and 11am to join with the Americans.

Join us at this important time after our Lord’s Ascension, and Pentecost, as we share our experiences over the last month.

CONCLAVE GROUP TALKS TOMORROW!

ONE: Europe FRIDAY 5th 9am London time.

TWO: United States: 9pm New York City time THURSDAY 4th

AUSTRALIA SYDNEY TIME: FRIDAY 11am, FRIDAY 6PM

I’m hoping to see you all there, important spiritual impulses are granted in these meetings.

To join us live on the discord, pledge here on Substack or at https://scottmannion.com/fellowship

God Bless you,

Scott Mannion

1. Pentecost Homily St. Gregory Palamas

2. Pentecost Writings St. Cyril of Alexandria,

3. Pentecost Homily St. John Crysostom,

4. Ascension Homily St. Gregory Palamas

5. Ascension Homily St. John Crysostom,

6. Pedagogy Lecture Rudolf Steiner

7. Pentecost Lecture Rudolf Steiner

Pentecost Homily, Saint Gregory Palamas, Archbishop of Thessaloniki

1. A short while ago, with the strong eyes of faith, we beheld Christ ascending, no less clearly than those accounted worthy to be eye-witnesses, nor are we less favored than they. “Blessed are they that have not seen, and yet have believed”, says the Lord (John 20:29), referring to those who have found assurance through hearing, and see by faith. Recently we saw Christ lifted up from the ground bodily (Acts 1:9). Now, through the Holy Spirit sent by Him to His disciples, we see how far Christ ascended and to what dignity He carried up the nature He assumed from us. Clearly He went up as high as the place from which the Spirit sent by Him descended. He Who spoke through the Prophet Joel showed us whence the Spirit comes, saying, “I will pour out my spirit upon all flesh” (Joel 2:28), and to Him David addressed the words, “Thou sendest forth thy spirit, they are created: and thou renewest the face of the earth” (Psalm 104:30). It follows that at His Ascension Christ went up to the Father on high, as far as His Fatherly bosom, from which comes the Spirit. Having been shown, even in His human form, to share the Father’s glory, Christ now sent forth the Spirit Who comes from the Father and is sent by Him from heaven. But when we hear that the Spirit was sent by the Father and the Son, this does not mean that the Spirit has no part in their greatness, for He is not just sent, but also Himself sends and consents to be sent.

2. This is clearly shown by Christ’s words spoken through the Prophet, “Mine hand hath laid the foundation of the earth and stretched out the heavens, and now the Lord God, and His Spirit, have sent me” (cf. Isa. 48:13-16). Again, speaking through the same Prophet He says, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me; because the Lord hath anointed me to preach good tidings unto the meek” (Isa. 61:1). The Holy Spirit is not just sent, but Himself sends the Son, Who is sent by the Father. He is therefore shown to be the same as the Father and the Son in nature, power, operation and honor. By the good pleasure of the Father and the cooperation of the Holy Spirit, the only begotten Son of God, on account of the boundless ocean of divine love for mankind, bowed down the heavens and came down (Psalm 18:9). He appeared on earth after our fashion, lived among us, and did and taught great, wonderful and sublime things truly worthy of God, which led those who obeyed Him towards deification and salvation.

3. After willingly suffering for our salvation, being buried, and rising on the third day, He ascended into heaven and sat down on the right hand of the Father, whence He co-operated in the descent of the divine Spirit upon His disciples by sending down together with the Father the power from on high, as Both had promised (cf. Luke 24:49). Having sat down in the heavens, He seems to call to us from there, “If anyone wants to approach this glory, become a partaker of the kingdom of heaven, be called a son of God and find eternal life, inexpressible honor, pure joy and never-ending riches, let him heed My commandments and imitate as far as he can My own way of life. Let him follow My actions and teachings when I came to the world in the flesh to establish saving laws and offer Myself as a pattern.” Truly the Savior confirmed the Gospel teaching by His deeds and miracles, and fulfilled it through His sufferings. He proved how beneficial it was for salvation by His Resurrection from the dead, His Ascension into heaven, and now by the descent of the divine Spirit upon His disciples, the event we celebrate today. After rising from the dead and appearing to His disciples, He said as He was taken up into heaven, “Behold, I send the promise of my Father upon you: but tarry ye in the city of Jerusalem, until ye be clothed with power from on high” (Luke 24:49). “For ye shall receive power, after that the Holy Spirit is come upon you: and ye shall be witnesses unto me both in Jerusalem, and in all Judaea, and unto the uttermost part of the earth” (cf. Acts 1:8).

4. When the fiftieth day after the Resurrection had come, the day we now commemorate, all the disciples were gathered with one accord in the upper room, each having also gathered together his thoughts, for they were devoting themselves intently to prayer and hymns to God. “And suddenly,” says Luke the Evangelist, “there came a sound from heaven as of a rushing mighty wind, and it filled the house where they were sitting” (Acts 2:1-11). This is the sound which the Prophetess Hannah foretold when she received the promise concerning Samuel: “The Lord went up to heaven and thundered; and he shall give strength and exalt the horn of his anointed” (cf. 1 Samuel. 2:10 LXX). Elijah’s vision also forewarned of this sound: “Behold the voice of a light breeze, and in it was the Lord” (cf. 1 Kings19:12 LXX). This “voice of a light breeze” is the sound of breath. You might also find a reference to it in Christ’s Gospel. According to John the Theologian and Evangelist, “In the last day, that great day of the feast”, that is to say Pentecost, “Jesus stood and cried, saying, If any man thirst, let him come unto me and drink… This he spoke of the Spirit, which they that believe on him should receive” (John 7:37-39). Again, after His Resurrection He breathed on His disciples and said, “Receive ye the Holy Spirit” (John 20:22).

5. That cry of Christ prefigured this sound, and His breathing upon the disciples foretold the breath, which is now poured down abundantly from above and resounds with a great voice heard far and wide, summoning everything under heaven, pouring grace over all who approach with faith and filling them with it. It is forceful in that it is all-conquering, storms the ramparts of evil, and destroys all the enemy’s cities and strongholds. It brings low the proud and lifts up the humble in heart, binds what should not have been loosed, breaks the bonds of sins and undoes what is held fast. It filled the house where they were sitting, making it a spiritual font, and accomplishing the promise which the Savior made them when He ascended, saying, “For John truly baptized with water; but ye shall be baptized with the Holy Spirit not many days hence” (Acts 1:5). Even the name which He gave them proved to be true, for through this noise from heaven the Apostles actually became Sons of Thunder (cf. Mark 3:17). “And there appeared unto them”, it says, “cloven tongues like as of fire, and it sat upon each of them. And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit, and began to speak with other tongues, as the Spirit gave them utterance” (Acts 2:3-4).

6. Those miracles accomplished by the Lord in the flesh, which bore witness that He was God’s only-begotten Son in His own Person, united with us in the last days, came to an end. On the other hand, those wonders began which proclaimed the Holy Spirit as a divine Person in His own right, that we might come to know and contemplate the great and venerable mystery of the Holy Trinity. The Holy Spirit had been active before: it was He Who spoke through the prophets and proclaimed things to come. Later He worked through the disciples to drive out demons and heal diseases. But now He was manifested to all in His own Person through the tongues of fire, and by sitting enthroned as Lord upon each of Christ’s disciples, He made them instruments of His power.

7. Why did He appear in the form of tongues? It was to demonstrate that He shared the same nature as the Word of God, for there is no relationship closer than that between word and tongue. It was also because of teaching, since teaching Christ’s Gospel needs a tongue full of grace. But why fiery tongues? Not just because the Spirit is consubstantial with the Father and the Son – and our God is fire (cf. Hebrews 12:29), a fire consuming wickedness – but also because of the twofold energy of the Apostles’ preaching, which can bring both benefit and punishment. As it is the property of fire to illuminate and burn, so Christ’s teaching enlightens those who obey but finally hands over the disobedient to eternal fire and punishment. The text says, “tongues like fire” not “tongues of fire”, that no one might imagine it was ordinary physical fire, but that we might understand the manifestation of the Spirit using fire as an example. Why did the tongues appear to be divided among them? Because the Spirit is given by measure by the Father to all, except Christ (John 3:34), Who Himself came from above. He, even in the flesh, possessed the fullness of divine power and energy, whereas the grace of the Holy Spirit was only partially, not fully, contained within anyone else. Each one obtained different gifts, lest anyone should suppose the grace given to the saints by the Holy Spirit was theirs by nature.

8. The fact that the divine Spirit sat upon them is proof not just of His lordly dignity, but of His unity. He sat, it says, “upon each of them. And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit” (Acts 2:3-4). For although divided in His various powers and energies, in each of His works the Holy Spirit is wholly present and active, undividedly divided, partaken of while remaining complete, like the sun’s ray. They spoke with other tongues, other languages, to people from every nation, as the Spirit gave them utterance. They became instruments of the divine Spirit, inspired and motivated according to His will and power. Anything taken hold of by somebody outside itself, sharing in the energy but not the essence of the one acting through it, is his instrument. As David declared through the Holy Spirit, “My tongue is the pen of a ready writer” (Psalm 45:1). The pen is the writer’s instrument, sharing in the energy, though obviously not the essence, of the writer, and inscribing whatever he wishes and is able to write.

9. In what sense is the Holy Spirit the promise of the Father? He foretold Him through His prophets, saying through Ezekiel, “A new heart also will I give you, and a new spirit will I put within you: and I will put my spirit within you” (cf. Ezekiel 36:26-27). Through Joel He proclaims, “And it shall come to pass in the last days, that I will pour out my spirit upon all flesh” (cf. Joel 2:28). Longing for the Holy Spirit, Moses cried out in anticipation, “Would God that all the Lord’s people were prophets, and that the Lord would put his spirit upon them” (Num. 11:29). As the gracious will of the Father and His promise are one and the same as the Son’s, Christ told those Who believed in Him, “Whosoever drinketh of the water that I shall give him, it shall be to him a well of water springing up into everlasting life” (cf. John 4:14), and, “He that believeth on me, as the scripture hath said, out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water” (John 7:38). By way of explanation, the Evangelist says, “This He spoke of the Spirit, which they that believe on him should receive” (John 7:39). As He approached His saving Passion He told His disciples, “If ye love me, keep my commandments. And I will pray the Father, and he shall give you another Comforter, that he may abide with you for ever; even the Spirit of truth” (John 14:15-17). And again, “These things have I spoken unto you, being yet present with you. But the Comforter, which is the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, he shall teach you all things” (John 14:25-26). And yet again, “When the Comforter is come, whom I will send unto you from the Father, even the Spirit of truth, which proceedeth from the Father, he shall testify of me” (John 15:26), and “he will guide you into all the truth” (John 16:13).

10. The promise was now fulfilled and the Holy Spirit, given and sent by both the Father and the Son, descended. He shone round about the holy disciples and with divine power kindled them all like lamps or, rather, He revealed them as heavenly lights set above the whole world, who had the word of eternal life, and through them He illuminated all the earth. If from one burning lamp someone lights another, then another from that one, and so on in succession, he has light continuously. In the same way, through the Apostles ordaining their successors, and these successors ordaining others, and so on, the grace of the Holy Spirit, is handed down through all generations and enlightens all who obey their spiritual shepherds and teachers.

11. Each hierarch in his turn comes to give the city this grace and gift of God and the enlightenment of the divine Spirit through the Gospel. Those who reject any of them, as can happen, interrupt God’s grace, break the divine succession, separate themselves from God and deliver themselves up to sinful rebellions and all kinds of disasters, as you are obviously aware from recent experience. If however, now that you have returned to the shepherd of your souls appointed by God, you obey my counsels for salvation, you will really and truly celebrate this annual commemoration of the Coming of the divine Spirit, Who of His unimaginable love descended for our salvation, just as the only-begotten Son of God, because of this same love and for the same purpose, bowed the heavens, came down and assumed our flesh.

12. Christ had ascended bodily into heaven, so if He had not sent His Holy Spirit to accompany and strengthen His disciples and their successors in following generations who taught the Gospel of grace, He would not have been preached to all nations, nor would the proclamation have been passed down to us. That is why the Lord, in His all-surpassing love for mankind, showed at Pentecost that His disciples were partakers, fathers and ministers of everlasting light and life, who bring us to new birth for eternal life and make those who are worthy children of the Light and fathers of enlightenment. Thus, He Himself is with us unto the end of the world, as was promised through the Spirit (Matthew 28:20). For He is One with the Father and the Spirit, not according to hypostasis, but in His divinity, and God is One in Three, in one tri-hypostatic and almighty divinity. The Holy Spirit always existed and was with the Son in the Father. How could the Father and divine Mind be without beginning if the Son and Word were not also without beginning? How could there be a pre-eternal Word without there also being a pre-eternal Spirit? Thus the Holy Spirit ever was and is and will be, co-Creator with the Father and the Son, together with them renewing that which has suffered corruption, and sustaining the things that endure. He is everywhere present and fills, directs and oversees everything. “Whither shall I go from thy spirit”, says the Psalmist to God, “Or whither shall I flee from thy presence?” (Psalm 139:7).

13. He is not just everywhere, but also above all, not just in every age and time, but before them all. And, according to the promise, the Holy Spirit will not just be with us until the end of the age, but rather will stay with those who are worthy in the age to come, making them immortal and filling their bodies as well with eternal glory, as the Lord indicated by telling His disciples, “I will pray the Father, and he shall give you another Comforter, that he may abide with you for ever” (John 14:16). “It is sown”, says the Apostle, meaning buried and committed to the earth, “a dead natural body”, that is to, say, an ordinary created body with a created soul, stable and capable of movement. “It is raised,” that is, comes back to life, “a spiritual body” (cf. 1 Corinthians. 15:44), which means a supernatural body, framed and ordered by the Holy Spirit, and clothed in immortality, glory and incorruption by the Spirit’s power (cf. 1 Corinthians. 15:53). “The first man, Adam”, he says, “was made a living soul; the last Adam was made a quickening spirit. The first man is of the earth, earthy; the second man is the Lord from heaven. As is the earthy, such are they also that are earthy: and as is the heavenly, such are they also that are heavenly” (cf. 1 Corinthians 15:45,47-48).

14. Who are these heavenly people? Those who are steadfast and immovable in their faith, who always abound in the Lord’s work and bear the image of the heavenly Adam through their obedience to Him. “He that obeyeth not the Son”, says John, the Lord’s Forerunner, through John the Evangelist, “shall not see life; but the wrath of God abideth on him” (John 3:36). Who can endure God’s wrath? “It is a fearful thing”, brethren, “to fall into the hands of the living God” (Hebrews 10:31). If we fear the hands of our enemies, even though the Lord says, “fear not them which kill the body” (Matt. 10:28), who in his right mind will not fear God’s hands raised in anger against the disobedient? For the wrath of God will be revealed against everyone who lives impurely and unjustly without repenting and holds the truth in unrighteousness (Romans 1:18).

15. Let us flee from wrath and hasten through repentance to obtain the kindness and compassion of the divine Spirit. If anyone feels hatred towards another, let him be reconciled with him and restore love, lest his hatred and conflict with his brother should bear witness against him that he does not love God. “For if you do not love your brother whom you have seen, how can you love God whom you have not seen?” (cf. 1 John 4:20). When we love one another, let our love be unfeigned, and let us show it in deeds, by neither saying nor doing, nor even enduring to hear, anything insulting or harmful to our brethren. As Christ’s beloved Theologian taught us, “Brethren, do not love in word, neither in tongue; but in deed and in truth” (cf. 1 John 3:18).

16. Anyone who has fallen into fornication, adultery or any other such bodily impurity, should desist from this revolting filth and cleanse himself through confession, tears, fasting and the like. For God judges unrepentant fornicators and adulterers. He condemns them, dismisses them and consigns them to hell, unquenchable fire and other never-ending punishments, saying, “Let the impure and accursed be taken away, lest they see and enjoy the glory of the Lord” (cf. Isaiah 26:10 LXX). Let thieves and all who are openly grasping and greedy stop stealing, defrauding and seizing what belongs to others, but also share their own possessions with those in need. In a word, if you desire life, to see good days, to be rescued from enemies both visible and invisible, the barbarians currently threatening us, and those punishments reserved for the prince of evil and his angels, depart from all evil and do good (Psalm 34:12,14). “Be not deceived”, the Apostle tells the Corinthians, “neither fornicators, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor abusers of themselves with men, nor covetous, neither drunkards nor revilers, nor extortioners, shall inherit the kingdom of God” (cf. 1 Corinthians 6:9-10). If someone has no inheritance with God he neither belongs to God nor has God as his Father.

17. But let us, brethren, I beseech you, abstain from deeds and words hateful to God, that we may boldly call God our Father. Let us truly return to Him, that He too may turn back to us, cleanse us from all sin and make us worthy of His divine grace. Then shall we keep festival both now and forever, and celebrate in a godly and spiritual way the accomplishments of God’s promise, the Coming of the All-holy Spirit among men and His resting upon them; the fulfillment and perfection of the blessed hope in Christ Himself Our Lord.

18. For to Him belong glory, honor and worship, with His Father without beginning and the all-holy, good and life-giving Spirit, now and forever and unto the ages of ages. Amen.

Pentecost Homily, Saint John Chrysostom

Let us spiritually extol the grace of the Holy Spirit in spiritual hymns, since spiritual grace has on this day shown upon us from heaven. Though our words are too weak to express adequately the greatness of this [grace], we shall praise its power and activity to the extent of our abilities; for the Holy Spirit probes all things, even the depths of divinity.

We are celebrating the day of Pentecost, the day of the Descent of the Holy Spirit to the Apostles, [the day of] the hope of perfection, the end of expectation, the longing for salvation, the fulfillment of prayer and the image of patience. Today the Spirit Who acted [to scatter] the nations in the time of Heber has formed tongues of fire among the Apostles. His action [of old] led to the confusion of the nations, in order to restrain the will of man from its brazenness and [consequent] chastisement; on this occasion, however, amidst fiery tongues, the deeds wrought by the activity of the Holy Spirit [served] to preserve us [as] recipients of preaching, [in] fulfillment of the will of God.

In the beginning the Spirit of God moved over the water, and later, in the time of Christ, the same Holy Spirit of God rested [upon him]. Then He moved, and now He rested, as being one in essence, equal in honor, ever-existent and unoriginate together with the Father and the Son. He Who by the flight of a dove over the waters of the Flood heralded fair weather to Noah, the same Holy Spirit, by the sight of a dove at the waters of the Jordan, showed the world the Sonship of Him Who was baptized. Moreover, the Lord had a terrifying answer for those who dared to utter blasphemy against the Holy Spirit: “Whosoever speaketh [blasphemy] against the Holy Spirit, it shall not be forgiven him, neither in this world, neither in the world to come.” David, declaring his desire for this Holy Spirit, prayed to God, saying: “Cast me not away from Thy presence, O Lord; and take not Thy Holy Spirit from me.”

As is well known, where He is absent, every sort of corruption sets in. Thus, the Spirit of the Lord departed from Saul, and an evil spirit entered into him, wherefore [David] said, “Take not Thy Holy Spirit from me.” This same Holy Spirit sanctified the prophets, instructed the apostles and empowered the mar­tyrs. This same Holy Spirit consecrated Isaiah, taught Ezekiel and revealed the resurrection of the dead. As he says, “The hand of the Lord was upon me, and carried me out in the spirit of the Lord.” This same Holy Spirit chose Jeremiah from his mother’s womb, and raised up Daniel to deliver Susanna. As it is written, “God raised up by the Holy Spirit a young youth, whose name was Daniel.” David so loved the presence of this same Holy Spirit that he prayed to God, saving, “Thy Holy Spirit shall lead me in the land of uprightness.” This same Holy Spirit of God came to dwell in the holy Virgin Mary, embracing her with the communion of the Divine Word at the good pleasure of the Father, and making her the Theotokos. Elizabeth, being filled with this same Holy Spirit, understood that the Lord had come to her by means of the Virgin; wherefore she said, “And whence is this to me, that the Mother of my Lord should come to me?” Zachariah, the father of John, was filled with the same Holy Spirit, whereby he declared that the son born to him would be the prophet and forerunner of the King Who was to come. John himself was also filled with the same Holy Spirit; the eyes of his intellect were given light, and he beheld the heavens opened, and the Holy Spirit hovering over Him Who was being bap­tized, Him Who baptized with the Spirit and fire. By the action of the same Holy Spirit, the Lord Himself, when He was giving His Apostles His teaching in detail and strength­ening their minds for the time of His Passion, said to them: “If I go not away, the Com­forter will not come unto you.”

Moreover, revealing to them the Spirit’s consubstantial power, He said: “When the Holy Spirit is come, Which proceedeth from the Father, He will guide you into all truth.” The holy Apostles waited expectantly for the coming of the power of this same Holy Spirit; they waited together to be clothed with power from on high, according to the commandment of the Lord, Who had said: “Tarry ye in the city of Jerusalem, until ye be endued with power from on high; for, behold, I shall send the promise of My Father upon you.” And, as it is written, “when the day of Pentecost was fully come, all the holy Apostles were assembled with one accord in one place, and the Paraclete was sent to them under the appearance of tongues of fire.” Having received the abundant promise of the Father and the Holy Spirit, they were strengthened, and they manifested Him Who was sent to them, His grace and His power. The martyr and protodeacon Stephen, filled with the same Holy Spirit, Whom he received by the laying-on of hands of the Apostles, did great wonders and miracles among the people. Being full of the Holy Spirit, he saw the doors of heaven opened and the Only-begotten [Son] and Word of God standing in the flesh at the right hand of the power of God. Filled with this same Holy Spirit, Paul became the preacher of divine mysteries. As Ananias said to him: “The Lord, even the Savior, hath sent me to thee, that thou mightest receive thy sight, and be filled with the Holy Spirit.” And [Paul afterwards] said with assurance: “And I think also that I have the Spirit of God.” The same Holy Spirit came to Cornelius and those that were to be baptized with him, and each of them spoke in his own tongue and magnified God. This same Holy Spirit came upon the Ethiopian eunuch after he went down into the water [of baptism], and he was filled with joy, and he went on his way rejoicing.

This [is] the same Holy Spirit Who preached by the prophets, Who gave understanding to the apostles, Who spoke to men. He was given to them by the Lord, and all their adversaries were not able to gainsay or resist Him. For, as [the Lord] said, “It is not ye that speak, but the Spirit of your Father Which speaketh in you.”

This Holy Spirit [also] or­dains priests, consecrates churches, purifies altars, perfects sacrifices and cleanses people of their sins. This Holy Spirit abides with the godly, refines the righteous and guides kings. This same Holy Spirit preserved the soul of Simeon, lengthening the time of his life and re­versing the rules of death, until the day when he beheld Him Who is the Redeemer of life and death; for it had been promised unto him by the Holy Spirit, that he should not see death before he had seen the Lord’s Christ. It was the same Holy Spirit Who gave strength to Elijah, and Whose power Elisha desired when he asked of Elijah: “Let there be, I pray thee, a double portion of thy spirit upon me.”

This Holy Spirit enlightens souls and sanctifies bodies. It was the same Holy Spirit Who descended upon the Apostles and filled them with divine wisdom. Having received His gifts, they were all filled with the knowledge of God; not only [were they given] divine knowledge, but also spiritual gifts. Simon Magus, being a stranger to the Holy Spirit, fell to his perdition. As Peter said to Simon: “Thy money perish with thee, because thou hast desired to purchase the priceless grace of the Holy Spirit with money.”

Therefore, beloved, let us strive to keep our bodies uncorrupted; for one who has acquired a new body, which is a temple of the Holy Spirit, has become a true victor over the devil. What the Spirit of God has said, may it be done unto me.

Moreover, Joseph, strength­ened by this same Holy Spirit, desired not that his body be defiled by the vile deeds of this life; for he knew that the Spirit does not abide in a body that has commerce with sin; there­fore, he attained a royal rank. This Spirit enlightened Bezaleel, [so that] he fashioned the tabernacle with all beauty and skill. Joshua the son of Nun, possessing the same Spirit, be­came a faithful heir to Moses and obtained the inheritance of the Promised Land for [his] people. [As] God said to Moses: “Take to thyself Joshua the son of Nun, a man who has the Spirit of God in him.” This is the Spirit [of Whom] the Lord, when He breathed upon His disciples after His Resurrection from the dead on the third day, said: “Receive ye the Holy Spirit.” And again, it is the same Spirit Who has vouchsafed to give eternal life to the faithful after the general resurrection from the dead. As it is written: “Thou wilt send forth Thy Spirit, and they shall be created; and Thou shalt renew the face of the earth.”

Many are the gifts of the Holy Spirit; many and all-powerful are His gifts. As it says in a certain place: By the Word of the Lord were the heavens established, and all the might of them by the Spirit of His mouth. And Isaiah says: “The Spirit of God [shall rest upon him], the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and strength, the spirit of knowledge and godliness.” And Paul adds, “The Spirit of adoption and of grace.” He Who is equally ever-existent, and equally unoriginate, and Who shares the throne and the honor of God, [His] Son and Word, called this Spirit the Spirit Who is our Comforter. David calls Him the Holy Spirit, since the Holy Spirit is sent by holiness; [the] governing [Spirit], since He has dominion over all, be­cause all things came from Him and are kept in existence by Him; and the good [Spirit], since salvation and all kinds of goodness are from Him. And what does Isaiah [call Him]? The Spirit of God, because He proceeds from God the Father; thus does [God] Himself speak of the Spirit of God as proceeding, in the words, Which proceedeth from the Father. [Isaiah] further [calls Him] the Spirit of wisdom and understanding, because all wisdom and good understanding have been given through Him; and the Spirit of counsel and strength, because He is able to bring to pass that which is desired; and also the Spirit of knowledge and godliness. Ezekiel, a man of the spirit, says: “And I will give you a new heart and a new Spirit.”

He is one in essence, one in principle and one in counsel [with the Father and the Son.] Wouldst thou believe? Listen to what the Scriptures say of Him: “When He prepared the heaven, I was present with Him.” The prophet further says: “The Lord, and His Spirit hath sent me.” Lest anyone think, from what was said, that this new Spirit would come from any creatures living or yet to come, or from any other person, He says: “And I will put My Spirit in you;” inasmuch as He said, “A new Spirit.”

In the Acts of the holy Apostles, this was ex­pressed in commandments: “The Holy Spirit said, ‘Separate me Barnabas and Saul for the work whereunto I have called them.’” And again, “It seemed good to the Holy Spirit, and to us;” even as it had been said, “I will put My Spirit in you.” Wouldst thou demonstrate that this was indeed His coming, as was foretold in parables, and that it was His grace [acting upon] the holy Apostles? Wilt thou believe what was said? Listen to [Saint] John the Evangelist, who says: “The Holy Spirit was not yet given, because that Jesus was not yet glorified.” Paul called this Spirit the Spirit of adoption and the Spirit of grace, inasmuch as in the waters of the baptismal font men are born again of water and the Spirit, and we receive the adoption of sons. In the same way, the Lord said to Nicodemus: “Except a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God.” Thus, [the Holy Spirit] is the Spirit of sonship and the Spirit of grace; for grace and truth came by Jesus Christ, through the Holy Spirit, [for those who have been born] by the power of God.

Moreover, the Spirit [is called] the Comforter, because He is also our advocate with the Father. And not only is He with the Father, but He is always with us also as a gift. “And I will pray the Father, and He shall give you another Comforter, that He may abide with you forever,” comforting your hearts and making them steadfast in divine patience and trust in Christ. Whereas the holy Apostles re­ceived this testament after [Christ’s] holy Rising from the dead, and were sent forth to teach and to baptize in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and whereas we have already been vouchsafed this true washing by the Holy Spirit, let us strive to keep our souls and our bodies undefiled as we glorify the Most holy and consubstantial Trinity, the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, now and ever and unto the ages of ages. Amen.

Pentecost, Saint Cyril of Alexandria

21 Then said He to them again, Peace be unto you: as the living Father sent Me, even so send I you.

Hereby our Lord Jesus Christ ordained the disciples to be guides and teachers of the world, and to be ministers of His Divine mysteries, and also bade them, for the time was now come, like lights to illuminate and enlighten, not merely the country of Judaea, according to the limit of the commandment of the Law, which extended from Dan even unto Beersheba, according to the Scripture, but rather also all under the sun, and men scattered throughout all lands, wheresoever they dwelt. The saying of Paul, therefore, is true: No man taketh the honour unto himself, but he that is called of God. For our Lord Jesus Christ called into His most glorious apostleship, before all others, His own disciples, and firmly fixed the whole earth, which was well-nigh tottering and in the act of falling, pointing out, as God, men to be props thereof who were well able to support it. Therefore, also, He thus spake by the mouth of the Psalmist, concerning the earth and the Apostles: I have fixed the pillars of it; for the blessed disciples were as the pillars and ground of the truth, whom also He says that He sent forth, even as the Father had sent Him; showing at the same time the dignity of their apostle-ship, and the incomparable honour of the power vouchsafed unto them, and also in all likelihood suggesting the method of life the Apostles were to follow. For if He thought it meet that He should send forth His own disciples, even as the Father had sent Him, was it not necessary for those who were destined to imitate His mission to ascertain what the Father sent forth the Son for to do? In divers ways, then, expounding unto us the character of His own mission, He said in one place: I came not to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance; and again: They that are whole have no need of a physician; but they that are sick: and again, in another place: For I am come down from heaven, not to do Mine own Will, but the Will of Him That sent Me; and yet once more: For God sent not His Son into the world to judge the world; but that the world should be saved through Him. Summing up, therefore, in a few words the character of their mission, He says that He sent them even as the Father had sent Him, that they might know thereby that they were bound to call sinners to repentance, and to minister to those who were in evil plight, whether of body or soul, and in all their dealings upon earth, not in any wise to follow their own will, but the Will of Him That sent them, and to save the world by their teaching, so far as was possible. And in truth we shall find the holy disciples eager to show the utmost zeal in performing all these things; and it is not difficult for any one to satisfy himself of this, who has once turned his attention to the Acts of the Apostles, and the words of the holy Paul.

22, 23 And when He had said this, He breathed on them, and saith unto them, Receive ye the Holy Ghost: whosesoever sins ye forgive, they are forgiven unto them; whosesoever sins ye retain, they are retained.

After dignifying the holy Apostles with the glorious distinction of the apostleship, and appointing them ministers and priests of the Divine Altar, as I have just said, He at once sanctifies them by vouchsafing His Spirit unto them, through the outward sign of His Breath, that we might be firmly convinced that the Holy Spirit is not alien to the Son, but Consubstantial with Him, and through Him proceeding from the Father; He shows that the gift of the Spirit necessarily attends those who are ordained by Him to be Apostles of God. And why? Because they could have done nothing pleasing unto God, and could not have triumphed over the snares of sin, if they had not been clothed with power from on high, and been transformed into something other than they were before. Therefore, also, it was said to one of old time: The Spirit of the Lord will come upon thee, and thou shalt be turned into another man; and the Prophet Isaiah also declared that those who waited upon the Lord should renew their strength. The wise Paul, too, when he says that he surpassed some in his labours, that is, in the deeds of an Apostle, adds at once: Yet not I, but the grace of God which was with me. Besides, we say this, that the disciples would never at all have understood the mystery that is in Christ, nor have been true guides in this knowledge, if they had not advanced in the light of the Spirit to a revelation of things which surpass man’s reason and understanding, a revelation which is able to point out to them the heights to which they were bound to ascend; for no man can say Jesus is Lord, as Paul says, but in the Holy Spirit. As, then, they were destined to proclaim that Jesus was the Lord, that is, to preach that He was God and Lord of necessity, therefore they received the grace of the Holy Spirit in immediate connexion with the office of apostleship, Christ granting Him unto them, not ministering to the desires of another, but rather vouchsafing Him of Himself; for the Spirit could only come down unto us from the Father through the Son. The old and written Law, however, which contained shadows and types of the reality, ordained that the appointment of priests should be performed in a more physical way, so to say, and that their appointment should be attended with more outward display. For the blessed Moses, by God’s command, bade Aaron and the Levites wash themselves with water: then he slew the ram of consecration and anointed with the blood the tip of Aaron’s right ear, as is written, and also put of the blood upon the thumb of the right hand, and upon the big toe of the right foot, giving an outline and type, as in a picture, of the mystery concerning Christ. For in the presence here of water and blood, the instruments of sanctification, how can there be any question that in an obscure type an outline was given of the fair beauty of the reality? Our Lord Jesus Christ, transforming into the power of truth the figure of the Law, consecrates through Himself the ministers of the Divine Altar. For He is the Lamb of consecration, and He consecrates by actual sanctification, making men partakers in His Nature, through participation in the Spirit, and in some sort strengthening the nature of man into a power and glory that is superhuman.

And there can be no doubt that the explanation I have here given can be proved not to err from the truth. But, perhaps, someone will come and say as follows, with a praiseworthy desire for knowledge, it may be, putting to us the question, “Where then, and when, did the Saviour’s disciples receive the grace of the Spirit? When the Saviour appeared unto them in the house, immediately after the Resurrection, and breathed upon them, saying: Receive ye the Holy Ghost; or in the days of the holy Pentecost, when, as they were again assembled together in one place, suddenly there came from heaven a sound as of the rushing of a mighty wind. And there appeared unto them tongues parting asunder, like as of fire; and it sat upon each one of them. And they began to speak with other tongues, as the Spirit gave them utterance?” For either, such an one will say, we must suppose that a double grace was given unto them, or we must remain in ignorance of the occasion on which they, in fact, became partakers in the Holy Spirit; if indeed our Saviour’s saying, and that which is written in the Acts of the holy Apostles, is found to be true. And, indeed, the question may well excite our perplexity, especially as Christ Himself said: It is expedient for you that I go away; for if I go not away the Comforter cannot come unto you; but when I depart, I will send Him unto you; for the inquirer will perhaps go on to say, “The Truth, that is, Christ, cannot lie. When, then, He said in plain words that the Comforter would not come unto the disciples unless He were taken up unto the Father, but of a surety He would send Him then, when He was in heaven at His side; how, then, can He be supposed to grant the gift of the Spirit, though His journey from hence was not yet accomplished?” Still, though the inquiry is very obscure, and very likely to cause perplexity, it yet allows of an appropriate solution, when we remember our faith that Christ is not as one of ourselves, but rather is God, and of God, and so exercises dominion over His own Words, and moulds them to suit His purposes.

For He proclaimed that He would send down to us from heaven the Comforter, when He was ascended to God the Father; and this, indeed, He did, when He had gone away to the Father, and vouchsafed to shed forth the Spirit abundantly upon all who were willing to receive it. For any man could receive it, through faith, that is, and Holy Baptism; and then was fulfilled that which was spoken by the voice of the Prophet: I will pour out of My Spirit upon all flesh. But it was necessary that the Son should appear as co-operating with the Father in granting the Spirit; it was necessary that those who believed on Him should understand that He is the Power of the Father, That has created this whole world, and called man out of nothing into being. For God the Father, at the beginning, by His own Word, took of the dust of the ground, as is written, and fashioned the animal, that is man, and endowed him with a soul, according to His Will, and illuminated him with a share of His own Spirit; for He breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, as is written. And when it came to pass that through disobedience man fell under the power of death, and lost his ancient honour, God the Father built him up and restored him to newness of life, through the Son, as at the beginning. And how did the Son restore him? By the death of His own Flesh He slew death, and brought the race of man back again into incorruption; for Christ rose again for us. In order, then, that we might learn that He it was Who at the beginning created our nature, and sealed us with the Holy Spirit, our Saviour again grants the Spirit, through the outward sign of His Breath, to the holy disciples, as being the firstfruits of renewed nature. For Moses writes concerning our creation of old, that God breathed into man’s nostrils the breath of life. As, then, at the beginning, man was formed and came into being, so likewise is he renewed; and as he was then formed in the Image of his Creator, so likewise now, by participation in the Spirit, is he transformed into the Likeness of his Maker. For that the Spirit impresses the Saviour’s Image on the hearts of those who receive Him surely does not admit of question; for Paul plainly exhorteth those who had fallen through weakness into observance of the Law, in the words: My little children, of whom I am again in travail until Christ be formed in you. For he says that Christ will not be formed in them save by partaking of the Holy Spirit, and living according to the law of the Gospel. Therefore, as in the firstfruits of creation, which is made regenerate into incorruption and glory and into the Image of God, Christ establishes anew His own Spirit in His disciples. For it was necessary that we should also perceive this truth, namely, that He brings down and grants the Spirit unto us. Therefore, also, He said: All things, whatsoever the Father hath, are Mine. And as the Father hath, of Himself and in Himself, His own Spirit, so also the Son hath the Spirit in Himself, because He is Consubstantial with Him, and essentially proceeded from Him, having by Nature in Himself all the attributes of His Father.

From the following fact we can prove that, many as were the actions that He repeatedly promised us that He would perform in due season, He even in part anticipated the appointed time in the performance of them, for our edification, that we might be fully convinced that whatsoever He has spoken will assuredly come to pass. He declared that He would raise up the dead, and bring back again to life those who are lying in the earth and in tombs. The hour cometh, He says, when the dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God, and shall come forth; they that have done good, unto the resurrection of life; and they that have done ill, unto the resurrection of judgment. And, desiring to satisfy us that He could readily accomplish this, He taught, saying: I am the Resurrection and the Life. But, inasmuch as the vastness of the miracle made it difficult of belief that the dead could ever be restored to life, He anticipated to our profit the time of the Resurrection, and gave us a sign by raising Lazarus and the widow’s son and the daughter of Jairus. And what else besides? As He said that full of glory would be the resurrection of the Saints, for then, He says, shall the righteous shine forth as the sun in the Kingdom of their Father, in order that here again He might be believed to speak truth, He granted the sight thereof before the time to the disciples. For He took Peter and James and John, and went up into the mountain, and was transfigured before them: and His Face did shine as lightning, and His garments became white as snow. Just as, then, although He promised to accomplish these things in their season, yet He performed the works in part and with a limited scope even out of due time, as an earnest and foretaste of that which was expected to come to pass and to affect the whole world, so doing in order that faith in Him might not be shaken; even so, likewise, after having said that He would send the Comforter to us when He went away to the Father, and having fixed this occasion for granting this grace universally, He performed in the persons of His disciples the first instalment, as it were, of the promise, for the many just and sufficient reasons we have previously given.

They, therefore, partook of the Holy Spirit when He breathed on them, saying, Receive ye the Holy Ghost; for it were impossible for Christ to lie, and He would never have said “Receive” without giving; but in the days of Holy Pentecost, when God more openly proclaimed His grace, and manifested the stablishment of the Holy Spirit in their hearts, there appeared unto them tongues through flame, not signifying the beginning of the gift of the Spirit in their hearts, but rather having reference to the time when they were first endowed with the gift of languages. It is written, indeed, that they began to speak with other tongues, as the Spirit gave them utterance. Note, that they began to speak, not to receive sanctification, and that the gift of divers tongues came down upon them; and this was the working of the Spirit that was in them. For just as the Father spake from heaven, and bare witness to His Son, saying, This is My beloved Son, in Whom I am well pleased; and did this to satisfy the minds of those who heard, uttering, or causing to be uttered, a sound as of some instrument which fell upon the ear; even so, also, in the case of the holy disciples He made the manifestation of the grace given them more public, sending down upon them tongues as of fire, and causing the descent of the Holy Spirit to resemble the sound of the rushing of a mighty wind. And that this very portent was given unto the Jews by way of a sign, you will readily see, if you listen to God, the Lord of all, saying by the mouth of the Prophet: By men of strange tongues, and by the lips of strangers, will I speak unto this people, and yet will they not believe. And to the intent that we might believe that the blessed disciples did, in fact, partake of the Holy Spirit, and were from henceforth honoured with the grace of Christ from above, and that they were able to expound the truth, and that the glory of their apostleship was worthy all admiration, witness being borne thereto by the gift from on high, therefore it was that fire came down in the form of tongues.

I think, indeed, that I have here said enough to accurately explain the meaning of the passage; but, inasmuch as we are bound to take every precaution in our treatise, that no stumblingblock spring up to offend the brethren through the carping spirit of any amongst us, let us make this addition to what we have said, and refute the vain talk that we may expect will be started. We shall find, then, in the passage that follows, the words: Thomas, called Didymus, was not with the disciples when Jesus came. How, then, someone may not unreasonably inquire, if he were away, was he in fact made partaker in the Holy Spirit when the Saviour appeared unto the disciples and breathed on them, saying: Receive ye the Holy Ghost? We reply that the power of the Spirit pervaded every man who received grace, and fulfilled the aim of the Lord Who gave Him unto them; and Christ gave the Spirit not to some only but to all the disciples. Therefore, if any were absent, they also received Him, the munificence of the Giver not being confined to those only who were present, but extending to the entire company of the holy Apostles. And that this interpretation is not strained, or our idea extravagant, we may convince you from Holy Writ itself, bringing forward as a proof a passage in the Books of Moses. The Lord God commanded the all-wise Moses to select elders, to the number of seventy, from the assembly of the Jews, and plainly declared: I will take of the Spirit which is upon thee and will put it upon them. Moses, as he was bidden, brought them together, and fulfilled the Divine decree. Two only of the men who were included in the number of the seventy elders were left behind, and remained in the assembly, to wit, Eldad and Medad. Then when God put upon them all the Divine Spirit, as He had promised, those whom Moses had collected together immediately received grace, and prophesied; but none the less also the two who were in the assembly prophesied, and, in fact, the grace from above came upon them first. Nay, further, Joshua, that was called the son of Nun, who was the constant attendant of Moses, not understanding at once the meaning of the mystery, but thinking that after the manner of Dathan and Abiram they were rivals in the art of prophecy to those whom Moses had brought together, said unto him: Eldad and Medad do prophesy in the camp; my lord Moses, forbid them. And what answered that truly wise and great man, seeing in his wisdom the working of the grace given unto them, and the power of the Spirit? Enviest thou for my sake? Would God that all the Lord’s people were prophets, and that the Lord would put His Spirit upon them! Observe how he rebukes the saying of Joshua, who knew not what had been done. Would that, he says, the Spirit were given to all the people! Nay, this will indeed come to pass in due season, when the Lord, that is, Christ, will grant unto them His Spirit; breathing upon His holy Apostles as upon the firstfruits of those whose due it is to receive Him, and saying: Receive ye the Holy Ghost. Then, if Thomas were absent, he was not cut off from receiving the Spirit, for the Spirit pervaded all whose due it was to receive Him, and who were included among the number of His honoured disciples.

Christ, when He gave the Spirit unto them, said: Whosesoever sins ye forgive, they are forgiven; and whosesoever sins ye retain, they are retained; though only the living God is able and powerful to grant unto sinners remission of sins; for whom could it befit to pardon the transgressions that sinners have committed against the Divine Law, save the Lawgiver Himself? You may, if you choose, see the meaning of the saying from the analogy of human affairs. Who has authority to meddle with the decrees of earthly monarchs, and who tries to undo that which has been ordained by the will and judgment of rulers, save only someone who is invested with regal honour and dignity? Therefore, wise was the saying, Insolent is he who saith unto the king, Thou breakest the law. In what way, then, and in what sense did the Saviour invest His disciples with the dignity which befits the Nature of God alone? The Word that is in the Father cannot err; and this He did, and whatsoever He doeth, He doeth well. For He thought it meet that they who have once been endued with the Spirit of Him Who is God and Lord, should have power also to remit or retain the sins of whomsoever they would, the Holy Spirit That dwelt in them remitting or retaining them according to His Will, though the deed were done through human instrumentality.

They who have the Spirit of God remit or retain sins in two ways, as I think. For they invite to Baptism those to whom this sacrament is already due from the purity of their lives, and their tried adherence to the faith; and they hinder and exclude others who are not as yet worthy of the Divine grace. And in another sense, also, they remit and retain sins, by. rebuking erring children of the Church, and granting pardon to those who repent; just as, also, Paul gave up him that had committed fornication at Corinth, for the destruction of the flesh, that the spirit may be saved, and admitted him again into fellowship, that he might not be swallowed up with his overmuch sorrow, as he says in his letter. When, then, the Spirit of Christ dwelling in our hearts doeth things which befit God alone, surely He is the living God, invested with the glorious dignity of the Divine Nature, and having power over sacred laws.

Ascension Homily, Saint Gregory Palamas

“1. The Jews kept the Feast of the Passover, the crossing from Egypt to the land of Palestine, as laid down in their law, and we have celebrated the gospel Pascha, the passage of our human nature in Christ from death to life (cf. JN. 5:24; I JN. 3:14), from corruption to incorruption (cf. I COR. 15:42, 50). What words can express the superiority of this celebration over the solemnities of the old law and the events commemorated on its holy days? No one can adequately state how much more excellent it is. The enhypostatic Wisdom of the most high Father, God’s pre-eternal Word who is beyond all being, who was united with us in His love for mankind and lived among us (JN. 1:14), has now revealed through His actions a cause for celebration even more distinctly superior than Pascha’s excellence. For we now celebrate the transition of our nature in Him, not just from the subterranean regions up on to the earth, but from the earth to the heaven of heavens, and to the throne above the heavens of Him who rules over all.

2. Today the Lord not only stood with His disciples after His resurrection, but was also parted from them and was taken up into heaven as they watched (Acts 1.9-11), ascended and entered into the true Holy of Holies and sat down on the right hand of the Father, far above all principality and power and every name and honor that is known and named, either in this world, or in that which is to come (cf. Eph. 1.20-21). There were many resurrections before Christ’s resurrection, and similarly, there were many ascensions before His ascension. The Spirit lifted up Jeremiah the prophet, and an angel took up Habakkuk (Bel & Dr. 33-39 LXX). In particular it is written that Elijah went up with a chariot of fire (2 Kgs. 2.11). But even he did not go beyond the realms of earth, and the ascension of each of those mentioned was just a sort of movement lifting them up from the ground without taking them out of the area surrounding the earth. Similarly, the others who were resurrected all died and returned to the earth. By contrast, Christ has risen and death no longer has dominion over Him (cf. Rom. 6.9), and now He has ascended and sat down on high, every height is below Him and bears witness that He is God over all (Rom. 9.5).

3. The Master’s body is the visible mountain of which Isaiah speaks, the Lord’s house above the tops of all the mountains of reason (cf. Is. 2.2 LXX). Neither an angel nor a man, but the incarnate Lord Himself came and saved us, being made like us for our sake while remaining unchanged as God. In the same way as He came down, without changing place but condescending to us, so He returns once more, without moving as God, but enthroning on high our human nature which He had assumed. It was truly right that the first begotten nature from the dead (Rev. 1.5) should be presented there to God, as firstfruits from the first crop offered for the whole race of men.

4. Although many resurrections and ascensions have taken place, we celebrate none of them as we do the Lord’s resurrection and ascension, because we neither have nor ever shall have any share in those others. All we gained from them was to be led towards faith in our Savior’s resurrection and ascension, in which we all share now and in the future. His resurrection and ascension are the resurrection and ascension of our human nature; and not just of our human nature, but of everyone who believes in Christ and shows his faith in works (cf. Jas. 2.18). Christ was unbegotten and uncreated according to His divinity, and it was for our sake that He became man. He lived as He did because of us, teaching us the path that leads back to true life. Everything he suffered in the flesh He suffered for us to heal our passions. On account of our sins He was led to death, and for us He rose and ascended, preparing our own resurrection and ascension for unending eternity. For all the heirs of everlasting life follow as far as possible the pattern of His saving work on earth.

5. We start this imitation of Christ with holy baptism, which symbolizes the Lord’s burial and resurrection. Virtuous living and conduct in accord with the gospel are its intermediate stage, and its perfection is victory through spiritual struggles against the passions, which procures painless, indestructible, heavenly life. As the apostle tells us: “If ye live in the flesh, ye shall die; but if ye through the Spirit do mortify the deeds of the body, ye shall live” (cf. Rom. 8.13). Those who live according to Christ imitate what He did in the flesh. Just as He died physically, so in time everyone dies, but we shall also rise again in the flesh as He did, glorified and immortal, not now but in due course, when we shall also ascend, as Paul says: for “we shall be caught up,” he says, “in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air; and so shall we ever be with the Lord” (1 Thess. 4.17).

6. Do you see that any of us who wishes will share in the Lord’s resurrection, and will be an heir of God and joint-heir with Christ (cf. Rom. 8:17)? That is why we joyfully celebrate the resurrection of our human nature, its exaltation and sitting down on high, and also the starting point of the resurrection and ascension of each of the faithful, publicly proclaiming the word of today’s Gospel reading, that when the Lord had risen, He stood in the midst of His disciples (Lk. 24:36-53).

7. Why did He stand in their midst and afterwards accompany them? “And He led them out,” it says, “as far as to Bethany, and He lifted up His hands, and blessed them” (Lk. 24:50). He did it to show that He was completely whole and unharmed, to prove that His feet, that had endured being pierced by nails, were sound and trod firmly, that His hands, that had been likewise nailed to the Cross, and His side, that had been pierced by the spear, were whole, even though they bored the signs of the wounds as confirmation of the saving passion. I think that the words, “He stood in the midst of His disciples” (cf. Lk. 24:36), also imply that their faith in Him was strengthened by the way He appeared and blessed them. He did not just stand among them all, but stood in the midst of each one’s heart and it was strengthened through faith, so that the psalmist’s words, “God is in the midst of her; she shall not be moved” (Ps. 46:5), can be applied to each of their hearts. For from then on the Lord’s apostles became steadfast and immovable.

8. So He stood in the midst of them and said: “Peace be unto you” (Lk. 24:36), that sweet, penetrating, and familiar salutation. There are two kinds of peace: peace with God, which is above all the fruits of godliness, and peace with one another, which arises naturally from the words of the Gospel. At that time the Lord gave them both by His one greeting. When He first sent them out He told them, “Into whatsoever house ye enter, first say, ‘Peace be to this house’” (Lk. 10:5). Now He did exactly that, and entering the house where they were gathered, He straightway gave them peace. He saw that they were frightened and troubled by the unexpected and strange sight—“and supposed,” it says, “that they had seen a spirit” (Lk. 24:37), that is, that the person they saw was a phantom. So once more He told them what was happening in their own hearts, revealed that He was the one to whom they had said before the passion and resurrection, “Now are we sure that Thou knowest all things, and needest not that any man should ask Thee” (Jn. 16:30), and proposed that they reassure themselves by examining and touching Him. Once He saw that they had accepted the truth, He gave further confirmation for them to scrutinize by taking food while they watched, as well as sharing fellowship and peace with them. “And while they yet believed not and wondered,” certainly not because they dissented, but for joy, “He said unto them, ‘Have ye any meat?’ And they gave Him a piece of a broiled fish, and of an honeycomb. And He took it, and did eat it before them” (Lk. 24:41-43).

9. That incorruptible body was fed after the resurrection, not because it needed food, but to prove it had risen and to demonstrate that it was the same one as He had eaten with them before the passion. It did not, however, consume the food in the way that mortal bodies do, but by divine energy, as, so to speak, fire dissolves wax, except that fire has to have fuel to sustain it, whereas immortal bodies do not need food for sustenance.

10. The piece of baked fish and the honeycomb which He ate were also symbols of Christ’s mystery. The Word of God united Himself hypostatically with our human nature, which was like a fish swimming in the waters of pleasure-loving, passionate life. By the unapproachable divine fire of His Godhead He cleansed this nature of every tendency towards passion, and made it equal to God, and, as it were, red hot. The Lord came to send fire upon the earth (cf. Luke 12:49), and through participation in this fire He makes divine not just the human substance which He assumed for our sake, but every person who is found worthy of communion with Him. On the other hand, human nature is like honeycomb because we hold the treasure of reason in our bodies, just as honey is contained in the comb. This is especially true of anyone who believes in Christ, for he has the grace of the divine Spirit stored up in his soul and body like honey in wax. The Lord ate these things because He was pleased to take the salvation of each human being as His food. He did not, however, eat it all, but just a piece of a honeycomb, that is, a part of it, for not everyone believed. Nor did He take this portion Himself, but it was given Him by His disciples, for the disciples set before Him just the believers, separating them from the faithless.

11. By eating the fish and the honeycomb in front of His disciples, in this way and for these reasons, He reminded them of the words He spoke to them previously when He was approaching His passion, thus proving that He was truthful. What He had foretold was fulfilled, and He opened their understanding, that they might understand the Scriptures and know that thus it behooved God’s only-begotten Son to be made man for men’s sake on account of the unfathomable ocean of His love, to be manifested and witnessed to by the Father’s voice from above and the appearance of the divine Spirit (cf. Luke 3:22). It was fitting that He be proved worthy of trust and admiration by extraordinary acts and words, and also that He be envied and betrayed by people who did not seek God’s glory but honour from men, that He should be crucified, buried and rise on the third day from the dead. Repentance and the remission of sins had to be preached in His name, beginning at Jerusalem (Luke 24:47). Those who saw Him with their own eyes and served Him were to become messengers and witnesses of these events. He proclaimed that He would send them from above the promise of His Father, the Holy Spirit, and He ordered them to stay in Jerusalem until they were endued with power from on high (Luke 24:49).

12. As He spoke in this way to His disciples of matters pertaining to salvation, He led them out of the house and as far as Bethany, and when He had blessed them, He was parted from them and carried up to heaven (Luke 24:50-51). With a radiant cloud for a chariot, He ascended in glory (cf. Acts 1:9), entered the Holy of Holies not made by hands and sat down on the right hand of the heavenly majesty, making our human substance share His own throne and divinity. As the apostles continued looking steadfastly towards heaven, they learnt authoritatively from angels that He would come again from heaven in the same way with everyone watching (Acts 1:10). The Lord Himself foretold this, and earlier Daniel had seen it. “I saw”, he said, “and behold, one like the Son of man came with the clouds of heaven” (Dan. 7:13). The Lord Himself said, “All the tribes of the earth shall see the Son of man coming in the clouds of heaven” (cf. Matt. 24:30).

13. The disciples worshipped the most high Lord Who had come down from heaven, made the earth into heaven and gone up again whence He came, having united things below with things above and formed one Church, at the same time heavenly and earthly, to the glory of His love for mankind. Then they returned with joy from the Mount of Olives, whence the Master had ascended, to Jerusalem and were continuously in the Temple with their minds set on heaven, praising and blessing God (Luke 24:53), and preparing themselves to receive the promised coming of the divine Spirit.

14. Briefly put, brethren, that is how those called by Christ’s name should order their lives. They should persevere in prayers and supplications and, in imitation of the angels, have their eyes lifted up to the Master above the heavens, praising and blessing Him with irreproachable conduct, and waiting for His mystical coming. As the psalmist says to Him, “I will sing and will behave myself wisely in a perfect way. O when wilt thou come unto me?” (Ps. 101:2). Paul demonstrated this too by saying, “For our conversation is in heaven” (Phil. 3:20), “whither the forerunner is for us entered, even Jesus” (Heb. 6:20). Peter, the chief apostle, also guides us in this direction: “Gird up the loins of your mind,” he says, “be perfectly sober, and hope for the grace that is to be brought unto you at the revelation of Jesus Christ” (1 Pet. 13:8), “whom having not seen, ye love” (1 Pet. 1:8). The Lord too hinted at the same with His words, “Let your loins be girded about, and your lights burning; and ye yourselves like unto men that wait for their Lord, when he will return” (Luke 12:35-36). In this way He did not destroy the sabbath but fulfilled it, showing that the day of rest from physical work for the sake of what is more excellent, is a truly blessed sabbath. It is linked with a blessing because when we are at leisure from earthly labours which are soon to cease, we wait patiently on God, seeking wat is heavenly and imperishable with unashamed hope.

15. Under the old law one day of the week was the sabbath, and the Lord seemed to the foolish Jews to destroy what they thought of as their day of rest. However, He said, “I am not come to destroy the law, but to fulfil” (Matt. 5:17). How was it that He did not do away with this sabbath but fulfilled the law regarding it? He promised to give the Holy Spirit to those who asked Him (cf. Luke 11:13) by day and by night, and commanded them to be always awake and watching, saying, “Be ye ready: for in such an hour as ye think not the Son of man cometh” (Matt. 24:44). In this way He made all the days into blessed sabbaths for those who choose to obey Him perfectly, and so in this respect as well He did not abolish but fulfilled the law.

16. We, by contrast, are entangled in worldly affairs, but if you abstain from acquisitiveness and mutual hatred, and strive to speak the truth and be chaste, then you too will make every day a Sabbath by being inactive in evil. When a day comes that is especially profitable for salvation, you must free yourselves even from blameless work and words, patiently stay in God’s Church, listen with understanding to the reading and teaching and contritely attend to the supplications, prayers and hymns to God. Thus you too will fulfil the Sabbath, ordering your conduct according to the Gospel of God’s grace and lifting up the eyes of your understanding towards Christ sitting above the vaults of heaven with the Father and the Spirit. He has made us sons of God, not sons of one family with God and each other in the communion of the divine Spirit, through Christ’s own body and blood.

17. Let us preserve this union with one another by indossulable love. We should always look towards our Father in heaven, for we are no longer “of the earth, earthy”, like “the first man”, but like “the second man, the Lord from heaven” (1 Cor. 15:47). “As is the earthy, such are they also that are earthy: and as is the heavenly such are they that are heavenly. And as we have borne the image of the earthy, we shall also bear the image of the heavenly” (1 Cor. 15:48-49). As we lift up our hearts to Him we shall behold the great spectacle of our nature united for ever with the fire of the divinity. And laying aside everything to do with the coats of skins in which we were clothed because of the transgression (cf. Gen. 3:21), let us stand on holy ground through virtue and steadfast inclination towards God. 18. In this way we shall all be bold when God comes in fire, and run forward to be enlightened and once enlightened live with Him for ever, to the glory of Him who is the light above all, the threefold Sun and sovereign brightness, to whom belong all glory, might, honour and worship, now and for ever and unto the ages of ages. Amen.”

Ascension Homily, Saint John Chrysostom

When we were celebrating the commemoration of the cross, we celebrated the feast outside the city, and now as we commemorate the ascension of the Crucified One on this bright and brilliant day, we again celebrate the feast outside the city. We do so, not wishing to deprive the city of its honor, but in an eager pursuit to honor the martyrs, lest these saints reproach us and say, ‘Were we not worthy to see a single day of our Lord celebrated in the midst of our tabernacles?’ – or lest they reproach us and say, ‘Did we not shed our blood for His sake, and were we not worthy to have our heads cut off, and yet you did not count us worthy of seeing his day celebrated at our resting places?’ It is for these reasons that, having left the city, we have hastened to the feet of these saints on the present day so that we may make it up to them for the time that has elapsed.

For if it was necessary to run to these noble athletes of piety even before now, while they were still lying underground, how much more should we do this now that the pearls are lying out on display, when the sheep have been delivered from the wolves, and when the living have parted from the dead.

Still, even before this, no harm of defilement came to them by sharing in burial, for with their spirits abiding in the heavens their bodies were not violated by the place of entombment; with their soul in the hand of God, their relics suffered nothing from their interment. Even before now, no harm had come to them.

However, our people suffered no small difficulty regarding the places themselves, given that, while they were resorting to the relics of the martyrs, they were conducting their prayers with uncertainty and hesitation because they did not know the whereabouts of the saints’ sepulchres or where the true treasures lay. And just as would happen to a flock of sheep that comes hastening toward fresh springs to enjoy pure streams, if a foul and stale odor from somewhere nearby were to befall it, they would turn back, so that is what happened to this flock. The people were approaching the pure springs of the martyrs, but having smelled the nearby stench of heresy, they turned away.[3] So then, when he had grown aware of this problem, this wise shepherd and teacher to all, who arranges everything toward the edification of the Church, could no longer bear to ignore this source of trouble, being himself an ardent lover and zealot for the martyrs.[4] But what was he to do?

Behold his wisdom: he buried the muddy and fetid streams and dammed them up, whereas the pure springs of the martyrs he transferred to a pure place. And consider how he showed such humanity in his treatment of the departed, such great honor toward the martyrs, and so much care for the people! To the departed he showed the respect due to their humanity by not removing their bones but letting them rest in the same place, to the martyrs he showed honor by transferring them from a wicked neighborhood, and to the people he showed care by refusing to let them conduct their prayers with any doubt in mind.

That is why we have brought you here, so that the assembly would become more radiant and the spectacle more brilliant, since not only are the people here assembled, but also the martyrs; and not only martyrs, but also angels. Yes, indeed, angels too are present. And if you wish to see both martyrs and angels, open up the eyes of faith and you will behold this sight; for if the whole air is filled with angels, so is the Church even more so; and if this is true of the Church, all the more so on this present day when their Master is ascended. That you may know that all the air is filled with angels, listen to what Paul says when urging the women to have a covering for their heads, how women must have a veil on their heads because of the angels (1 Cor 11:10). And again Jacob: The angel, he says, who has delivered me from my youth (Gen 48:15). And those who were in the house with the apostles said to Rhoda about Peter, It is his angel (Acts 12:15). And once again Jacob: I have seen the host of angels (Gen 32:2). So what was the reason he saw the host and army of angels over the earth? Just as when a king orders garrisons to settle in each city to keep barbarian invasions from breaking out and overrunning the cities, so also, since in the midst of this air there are also demons, barbaric and savage, constantly stirring up wars and hostile to peace, God has set against them the hosts of angels, so that by their mere appearance they might subdue them to vouchsafe peace for us. And that you may learn that they are angels of peace, listen to the words that the deacons always repeat in their prayers: “Implore the angel of peace.” Do you see then how the angels are present, as well as the martyrs?

What then could be more wretched than being among those who are absent today? What could be more blessed than being among those of us gathered here for the enjoyment of this feast? Nevertheless, let us save the speeches in honor of the martyrs for other occasions, and let us bring our homily back to the subject of the present feast.

2. What then is the present feast? It is venerable and great, O beloved, surpassing the human mind and worthy of the largesse of God who made it. For on this day has taken place the reconciliation between God and the human race; today, the ancient enmity and the lengthy war have been abolished; today, a wondrous peace has returned, one that was inconceivable before. For who could have hoped that God would reconcile himself with man? Not because the Master was ill-disposed toward man, but because the servant was negligent; not because the Lord was cruel, but because the slave was heedless.

Do you want to know how we provoked this lover of mankind, our gracious Master? And indeed it is right for you to learn about the cause of our former enmity with him, so that when you see us, the enemies and adversaries, restored to a state of honor, you may admire the benefactor’s love for man; and so that you do not think that the change that came about was a result of our own achievements, but rather, by learning of the abundance of his grace, you should never cease to thank him for the greatness of his gifts.

Do you wish to learn, then, how we provoked the Master, who is a friend to man, who is gracious and good, and who arranges all things for the sake of our salvation? Once, he decided to completely destroy the human race and his anger at us was so great that he would have destroyed us along with our wives and children and the wild beasts and livestock and the whole earth. If you like, I will also let you hear the very decree, For, he says, I will blot out man whom I made from the face of the earth, as well as the wild animals and the cattle, for I am grieved that I made man (Gen 6:7).

Now, that you may understand that it was not our nature that he came to hate, but rather he was repulsed by our wickedness: after first saying, I will blot out man whom I have made from the face of the earth, he says to man, A time for all men is come before me (Gen 6:13). Certainly, if he had hated man, he would not have spoken with him. But now you see him not only unwilling to do what he threatened, but even giving a defense, as Lord, to the servant, and conversing with him as if with a friend of equal standing; and he gives the reasons for the impending doom, not just for man to learn them, but so that by telling them to others he would make them more prudent. At any rate, as I was saying, the human race was acting so perversely beforehand that we were at risk of falling from the very face of the earth.

Nevertheless, we who proved ourselves unworthy of the earth have today been raised up to heaven; we who were not even worthy of authority below have ascended to the kingdom on high, surpassed the heavens, and assumed the royal throne; and that nature which the Cherubim were assigned to keep out of Paradise is today seated upon the Cherubim. But how did this great and wondrous event take place? How were we, who gave such offense, who proved ourselves unworthy of the earth, and who were stripped of the authority here below, raised to such great heights? How was the war brought to an end? How was the anger annulled? How?

Indeed, this is the amazing thing, that peace was brought about not by those who were unjustly angry at God, but that the same one who was justly angry with us is the one who advocated for us. For as it is said, We are ambassadors for Christ, God making consolation through us (2 Cor 5:20). What could this mean? That he who is insulted is the same one who advocates? Yes, for he is God and thus advocates for us like a loving father.

See then what happens: the mediator is the Son of him who makes consolation, not a human, nor an angel, nor an archangel, nor any servant. And what does the mediator do? The work of the mediator. Just as when two people turn their backs on each other and do not wish to be reconciled, someone else must come to intervene and break down the enmity between them, so this is what Christ did. God was angry with us, we had turned away from God, the Master who loves mankind, and by putting himself in between, Christ reconciled both natures.

And how did he come between them? He took on himself the punishment that we deserved from the Father and endured the disgrace and insults that we inflicted on God. Do you desire to learn how he assumed both that punishment from on high and these insults here below? It is said, Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us (Gal 3:13). See then how he received the punishment inflicted from above? Consider how he also endured the insults inflicted here below. The insults of those who insult you, he says, have fallen on me (Ps 68:10). See how he dissolved the enmity, how he did not cease to do, suffer, and painstakingly perform all things until he had brought the adversary and enemy back to God himself and made him a friend?

So this present day is the source of these blessings. For by assuming our nature just as if it were first-fruits, he offered it up to the Master. And just as is done in the case of plains bearing grain, where a few grains are taken, gathered into a small sheaf, and presented to God, who blesses the whole field for the sake of this small portion – this is precisely what Christ did. Through this one flesh and offering of first-fruits he caused the entire human race to be blessed. But why did he not offer the entirety of human nature? Because it is not the first-fruit when someone offers everything. Rather, by offering a small portion one procures a blessing for the whole by means of the part. ‘If he really were the first-fruits,’ one might say, ‘then he would have to have been the first man in order to offer himself; for the first-fruits are the first shoots, the first sprouts.’ But it is not the first-fruits, beloved, when we offer a first fruit that is blemished and of poor quality, but rather when we bring forth an acceptable offering. Therefore, because that first fruit was responsible for sin it was not offered, even though it was born first, while this one, because it was free of sin, was offered for this reason, even though it was produced later. For this is what it means to be the first-fruits.

3. And that you may learn that the first-fruits are not simply the first fruit to sprout, but the acceptable and noble fruit that has reached suitable ripeness, I will provide you with evidence from the Scriptures. If you enter the land that the Lord your God gives you, Moses says to the people, and plant any tree that produces edible fruit, for three years you shall not purge its fruit; but in the fourth year its fruit will be holy to the Lord (Lev 19:23-24). Of course, if the first-fruits were simply the first produce, the fruit itself should have been offered in the first year. But now it says, ‘For three years you will not purge its fruit, instead you will leave it, because the tree is imperfect, its produce is frail and unripe. But in the fourth year, he says, it will be holy to the Lord.’ Consider then the wisdom of the lawgiver. He neither allowed anyone to eat of the fruit, lest he take it before God, nor did he permit it to be offered, lest it be presented to the Lord while still unripe. But he says, ‘Leave it,’ on the one hand, for it is the first, and, ‘Do not offer it,’ on the other, for it would be unworthy of the honor of the one receiving it. Do you see how the first-fruits are not from the first fruit to spring up, but from that which is first acceptable? And we are told these things on account of the flesh which Christ offered. He thus presented the first-fruits of our nature to the Father, and the Father so marveled at the gift, both because of the dignity of the offerer and the blamelessness of the offering, that he received the gift with his own hands, placed it at his side and said, Sit at my right hand (Ps 109:1).

To what sort of nature did God say, Sit at my right hand? To the very same one which had heard, Dust you are and to dust you shall return (Gen 3:19). Was it not enough for it to surpass the heavens? Was it not enough for it to stand amidst angels? Was this honor not indescribable as it was? But it surpassed the angels, exceeded the archangels, outstripped the Cherubim, ascended higher than the Seraphim, overtook the principalities, and did not cease until it assumed the Master’s throne. Do you not see how great is the interval between heaven and earth? But let us begin from what is below. Do you not perceive the distance between Hades and the earth, and how increasingly greater are the intervals separating earth from heaven, and heaven from the upper heaven, and the upper heaven from the angels, and the angels from the archangels, and the archangels from the powers on high, and those powers from the royal throne itself? Christ led up our nature across all this distance and height. Look where it lay below and to what height it mounted! It was impossible for man to go any further down than the depths to which he descended, and impossible to go any higher than the heights to which Christ had lifted him. And this Paul indicated when he said, He who descended is the one who also ascended (Eph 4:10). And again, he descended to the nether regions of the earth and ascended far above all the heavens (Eph 4:9-10). Come to know just who it was that ascended, or rather what kind of nature, or in what state it was before this. For I will dwell on the baseness of our kind with pleasure so that I might come to a superior knowledge of the honor bestowed by the Master’s love for us.

We were dust and ash (Gen 18:27), and even this was not yet a reproach to us, for the weakness was of our nature. But then we turned to a state more mindless than that of the irrational brutes: For man was made comparable to the mindless cattle, and became like them (Ps 48:21). Now, becoming like the irrational beasts in fact means becoming worse than them, since it is part of their nature to be naturally irrational and to persist in their irrational state. But when we who have been honored with a rational capacity fall into that irrational state, it is a reproach to our free will. So when you hear that they became like irrational brutes, do not think that this shows men out to be equal to them. Rather this was said to show how they became even worse than the brute beasts. Furthermore, we became worse and more insensible than the irrational beasts not just because as humans we fell down to their level, but in that we plunged toward even greater ignorance. And Isaiah indicates this when he says, The ox has known his owner and the donkey the manger of his lord, but Israel has not known me (Is 1:3). But let us not be ashamed to dwell on this former perverseness. For where sin increased grace abounded all the more (Rom 5:20). Have you seen how we became more senseless than cattle? The ox has known his owner and the donkey the manger of his lord. Do you care to see, then, how we have become more irrational than the birds too? The turtle-dove and swallow, the wild sparrows observe the times of their coming in; but my people do not know the judgments of the Lord (Jer 8:7). Behold how we became more mindless than donkeys and oxen, than the birds, than the turtle-dove and the swallow! Do you desire to learn of any other senselessness of ours? We were made the disciples of ants, to such a degree had we lost our natural wit: Follow the ant, it is said, and emulate his ways (Prov 6:6). We, who were created according to the image of God (Gen 1:26) were schooled by ants. However, it is by no means the Creator who was the cause of this, but it was we, who did not abide in the image. And why do I mention ants? We became more senseless than stones. Do you request that I produce a testimony of this as well? Hearken, you precipices and foundations of the earth, for the Lord is coming in judgment before his people (Mic 6:2). In judging humans do you summon the foundations of the earth also? ‘Yes,’ he says, ‘for humans are more senseless than the foundations of the earth.’

What further extreme of wickedness could you look for, when we have already proved to be more senseless than donkeys, more irrational than oxen, more ignorant than the swallow and turtle-dove, more witless than ants, duller than rocks, and equal to snakes. For their fury, it says, resembles that of the snake; the venom of the viper is under their lips (Ps 57:5; 13:3). And what need is there to mention the senselessness of irrational beasts when we appear to be called children of the devil himself? For you, says Christ, are children of the devil (Jn 8:44).

4. And yet we who are irrational, senseless, mindless, duller than stones, inferior to all else, without honor, utterly worthless – how might I say this? How shall I proceed? How might I utter this thing? This worthless nature, more senseless than anything, has today become exalted above all else.

Today, the angels have received what they had long yearned for; today, the archangels have seen what they long desired: our nature gleaming from the royal throne, resplendent in immortal glory and beauty.

For it is this that the angels long yearned for; it is this that the archangels long desired. And even though the honor exceeded their own, they still rejoiced in our blessings. For, indeed, when we were punished, they were grieved; and even as the Cherubim were guarding Paradise they nevertheless felt sorrow. And just as a servant who has taken a fellow slave into custody watches over him due to the master’s command but is still distraught by the fact due to his compassion for his fellow slave, so likewise the Cherubim assumed the guardianship of Paradise but grieved at having to do so.

Now, that you may learn that they were grieving, I will make this clear from a human example. Whenever you see humans feeling such compassion for their fellow servants, no longer have any doubt regarding the Cherubim, for these angelic powers are far more compassionate than human beings.

Moreover, what typical just man grieves at the sight of men being justly punished for their countless transgressions? But this is what is wondrous, that they were grieved even after having witnessed the sins of humans and beheld how they transgressed against the Lord. It is for this reason that Moses too, after the Israelites worshiped idols, said to God, If you forgive them their sin, forgive; but if not, blot me out also from the book which you have written (Ex 32:32). What does this mean? While recognizing impiety you may also grieve for those being punished. It is as if he were saying, ‘This is why I grieve, since they are being punished, and since they themselves incurred the blame for their just punishment.’ Ezekiel too, when he beheld an angel cutting off the people, cried aloud and lamented, saying, Woe is me, Lord, for you are blotting out the remnant of Israel! (Ezek 9:8). And Jeremiah says, Chasten us, Lord, but in judgment and not in anger, lest you diminish us (Jer 10:24). If then Moses, Ezechiel, and Jeremiah were all grieved, how could those powers not have suffered any grief over our misfortunes? How would this make any sense?

Now, in order to learn that they share an interest in our affairs, think of what joy they showed when they saw the Master reconciled with us. If they had not been grieving before this, then they would not have had any pleasure afterwards, either. It is clear that they rejoiced from the words that Christ says, that there shall be joy in heaven and on earth over one sinner who repents (Lk 15:7). If, then, the angels rejoice at seeing one sinner repent, how could they not receive the greatest pleasure today, upon seeing our whole nature offered up into heaven as first-fruits (1 Cor 15:20-23)? So then, hearken also to the jubilation of the inhabitants on high in another place over our reconciliation. For when our Lord Jesus Christ was born in the flesh and they saw that he was finally reconciled with men (for he would not have made such a descent if it were not a reconciliation) – when they saw this, then, they formed a chorus over the earth, proclaiming and saying, Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good favor among men (Lk 2:14). And that you may understand that this is why they glorified God (because the earth was receiving such blessings), they furnish the reason also, saying, Peace on earth, good favor among men: to those who were at enmity, to the enemies, the estranged, the senseless.

Do you see how they glorify God for the blessings of others, or rather for their own blessings? For they perceive our blessings to be their own. Do you wish to learn how they were already rejoicing and leaping for joy even as they anticipated to see him ascend? Listen to how Christ says that they were ascending and descending continually. This is the wondrous sight that they longed to see. And where do we get the proof that they were ascending and descending? Hear how he says, You will see the heavens open from now on and the angels of God ascending and descending on the Son of Man (Jn 1:51). For such is the habit of those who love passionately. They cannot even wait for the opportune moment but anticipate the appointed time with delight. Hence they descend, eager to behold that new and extraordinary spectacle: a human being appearing in heaven! Hence, angels appear everywhere: at the time of his birth, at the time of his resurrection, and today, at the time of his ascent. For it is said, Behold there were two men in bright garments, revealing their delight by their manner of dress. And they said to the disciples: Men of Galilee, this Jesus, who was taken up from you into heaven, will come in the same way as you saw him go into heaven (Acts 1:10-11).

5. Give me your close attention here. Why do they say this? For did the disciples not possess eyes? Had they not seen what had taken place? Did not the evangelist say, As they were looking on, he was lifted up (Acts 1:9)? Why did the angels stand in their midst to tell them that he ascended to heaven?

For these two reasons: first, that they were continually grieving at the prospect of Christ’s departure. For, to understand that they were sorrowful, hear what Christ has to say to them: None of you asks me, ‘Where are you going?’ But because I have said these things, sorrow has filled your heart. If we, having friends and relatives, cannot bear to part with them, how could the disciples not have grieved to see the Savior, the teacher, the guardian, the lover of mankind, the gentle and good one, parting from them? How could they not have felt pain? This is why the angel stood there, in order to assuage the sorrow that came to them at Christ’s ascent with the hope of his return.

For he says, This Jesus, who was taken up from you into heaven, will come back in the same way (Acts 1:11). ‘Are you grieved,’ he says, ‘because he was taken up? Yet grieve no more, for he will return again.’ This is so that they would not do as Elisha had done, who upon seeing his master taken up tore apart his garment (4 Ki 2:12), since he had no one at his side to tell him that Elijah would return. To keep the disciples from doing so, the angels stood at their side to raise their spirits.

This is one reason for the presence of the angels. The second reason, in no way inferior to the first, is also why the angel added the words ‘who was taken up’. What then is the reason? It was into heaven that he was taken up. Now the distance was great, and the power of our human sight was incapable of seeing a body taken up to the heavens. As in the case of a bird flying to the heights, which, the higher it goes the more it is hidden from our sight, so also was it the case with that body. For the further it ascended, the more hidden it became, since the weakness of our eyes were unable to follow its course due to the immense distance. Hence the angels stood by them, informing them of his ascent to heaven so that they would not think that it was in the same manner that Elijah ascended that Jesus ascended into heaven. This is why he says, ‘who was taken up from you to heaven.’ For he did not add this without reason. Now Elijah was taken up to heaven because he was a servant, but Jesus was taken up to heaven because he was the Master. Hence the former went up in a chariot of fire, the latter on a cloud. For when the servant had to be summoned, he was sent a chariot. But when it was the Son, it was a royal throne, and not just any royal throne, but that of the Father himself. For indeed, Isaiah says of the Father: Behold the Lord sits upon a swift cloud (Is 19:1). And since the Father is enthroned upon a cloud, he sent the cloud to the Son also. Moreover, whereas Elijah left his sheepskin to Elisha when he ascended, when Jesus ascended he left gifts of grace to the disciples, not making one prophet only, but thousands of Elishas, or rather, making prophets far greater and more radiant than him.

So let us arise, beloved, and look forward to his return. For Paul also says, The Lord himself will descend from heaven at the given signal, at the voice of an archangel; and we, the living who have been left, will be seized up on clouds to meet the Lord in the air, but not all (1 Thess 4:16-17). In order to understand that not all of us will be seized up, but that some will remain, while others will be seized up, listen to what Christ says: At that time there will be two women grinding in the mill, one will be taken and one left (Mt 24:41), and, There will be two men in bed, one will be taken and one will be left (Lk 17:34-35). What is the meaning of this parable? What does this ineffable mystery signify? By the mill it refers to those who live in poverty and hardship, and by the bed and its repose it alludes to those who live in wealth and honor.

So then, wishing to show that even among the poor some are saved and others perish, Christ said, of those in the mill, one is taken and one is left, and of those in bed, one is taken and one is left behind, revealing that the sinners will be left here to await their punishment, whereas the righteous will be seized up into the clouds. For just as when a king marches triumphantly into a city, those of high rank and office who have great boldness before him go outside the city to meet him, while those who are sentenced and condemned are kept inside to await the king’s judgment, so in the same way, when the Lord comes, those who have boldness will go up to meet him in the midst of air, while the guilty, with many sins on their conscience, await the judge here below. Then we also will be seized up. However I have not said ‘we’ to put myself among the ranks of those who will be seized up. I am not so senseless and ignorant as to fail to recognize my own sins. Indeed, if I did not fear to disturb the pleasure of the present feast, I would have wept bitterly at the recollection of those words, since I am reminded of my own sins also.

But since I have no desire to confound the joy of the present feast, I will end my discourse here, leaving you with the memory of this day at its summit, so that neither the rich man will rejoice in his wealth nor the poor man despair at his poverty, but that each of them will know in his heart whether he has been acting one way or the other. For neither is the rich man blessed nor the poor man pitiful. But whoever is deemed worthy of that rapture into the clouds is blessed and thrice blessed, even if he is the poorest of all, just as he who falls short of it is pitiful and thrice wretched, even if he is the wealthiest of all. Thus, I say this so that those of us who remain in sins may lament over ourselves, while those who are living in virtuous deeds may be emboldened, or rather, not only that the virtuous may be emboldened, but that they may make their place secure; and not only that the sinners may lament, but that they may be changed.

For it is even possible for the one who has been living in vice, by turning from wickedness to virtue, to return and even become equal to those who have led a righteous life from the beginning. Let us too strive for this end, and let those who are conscious of their virtue remain in reverence, constantly increasing this noble possession and adding to the boldness they already possess. But as for us who do not have such boldness and are aware of our many sins, let us change, so that by attaining their boldness we may all together receive in unison the King of angels with all the glory due unto him and enjoy the blessing of that blissful merriment. May we all attain this by the grace and love of our Lord Jesus Christ, with whom to the Father be glory, honor, and power, together with the Holy Spirit, now and forever and unto the ages of ages. Amen.

Pentecost Reading 1, Rudolf Steiner

IV. Pedagogy, from the Standpoint of the History of Culture

Considering the seriousness of the times, it seems to me that if I were to speak about Pentecost today in the way it is ordinarily spoken of, it would be unchristian—although such unchristian performances are quite the accepted thing. All who have been speaking here for the renewal of our education and school life, have spoken in the real spirit of Pentecost—endorsing as they have, so earnestly, our movement for the threefolding of the social organism. For in the liberation of the spiritual life, in the emancipation of the schools, lies the truest spirit of Pentecost for our present day—that Pentecost spirit which has entirely disappeared from the ordinary so-called religious and confessional streams of this age.

It is our sincere hope that an emancipation of the spiritual life, such as we are striving to achieve, will bring about its renewal—a thing of which mankind is so sorely in need. But one will only be able to comprehend what must be done to our schools and to our education in order to bring about a renewal of the spirit, a pouring out of the true Pentecost spirit, if one realizes how deeply the anti-Pentecost spirit has trickled into public life, into men’s so-called spiritual intercourse with one another.

If one speaks in these times as one must on an anthroposophical basis, then one even—I underline it three times—even hears this reproof: that the word “German” and the word “Christian” or “Christ” are never mentioned in the course of one’s remarks.

My dear friends, if we cannot find within ourselves the answer to such foolish chatter we have not yet get to the heart of the anthroposophical world-conception! It is the direct result of our distorted pedagogy; it illustrates what absurdities have trickled into our souls through our education. We must above all things gain a knowledge of the connection between the perverted chatter of our age and our perverted educational life; this knowledge must pour down in manifold fiery tongues upon the heads of our contemporaries.

A great deal is being said in our time about the unimportance of the word, and that “in the beginning was the deed”. My dear friends, an age like ours will even find a false use for the Gospel; the word has become mere chattered phrase and the deed, thoughtless brutality. An age like ours turns away from the Word with reason, because in the word that it knows it can only find phrase—and the deed that it knows is only thoughtless brutality.

There is a deep connection between our educational life and this fact which I have mentioned. We bear within us two sources of perverted humanity: a perverted Hellenic and a perverted Romanism. We do not understand Hellenism as it related to its own time and place. We can, hardly comprehend why the noble Socrates and Plato tried with such courage to cure the Greeks of their unconquerable love of illusion. The Greeks always wanted to escape from the seriousness of life, and sought their satisfaction in illusions. Socrates and Plato, the Greek lawgivers, had to point with great severity to the reality of the spirit, to save the Greeks from falling more and more into the failing of their race, that of withdrawing comfortably by means of illusions from the seriousness of life. The Greeks allowed “the loafer Socrates” to go on talking about the seriousness of life as long as he seemed harmless. But as soon an they realized what was really contained in his words they gave him hemlock to drink.

Socrates spirit of earnestness is not the spirit of this age. We inherit rather that spirit of Hellenism that poisoned Socrates; and we revel in it. We even consent to the poisoning of the pearl of world-literature, the beginning of the Gospel of St. John, when we allow the word “Word”—of which the Old Testament said that when man lets it become one of his illusions heaven and earth will fall—we allow it to be taken literally. St. John’s Gospel begins, “In the beginning was the Word”. The man of today is content to take the word “Word” as a mere phrase. But something stands written there that is destined to scatter all his illusions which he drags into the phrase. The heaven end earth of our illusions would collapse if we were earnestly willing to understand the “Logos” that shines forth from this sentence, and that should be experienced in it.

Thus our culture has tried to ameliorate the severities of life either by mystic comfort or by brutal action. That is what we must see today, what we must realize above all things. Today we must drive out of men’s souls from the first moment of education up through the highest schools, what Socrates and Plato sought to expel from Hellenism when they said to the Greeks: “Beware of illusions; the spirit alone has reality! There is living reality in ideas, which is not what you, with your elusive phrases, want to see in thee?”

We will get no further if we keep chattering about ethics and religion! For the Gospel is itself a fact in the evolution of the world. It has become today mere babble; and therefore it is accompanied by thoughtless, brutal action. We must fill our souls with what can really inspire us when we speak. We must find a way to make the heart speak behind the lips. We must find a way to penetrate our words with our entire being; otherwise the word becomes a seducer, tempting us with illusion, alluring us from the earnestness of reality. We must put away forever the spirit which lures us to go church in order to be lifted there out of the earnestness of life, and to hear this gratifying phrase trickled out to us: that the Lord God will make it all right, He will deliver us from our evils. We must look within ourselves, within our own souls, for forces which are divine forces, which have been implanted in us during the evolution of the world in order that we shall use them, in order that we shall he able to receive God into our individual souls. We should not be listening to all this preaching about an external God, which allows our souls to lie in indolent repose on Philistine sofas, of which we are so fond when it is a question of spiritual life. Our education must find a way out of the “Greek Phrase”, as one may call it today. It must also find a way out beyond the “Roman phrase”.

The “spirit of law” which our age still worships today was right for the Romans. For what was this spirit of law? A deep meaning lies hidden in the legend of the founding of Rome. Brutes were held together in order to combat the worst animal-human instincts. That is what the Roman laws were for, to herd wild animals together. But we should realize that we have become men, and we should not worship that spirit of law which arose from a legitimate Roman instinct to tame brutish human passions. The Roman spirit that still prevails in us today as our “spirit of right” is universally of such a character as to intend that wild human passions shall not rule in freedom, but shall be held in full restraint.

Christian! the complaint is that that word is not used in the lectures we are giving. But we continually forget a very Christian saying of Paul that reads as follows: “Sin came through law, not law through sin. “If there were no law, sin would be dead”. Of course that may be worth nothing for our time, because men have become unchristian. But it is a saying of which one must learn the dear significance. This is the true Christian spirit: to take out of the State—which men regard today as All-containing, All-embracing, and which is our inheritance from Rome—to take out of it the spiritual life and the economic life, and to make them free. But men do not want the Christian spirit, and therefore they want to make themselves feel comfortable by using “Christ” and “Christian” as often as possible as phrases.

Likewise they want to hear the word “German” as a mere phrase as often as possible. A true German spirit prevails in Goethe. The recent un-German spirit of middle Europe has in its enlightened representative, the Berlin Academy of Science, coined a phrase which I have mentioned here before: the glory of these men, the spiritual leaders of today, consists in this, they regard themselves as “the scientific bodyguard of the Hohenzollerns”! The man who coined that phrase has also given a lecture, in the scientific phraseology of the present day, entitled “Goethe and no End”, in which he endeavored to trample to the ground Goethe’s whole natural-scientific spirit. He took great pleasure in saying: “Goethe’s Faust character might better be inventing an air pump to keep Gretchen upright, than all the silly things he does in that book”. That is in the spirit of the time—trampling on the true German spirit which never takes the word “German” in vain—just as the “modern” Christian spirit (and that means unchristian spirit) has been always to require the words “Christ” and “Christian”, and to disregard this other saying; “Thou shalt not speak the word God is vain”. One should have a feeling for what is Christian, and not be constantly wanting to have one’s ears filled with chatter about Christianity.

That is “the spirit of Whitsuntide” today. One can hardly say that if it were not cherished and cultivated it would find much fruitful ground upon which to fall. One has plenty of opportunity to see how this Whitsuntide spirit is everywhere misunderstood. The following fact, for instance, that has actually come to light, in a remarkable illustration of the spirit of our time (if I may descend for a moment to an everyday matter): Our Union for the Threefolding of the social organism started forth to make seed-words grow into deeds, and in order to be understood snatched up the words of a certain person for quotation. Then this person talked also on his side, about socialization, using words which could very well be used if socialization was being talked about, and which at the same time could very well be quoted by our Union for the Threefolding of the social organism, because as words, if they were the thought-seeds of actions, then would actually mean what we want to say. But then, what happened? From the side from which these words originally came, the course of action which should naturally follow these words was violently attacked. What, does this indicate, was under the surface of the man’s thought? It was this: Woe to you if you regard our words as anything else but chatter and phrase! The moment you take our words seriously, we are your enemies! That is the outcome of on educational system that has grown up in this age under the wing of the State. That on the one side. On the other hand is this pleasing denunciation: We are in complete agreement with what Steiner says, his whole ides for fighting existing capitalism; we agree with his Threefold Commonwealth; but we are fighting him because we will not be preached to by a spirit-seer!

It does not seem unreasonable to ask ourselves: What can be attempted in an age that wants nothing else but phrases or thoughtless brutal action, that refuses everything else, but that nevertheless bears within it the seed out of which real men can be developed? People do not want to have to think; they prefer thoughtless class war. They utter beautiful phrases and do not want their thoughts to become deeds. And if someone takes their phrases seriously he is violently attacked.

We must ask ourselves noel, seriously: ! Have men who are born in the midst of such a spirit the right to pour out phrases—oily phrases—about the Pentecost wonder? My dear friends, the slime that is poured out today about the Pentecost wonder comes from the dame glands as the poison with which some want to choke everything today that comes from the spirit, poison by which they encourage in themselves on the one hand unreal phrase, and on the other hand thoughtless, brutal action. The unreel phrase is the religious chatter of the world; the brutal unspiritual act is militarism, the fundamental evil of our time. Until one realizes how thoroughly these two things are ingrained in our perverted educational life, one cannot think fruitfully about what ought to be done. Everything else is simply a quack remedy.

What must be done, my friends, must be done out or reality. For reality carries the spirit within it; whereas a denial of the spirit makes everything an absurdity. And if in our time anyone tries to indicate spiritual realities, he is branded a “visionary”, and “spirit-seer”. It is because a feeling for reality is universally lacking.

The comparison of the social organism with the human or any other organism, has also become a phrase, in our time, and avery cheap one at that. If one wants to use a comparison without resorting to phrases, one must present the fundamental knowledge for it as it is given in my book Riddles of the Soul. What sense is there today in speaking of the threefold social organism until its spiritual foundation, the threefold nature of the human organism, consisting of nerve-sense faculties, rhythmic faculties, and metabolic faculties, is presented to men as real natural-scientific knowledge? But men are so indolent that they will not allow the conceptions they have acquired from their perverted school-training of the present day to be corrected by that which originates in true reality.

Our official science, that is, the science that is accepted everywhere as authoritative, cherishes another hoary conception. Even modern science kneels in idolatrous worship before everything that is thrust forward as highest culture. To what else, then, should it have recourse when it wants to explain something especially mysterious, than to something to which just at this time kneels the lowest? Thus, the human nervous system has become for science a collection of “telegraphic lines”; it sees the whole nervous activity of men as a remarkably complicated telegraph system. The eye perceives; the skin perceives. Then what has been perceived on the outside is carried to the telegraph station called “the brain”. And sitting in the brain is some being or other—of course modern science would not have anything to do with a spiritual being—anyway, through some kind or being that has become a phrase because one acknowledges no reality there, the perception announced by the sensory nerves is transformed through the motor nerves into movements of will. And this distinction between sensory and motor nerves is stuffed into our young people, and upon it the whole conception of man is built.

For years I have been fighting this absurd distinction between sensory and motor nerves, first of all because the distinction is nonsense. For, the so-called motor nerves exist for no other reason than that for which the sensory nerves exist. A sensory nerve, a sense-nerve, is the means by which we are to perceive what is going on in our sense-organization. And a so-called motor nerve is not a “motor” nerve but is also a sensory nerve; it only exists so that I shall perceive my own movements, which originate in something quite other than the motor nerves. Motor nerves are inner sensory nerves for the perception of my own will-impulse. The sensory nerves exist in order that I may perceive the external things that are happening to my sense apparatus. And in order that I may not be merely an unconscious being walking, hitting, grasping, without myself knowing anything about it, the so-called motor nerves exist thus not for the exertion of will, but for the perception of what my will is doing. The whole idea of a distinction has been invented by modern science out of the distorted intellectual knowledge of our time, and it is truly scientific nonsense. That is one reason why I have been fighting it for years.

But there is another reason why this nonsense must be uprooted, this superstition about motor and sensory nerves, between which there is no other difference than that one is sensitive to what is outside the body and the other to what is inside the body. This is the other reason.

No one in any kind of social science can acquire a correct understanding of man in his relation to work if he builds up concepts on this false differentiation between sensory and motor nerves. For one will get most curious notions of what human work is, of what happens in man then he works, when he brings his muscles into movement, if one does not know that the man’s bringing his muscles into movement does not depend upon his so-called motor nerves but upon the immediate connection of his soul with the outer world. I can do no more then just indicate this fact to you, because today men do not yet have the slightest understanding for it. Education has not yet produced even a primitive capacity for the understanding of such things because it still works on the basis of this mad distinction between sensory and motor nerves. When I confront a machine I must confront it as a whole man; I must set up a relation above all things between my muscles and this machine. This relation is all that a man’s work really depends upon. It is this relation that one must understand if one wants to know the social significance of work,—this very special relation of men to work. What is our concept of work today?

The process that goes on in man when he is, as we say, “working” is no different, whether he is exerting himself at a machine, or chopping wood, or engaging in sport for pleasure. He can wear himself out just as thoroughly, he can consume just as much working-power, in some sport that is a social superfluity as in chopping wood which is social necessity. And the illusion of a difference between sensory and motor nerves is the origin psychologically of man’s conception of work today—while in reality one can only gain a true conception of work if one considers, not how a man exerts himself in work, but in what sort of relation to his social environment he is placed by his work. I believe you do not really comprehend that, because the concepts one might have today of these things are so distorted by our education that it will be a long time before one can find any transition from the concept of work that is socially absurd and from the concept of sensory and motor nerves that is scientifically absurd. It is in these very things that we must look for the reason why our thinking in so impractical. How can humanity think practically about practical things when it is a victim of this absurd concept: that we have a telegraphic apparatus strung up in us by which wires go to someplace or other in the brain and are then switched on to other wires—sensory and motor nerves! It is from this unscientific science of ours, which arises from a distorted school system, and to which people are intrigued into pinning their faith—it is from this that the impossibility arises of thinking socially.

That is what we should recognize today as the Pentecost spirit. It would be wiser to pour that out in single streams on the men of the present day, than to use the kind of quack ointment that it is thought today will better this thing or that. When one says today that mankind must learn anew and think anew, people believe at most that one is employing that same phrase that they themselves employ—and that is easy to understand because people at once translate what one says into phrases and utopias. But does it not make a difference whether some popular orator says “Mankind must learn new lessons”, or whether someone says it who knows that through the habit of artificial thinking mankind has created such depths of false thoughts that they even reach down into the structure of the human nervous system, so that today men have a deeply rooted superstition about sensory and motor nerves because their authorities impose it upon them. It must be made clear to the world that one is speaking from a basis of reality—and saying very different things about this reality—when one talks on the ground of the anthroposophical movement about “thinking anew” and “learning anew”; it should be the task of the Anthroposophical Society to make that clear. For today the phrase has won such power that as far as the words themselves are concerned anyone who is unable to distinguish between reality and phrase can refer you, for instance, to the editorial of today’s Stuttgart Daily and say: Look there, there is also preaching about “learning anew”. But it is not a question of comparing words, for then we fall into word-idolatry; today we must see what the reality is, and protect ourselves fro the danger of falling into phrase idolatry. How many times have I regretfully had to disagree when such phrases as this have been uttered: Look there, someone has again spoken from the pulpit “quite theosophically”—as people say. These things are so bad because they show how little capacity exists today for differentiating between a knowledge of reality and a smug use of phrases. With the Pentecost festival this admonition should pour down upon human souls: “Away from you phrases back to reality!” We talk today in the field of science, the field of art, the field of religion—in fact, we talk everywhere—in phrases which stick in the throat and do not include the whole man; just as man’s belief today is that his sense impressions stay somewhere up in his brain and do not also register his motor activities. Everything is connected in the most intimate way, and until there is a change in those thought habits which official science has created in our time, which scientific popery has imposed upon us, there will be o real Pentecostal renewal—for all other renewal is only on the surface and does not pour forth, as it must, from real inner depths. If our school life and education are really to experience a renewal we must become awake to such things as have been discussed here, and protect mankind from the diseases which so easily can arise in it today, because of its inheritance from Romanism.

The love of illusion that is so widespread today must be fought against. The man of today feels comfortable when he can delude himself about reality, when he can say to himself: Not Christ in me, Who arouses my strength, Who liberates powerful forces within me—not that do I profess; but the Christ Who is external to me, and Who mercifully frees me from my sins without my having to do anything about it out of my own earnestness or my own powers!

My dear friends, again and again in numerous letter I have had this Christ-Jesus creed held up to me, in contract to what Anthroposophy must do and wants to do. And again and again I have been confronted by the request to “popularize” in trivial phrases, “so that people can understand it”, that which today must be stamped with severe accuracy out of the reality of the spirit because the time demands it. But the moment anthroposophical truths were cut up into trivial phrases they would become just phrases, such as all the phrases that are so cheap in the present day; they would be brought down either to trivialities of the street or to the Philistinism of modern science. Again and again I have found the courage not to do either—either to reduce anthroposophical teaching to the trivial phrases of the street (which is called “popularizing”) or to talk so that the scientific people would understand me. I have received these two admonitions many times. My dear friends, I should then have to talk so that I would find an echo in the scientific senselessness of the present day. It would be especially agreeable to me when people behave as a professor in Tübingen did recently out of the scientific conviction of the present time. It seems to me, truth reigns in external events, for that affair is the best proof of how necessary it is for the spiritual life to be completely transformed. Especially, if one wants to find a transition to the true Pentecost spirit, from babbling words to seed-bearing words, then one must earnestly again and again examine one’s old habitual concepts in order to see what it is that one does not want to make new concepts for—what it is that can be chattered about perhaps while still clinging to one’s old concepts, but not comprehended by them.

Apropos of’ the value or words today, there is no great sense in pointing out that in certain circles the proletariat has sufficient goodwill to understand the Threefold Commonwealth ideas even better then the middle-class understands them. If the middle class would only have the same “goodwill” is what many would like to say today. The proletariat laughs at this urging the middle-class to have “goodwill”—and he is justified in laughing. He is better prepared to understand than a man of the middle-class. But it is on quite a different basis that he is prepared to understand these things, and he laughs when when anyone says one appeal to the goodwill of the middle-class in order to set understanding; he laughs especially when one says one could expect a result from this appeal. For he knows quite well that his better understanding comes from something quite different: that in the morning if he does not work he finds himself in the street: he is bound up with the social order, I might say, at points only—not throughout a straight line as is the middle-class citizen of today: he understands out of his humanness because the present social order has brought it about that he has other than human interests, for he is nothing else the morning he is thrown out on the street, but just a man. That is what his better understanding springs from.

As to the middle-class citizen, especially the state-official: the state takes him in hand as soon as possible—not too early, because then it is still considered indelicate, and so the state leaves him to mothers and wet-nurses. But as soon as he gets beyond this first indelicate period he is taken at once into the care of the state and trained, prepared—not to be a man, but to be a state-official. Then the strings are tied, so that he is connected with the social order not at points, like the proletarian, but by a long line; through strings on all his interests, he is fastened up to the social order that exists through the state and that is supported by the state. He is trained in all his behavior to be the correct expression of the social order. Then he is fed, and he is satisfied. He is not only fed, but he is so taken care of that he does not have to take care of himself. And then, when he is no longer able to work, the state sees that he gets a pension so that without having to do anything about himself he is properly supported by the Powers that trained him in the first place to be their loyal expression. This lasts until death. Then he is still taken care of, this time by a religion which gets its salvation not from the inner forces of the soul, but from a mercy that comes in from the outside; this religion sees to it that his soul is “pensioned” after death. That is the precise content of state wisdom and religious wisdom. No wonder that a man of the middle-class, citizen of both state and heaven, hangs on to that with which he is bound up so thoroughly.

There is the contrast: personal interest on the one side, but then also personal interest on the nearest corner of the other side. It is in opposition to the personal interest on the other side that that a number of men attain today that which mankind must attain in this age of the consciousness soul, and of which I have often spoken: establishing oneself as an individual human being. The proletarian has only an opportunity of doing that, of establishing the fact that he is first of all an individual, when he has not been drawn into a contract with all the others. The more he is drawn in, the worse it is for him.For here on this side are men who similarly are set up in their positions by the proletarist: they are the the men who have any kind of official position in the labor unions. Even if their positions are called by other names, they succumb easily to the same grand manners as the middle-class citizens, and they fight whatever arises as a possible hindrance to these airs. And so they gradually acquire the habits of the middle-class.

One talks today in the proletarian world of labor unions. In England about a fifth of the whole laboring population is economically organized. That is relatively many. Thus the present English laboring class, in the modern spirit of organizing, has grown quite neatly into the middle-class way of thinking. In Germany only an eighth are organized, the others are unorganized workers. And it is the unorganized workers today who stand on the ground of personality; they are the real driving powers, it is they who have preserved the consciousness of what it means to remain just a man, without the pensions—without even, the pension which I have rationed for one’s later spiritual life. These men who stand in the external economic sphere upon their own individuality are, I might say, the psychic channel for that which must arise today as an historical necessity, for that which makes the proletarian demand of today at the same time a world-historical demand.

The modern economic order has harnessed the proletariat to factories and capitalism, where it is easier for them to understand what the demand of the time is, than for the middle-class man who hangs on with all his strings to his maintenance and his pension, and who does not want to think. If he were to think, if he were to analyze the age correctly, it would not be possible to speak as a Tübingen professor did recently, who brought up this argument during the discussion after one of my lectures: It has just been said that the proletarian’s “existence worthy of a man” is undermined because the proletarian is paid wages for his work; is not Caruso paid wages when he sings, and at the end of the evening is given 30 or 40 thousand marks for his work? Or—the selfless gentleman continued—do I not also receive wages?—I feel none of this “unworthy of a man” business when I pocket my salary! Nor does Caruso feel it when he collects his 30 or 40 thousand marks… That is the gist of what he said. And he went on to say: the only difference is this, that in one case the wages are more, in the other, lees, but that is of no importance—in reality it is all the same!

My dear friends, that is the spirit which blossoms out of the educational life of today! It is the same spirit that says: We are becoming a poor nation , we will not be able to pay for schools and educations, the state will have to step in and pay for them. Now, to one who thinks so shortsightedly, one will have to reply: But what does the state do when everybody is poor, and it must suddenly become the Croesus who will pay the debts that all of, us cannot pay? First, the state takes away in the form of taxes whatever everybody has: it seems to me it can hardly manufacture as a Croesus what the people themselves do not have. That is what these classes of people have to learn. It is also what those persons must learn to understand who are supported by the state out of the pockets of those who stand economically on the basis of their human individuality. As long as they have not learnt to understand it through the necessity of life, it is impossible to put it into their minds. And so it seems to me, a great number of people today want to conjure up an age in which one can also be thrown on the street if one is not willing to bring about another social order through an impulse of thought. It could very easily happen that the state pensions of which I have spoken could no longer be paid—in which event, I believe, the people would not so much, either, of those other spiritual pensions that are paid today to the soul after death by the religious community that has become so dependent upon the material powers.

But now when something arises that is not willing to be mere phrase, but insists upon being seed-thoughts for action, people cannot accept it as anything other than phrase. They cannot perceive that a real concept of work depends upon actual knowledge of life, even of single details such as the scientific absurdity existing in the distinction between motor and sensory nerves.

It is necessary today that at least a few men see into these depths. Today it is absolutely necessary that individuals should not let themselves be fooled into saying: We will socialize the outer economic life, but we will not touch the schools, especially the high schools and colleges. They must remain as they are. That is the very worst thing that could happen, for the state of affairs that has prevailed until now will, if it remains as it is, will only become worse. Socialize economic life, and leave the spiritual life as it is, and in a short time out of your apparent socialization you will have a much greater tyranny and much worse conditions of life than ever before. Today of course the economic pressure which exists is the cause of frightful eruptions in the social organism. Is this now to be succeeded by place-hunting, by the worst kind of bureaucracy? Do men who have now (although a little late) finally learnt that they cannot depend upon “throne and alter”, actually believe that it would be any safer to depend in the same way upon the state treasury and state budget? Capitalism has known how to bring the altar around gradually to a respect for power that really no longer exists but that lives on in phrase, into corporation idolatry and corporation place-hunting.

What mankind needs for a renewal of the spirit is the courage to realize that the spiritual life of humanity has become today religious chatter on the one hand , and on the other , thoughtless, brutal action, militarism. The typical man of this modern capitalistic age feels most himself when he is engaged in cutting his coupons, averting his eyes while he does it from what really takes place through that action. On the one hand the gospel made into chatter about love of neighbor and brotherliness, and he sits there comfortably with his scissors, cutting it all to pieces: he does not need to see the reality of what he is doing, because on the other hand he knows that he does not have to protect his business himself: the state does that by manufacturing swords. We have experienced this covenant between business life and state life in modern times: it is precisely what brought the world catastrophe upon us. This “state” of which men have been so proud: what has it been else then the great Protector of economic life as it is carried on under capitalism? My dear friends, one would like to hope that the patriots of the past, whose patriotism in their sense one would not question, ( for they were “good” patriots, they coined the word from a patriotic phrase, and it was very disastrous in the age just past to point out that this patriotic phrase had a very real foundation, that the state reverenced by patriots was after all just a protector of banknotes?)—one would like to hope that these patriots do not suddenly “unpatriotize” themselves and now that their gold is probably bettor protected by the Entente powers, speedily trim their patriotism! I will not say anything in particular about such a possibility, but I should like to draw your attention to the ease with which the patriotic phrase can be transformed into its opposite. There are plenty of examples about us.

These are the things that must be said today, while celebrating Whitsuntide, in regard to the necessity of renewing school and educational life. For the unctuous talk that has been given to mankind should he poured out no longer. Men must accustom themselves to words that point to the realities of the present day. Then it will be possible for the real Pentecost spirit to descend among us, for little tongues of fire to reach into all that arises in the future out of the emancipated spiritual life, into the lowest school as well as the highest, so that in the future the liberated spirit, which is the real Holy Spirit, can bring about the spiritual evolution of mankind.

One is talking perhaps of something that the religious chatterer of today does not think of as exactly “Christian”. But mankind will have to decide whether the Christian talk of the man of today originates in that spirit which Peter denied his Lord three times, or whether it crises out of the spirit that said, “What I have revealed to you is not merely confined to one age, but will stand through all ages. And I will not cease to declare the truth to you; I will be with you until the end of the earth, time.” Those who can hear only the spirit of the past today even in Christianity, will be the phrase makers, the chatterers. Those who accept the living spirit today even for the transformation and rebuilding of the social order,’ will be those perhaps in whom one will able to see the true Christ.

May this age grow out of a truly comprehended Pentecost spirit.

Pentecost Reading 2, Rudolf Steiner

III. World-Pentecost: The Message of Anthroposophy

When we look back over the history of human evolution, events of major or minor importance which have influenced the life of the whole of mankind stand out in strong relief. The greatest of all these events is that known as the Mystery of Golgotha, whereby Christianity became an integral part of the evolution of humanity. In the age when the Mystery of Golgotha took place, man’s conception of it was quite different from that of later times. In our present age a new understanding, a new conception, must arise. It is the task of Anthroposophy to promote an understanding of the Mystery of Golgotha that is in keeping with the spirit of our epoch.

We must cast our minds back to earlier ages when human consciousness was altogether different from that of to-day. Three or four thousand years ago, men were instinctively conscious that before coming down into a physical body on the earth they had lived in the spiritual world. Every individual in those times knew that within him was a being of soul-and-spirit, sent down by the Divine Powers into earth-existence. Men’s consciousness of death, too, was different, for, in that they were able to look back in remembrance to their pre-earthly existence as beings of soul-and-spirit, they knew that the part of them that had lived before this earthly life would also live on beyond death.

In those days there were schools of learning which were at the same time religious institutions—the Mysteries, as they are called—where men received instruction on what it was within their power to know concerning their pre-earthly life. Thereby they came to realise that before their earthly existence they had lived among stars and among spiritual Beings, just as on earth they were living among plants and animals, mountains and rivers. Man said to himself: “Out of the world of the stars I have descended to existence on earth.” He knew, too, that the stars are not merely physical, that every star is peopled by spiritual Beings with whom he had been connected before descending to the earth. He knew also that on laying aside his physical body at death he would return to the world of the stars, that is to say, to the spiritual world. He regarded the sun as the star of supreme importance—the sun with its Beings, of whom the most exalted was the One known as the sublime Sun-Spirit.

From the Mysteries the teaching came to men that before they descend to the earth the sublime Sun-Being gives them the power whereby they are able to return in the right way after death into the spiritual worlds of the stars. The teachers in the Mysteries said to their pupils and these pupils in turn to other men: “It is the spiritual power of the sun, the spiritual light, which bears you on beyond death and which accompanied you when you descended, through birth, into earthly existence.” [Cp. John I, 9.]

Many were the prayers, many were the lofty teachings given by the teachers in the Mysteries in order to glorify and describe the sublime Sun-Spirit. These teachers in the Mysteries said to their pupils and they in turn to all humanity, that when man has passed through the gate of death he must enter, first, into the sphere of the lesser stars and their beings, and then rise above the sun. This he cannot do if the power of the Sun-Being is not bestowed upon him. Thus the hearts of men who understood this were aglow with ardour when they offered their prayers to the Spirit of the sun who gives them immortality. The hymns and devotional exercises dedicated to the sun had a particularly strong influence upon man’s feeling and upon his whole life of soul. He felt himself united with the God of the universe when he participated in sun-worship.

Among the peoples where these customs prevailed, special rites and ceremonies were enacted in connection with this veneration of the sun. The ritual consisted, as a rule, in an image of the god being laid in the grave and after some days taken out again, as a sign and token that there is a god in the universe—the Sun-God—who ever and again awakens men to life when he succumbs to death.

In enacting this ritual, the officiating priest said to his pupils, and they then repeated it to others: “This is the sign and token that before you came down to the earth you were in a spirit-realm that is the abode of the Sun-God. Look up to the sun which radiates light! Whatever you see is only the outward revelation of the Sun-Being. Behind its radiance is the eternal Sun-God who ensures immortality for you.” Thus those who received this teaching knew that they had come down from spiritual worlds into the earthly world, but that they had forgotten the world where dwells the Sun-God. But the priest told them: “Through your birth you have departed from the realm of the Sun-God. When you pass through death you shall find that realm again through the power that he, the Sun-God, has laid in your hearts.”

It was known to the initiated priests of these Mysteries that the sublime Sun-Spirit of whom they spoke to the worshippers is the same Being as He who would later be called the Christ. But before the Mystery of Golgotha the priests could speak to this effect only: “If you desire to know something of the Christ, you will seek in vain on the earth; you must be lifted to the secrets of the sun. For only outside and beyond the earth will you find the mysteries pertaining to the Christ.”

Relatively speaking, it was not difficult for men at that time to accept such teaching because they had an instinctive remembrance of the realm of the Christ whence they had descended to the earth. But human nature is involved in a process of evolution and this instinctive remembrance of pre-earthly, spiritual life was gradually lost. Eight hundred years before the Mystery of Golgotha there were only a very few in whom any instinctive remembrance of pre-earthly life still survived.

Let us picture for a moment the passing of a man through death.—He passes out into the starry universe, gradually reaching spheres from which he beholds the stars—and even the sun—from the other side. From the earth we see the sun in the way to which we are accustomed here. When, after death, we pass into the cosmic expanse and see the sun from the other side, we see it, not as a physical orb, but as a realm of spiritual Beings.

Long before the Mystery of Golgotha took place, men had been able to behold the Christ in the sun from the other side, both before their birth and after their death. The teachers in the Mysteries were able to recall this vision of the Christ to their pupils, and to awaken in them the realisation: “Before I came to the earth, I beheld the sun from the other side.”—This was so in times long preceding the Mystery of Golgotha.

Then came the age—beginning about eight hundred years before the Mystery of Golgotha—when it was no longer possible to quicken in men the remembrance that before they came down to the earth they beheld the Christ from the other side of the sun. And now the teachers in the Mysteries could no longer say to men: “Look up to the sun and behold the revelation of Christ!”—for men would not have understood these words. It was as if men on the earth had been quite forsaken by the Christ-power, were no longer able to kindle to life within them any remembrance of the spiritual worlds.

Then, for the first time, there came upon men what may be called the fear of death. When in earlier times they saw the physical body die, they knew: As souls we are of the kingdom of Christ and do not die.—But now men were greatly troubled as to the destiny of the immortal, eternal being within them. It was as though the link between themselves and the Christ had been severed. This was because they were no longer able to look up into the spiritual worlds, and in the earthly realm the Christ was nowhere to be found.

Then, at the time when men could no longer find the Christ on yonder side of the sun in the super-earthly world, out of infinite grace, out of infinite mercy, Christ came down to the earth in order that men might find Him there. Something happened then in the evolution of worlds that has no parallel with anything within the range of human knowledge. For in the spiritual world, the Beings above man—the Angeloi, Archangeloi, Archai, up to the very highest Divine Beings—only pass through transformation, metamorphosis. They are not born, neither do they die. In the Mysteries of those times it was said: “Men alone know birth and death. The gods know metamorphosis only; they do not know birth and death.”

And so, since men could no longer reach Him, Christ came to them on earth. In order that this might be achieved, it was necessary that He, as a god, should undergo what no god had ever previously undergone, namely, birth and death. Christ became the soul of a man, Jesus of Nazareth, and passed through birth and death. That is to say: for the first time a god trod the path which leads through human death.

The essential truth of the Mystery of Golgotha is that it is not a mere human affair; it is a Divine affair. It was a resolve of the divine world that the sublime Sun-Being Himself should unite His destiny with mankind so completely as to pass through birth and death. Since then, men have been able to look to that which happened on Golgotha and so to find the Christ on the earth—to find Him who would otherwise have been lost to them because the heavens were no longer within reach of their consciousness.

In those who were the first to share in the secrets of Golgotha, the apostles and disciples of Christ, a last vestige remained of an instinctive consciousness of what had come to pass. These men knew: The Being who was formerly to be found only by those able to look up in spirit to the sun, can be found here and now if men rightly understand the birth, life and suffering of Christ Jesus. There were, then, at the time of the Mystery of Golgotha, a few who knew that He who, as the Christ, was in Jesus of Nazareth, is the sublime Sun-Being who has come down to the earth.

Until the fourth century after the Mystery of Golgotha there were always some who knew that Christ, the Sun-Being, and the Christ who had lived in Jesus of Nazareth were one and the same. It is deeply moving to learn from Spiritual Science of the fervent prayers of men in the early Christian centuries: “Thanks be to the Christ-Being from whom we should perforce have been separated, had He not come down from spiritual worlds to us here on earth!”

After the fourth century A.D. the human mind could no longer comprehend that the Christ, who ensures immortality for men, was the sublime, divine Sun-Being. From that time until our own day there have been only the external words of the Gospels, telling of the Mystery of Golgotha. Nevertheless, these words of the Gospels worked throughout the centuries with such power that they turned men’s hearts to the Mystery of Golgotha.

To-day, however, we are on the threshold of an age when, having acquired great knowledge about the secrets of nature, men would be wholly estranged from the Gospel tidings if a new path to Christ were not opened. Anthroposophy would fain open this path by leading men again to knowledge of the spiritual world. For the Christ Event can only be understood as a spiritual Fact. Those who are incapable of this do not understand the Christ Event at all.

With the help of anthroposophical knowledge we can carry ourselves back in imagination to the time when Christ Jesus walked in Palestine and lived through His earthly destiny. We can look into the hearts of the disciples and apostles who realised with their intuitive knowledge: “The Being whose abode in former time was the sun, has come down to the earth, has dwelt among us. He who has dwelt among us as Christ Jesus, He who has walked the earth, was once to be found only in the realm of the sun.”—Therefore these disciples said to themselves: “Out of the eyes of Jesus of Nazareth the light of the sun rays forth to us. Out of the words of Jesus of Nazareth streams the power of the warmth-giving sun. When Jesus of Nazareth moves among us it is as though the sun itself is sending its light and power into the world.”

Those who understood this, said: “Moving among us in the form of a man is the Sun-Being, who in earlier times could be reached only when man’s gaze was directed upwards from the earth to the spiritual world.” And because the disciples and apostles knew this, their attitude to Christ’s death was also true and right, and they could remain disciples of Christ Jesus even after He had passed through death on the earth.

Through Spiritual Science we know that when the Christ had departed from the body of Jesus of Nazareth, He moved in a spirit-body among His disciples and gave them further teaching. A power had been given to the apostles and disciples which enabled them still to receive the teaching of Christ when He appeared to them in this spirit-body. This power however, departed from them after a certain time. There was a point in the lives of the disciples of Christ Jesus when they said among themselves: “We have seen Him but we see Him no longer. He came down from heaven to us on earth. Whither has He gone?”

The point of time when the disciples believed they had again lost the presence of Christ is commemorated in the Christian festival of the Ascension, which preserves in remembrance the disciples’ conviction that the sublime Sun-Being who had walked the earth in the man Jesus of Nazareth had vanished from their sight. At this happening there fell upon the disciples a sorrow such as cannot be compared with any other sorrow on earth. When in the ritual of the Sun Cult in the ancient Mysteries, the image of the god was laid in the grave and lifted out only after a period of days, the souls of those participating in the ceremony were filled with sorrow at the death of the god. But this sorrow was not to be compared in magnitude with the sorrow that filled the hearts of Christ’s disciples. All knowledge that can truly be called great is born from pain, from inner travail. When through the means for the attainment of knowledge described in anthroposophical spiritual science one tries to tread the path into the higher worlds, the goal can be reached only by experiencing pain. Without having suffered, suffered intensely, and thereby having become free from the oppression of pain, no man can come to know the spiritual world.

During the ten days following the Ascension, the suffering of Christ’s disciples was beyond all telling, because Christ had vanished from their sight. And out of this pain, out of this infinite sorrow, there sprang that which we call the Mystery of Pentecost, the Whitsun Mystery. Having lost the sight of Christ in instinctive, external clairvoyant vision, the disciples found it again in their inmost being, in their feelings, in inner experience—found it through sorrow, through pain.

Once again let us look back to earlier times.—Before the Mystery of Golgotha men had some remembrance of pre-earthly existence. They knew that in this pre-earthly existence they had received from Christ the power to attain immortality. But now, at the time of the Mystery of Golgotha men knew that through their own human power they were not able to look back into the spiritual world, into pre-earthly existence.

The disciples of Christ therefore turned their thoughts to all that their memory had preserved concerning the Event of Golgotha. And out of this remembrance, and the suffering it evoked, the vision arose in their souls of that which man had lost because he no longer possessed the faculty of instinctive clairvoyance. The men of old had said: “Before we were born on earth we were together with Christ. From Him we have the power which leads to immortality.” And now, ten days after they had lost the outer sight of Christ, the disciples said: “We beheld the Mystery of Golgotha, and this gives us the power to feel again the reality of our immortal being.”—This is expressed symbolically by the tongues of fire at Pentecost. Thus, in the light of Spiritual Science, the Pentecost-secret reveals to us that the Mystery of Golgotha has replaced the Sun-Myth of the ancient Mysteries.

It was Paul who, through the revelation that came to him at Damascus, realised with particular clarity that Christ was the Sun-Being. As a pupil of the ancient Initiates in the Mysteries, Paul’s first firm conviction had been that Christ is to be found only when, by means of clairvoyance, man reaches the spiritual world. Therefore he said: “This sect declares that the Sun-Being has lived within a man, has passed through death. This cannot be, for only above and beyond the earth is the Sun-Being to be seen.”—As long as Paul’s belief was based upon knowledge acquired by him in the Mysteries, he was an opponent of Christianity. But through the revelation at Damascus Paul realised that without being transported into the spiritual world, man can behold the Christ, and therefore that He had in very truth descended to the earth. From this moment he knew that the disciples of Christ Jesus spoke the truth; for the sublime Sun-Being had now come down from the heavens to the earth.

Had Christ not appeared on the earth, had He remained the Sun-God only, humanity on the earth would have fallen into decay. Increasingly men would have come to believe that material things alone exist, that the sun and the stars are material bodies. For men had forgotten altogether that they themselves had descended from a pre-earthly existence, from the spirit-world of the stars.

Only for a time, however, can mankind hold to the conviction that everything is material. If all human beings were to believe, let us say for a century, that everything is material, they would lose the strength of the spirit within them and would become decrepit and sick. This would in fact have been the lot of mankind if Christ in His infinite mercy had not come down from the spiritual world to the earth.

You will say: Yes, but there are many who do not want to know anything of Christ, who do not believe in Him. How is it that these human beings have not become decrepit, weak and sick? The answer is that Christ appeared on the earth at the time of the Mystery of Golgotha not merely in order to give teaching to men but to make the fact of His appearance effective on the earth. He died for all men. The physical nature of every human being, including those who have not believed in Him, has been rescued and restored through the Deed of Golgotha. Ever since that time a man might be a Chinese, a Japanese, a Hindu, with no desire to know anything of Christ,—nevertheless Christ died for all men.

In the future it will not be the same, inasmuch as knowledge will become a much more decisive factor for man than hitherto. More and more it will become a necessity in the evolution of mankind for all human beings to acquire some knowledge of spirit-being and of spiritual life. Such a knowledge as will lead all mankind into the world of spirit is the goal striven for by anthroposophical Spiritual Science.

Moreover this knowledge can give a new understanding of Christ, in the sense that, where Anthroposophy is rightly understood. Christ can be presented in a way that is comprehensible to all men. Christianity, as it has hitherto been proclaimed, may have been carried to Africa or to Asia. A few, maybe, have professed their belief in Christ, but the great mass of the people have rejected the teaching, for they could not understand what the missionaries were saying.

What kind of religion had these people? They had religions which had originated among themselves and were understood only by the particular people to whom some particular place or personality was sacred. As long as the god of the ancient Egyptians was worshipped at Thebes, the people had perforce to journey to Thebes in order to worship in the sanctuary of this god. While Zeus was worshipped at Olympia, the people had perforce to journey to Olympia in order to worship him. In like manner the Mohammedan must journey to Mecca. Even in Christendom itself an element of this has remained.

But if Christianity is rightly understood, men know that the sun shines upon all men, it shines upon Thebes, upon Olympia, upon Mecca; physically, the sun can be seen in the same way everywhere. So too, the sublime Sun-Being, the Christ, can be worshipped spiritually everywhere. Anthroposophy will reveal to men that the Being who before the Mystery of Golgotha could be reached only by instinctive, super-earthly faculties, can be reached since the Mystery of Golgotha through a power of knowledge acquired on the earth itself.

Men will again understand the meaning of the words: The kingdoms of heaven have come down to the earth—and they will no longer speak in vague, mystical terms of the ‘kingdom of a thousand years.’ They will understand that the Being who was formerly to be found on the sun is now to be found on the earth. They will say: “Christ came down to the earth and since the Mystery of Golgotha He dwells among men in the sphere of the earth.” They will be able to feel ever and again what the disciples experienced as the Whitsun Mystery: Christ Himself has come down to the earth.

A power that guarantees immortality for men is dawning in our hearts, but words of Christ, such for example as: “I am with you always, even unto the end of earthly days” must be taken in true earnestness and their deep truth understood. If words such as these are understood in all their spiritual depths, man will also wrestle through to the knowledge that Christ was not only present at the beginning of our era. He is forever present. He speaks to us provided only that we are willing to listen to Him.

But this means that through Spiritual Science we must again learn to perceive a spiritual reality in everything that is of a material nature—a spiritual reality behind stones, plants, animals, human beings, behind clouds, stars, behind the sun. When through what is material we again find the Spirit in all its reality, we also open our soul to the voice of Christ who will speak to us if we are willing to hear Him.

Anthroposophy is able to affirm the reality of the Spirit behind the whole of nature. It may therefore also affirm that the Spirit is at work throughout the earthly history of mankind, that the earth itself first acquired meaning through the Mystery of Golgotha.

Before the Mystery of Golgotha the meaning of the earth was contained in the realm of the Sun; but since the Mystery of Golgotha it inheres in the Earth itself.

This is what Anthroposophy would fain bring to mankind as a perpetual Whitsun Mystery. And when, prepared by Anthroposophy, men are ready to seek again for the spiritual world, they will find Christ as an ever-present reality, in the way that is needful and right for our age. If in this age men do not turn to spiritual knowledge, they will lose Christ. Until now, Christianity did not depend upon knowledge. Christ died for all men. Verily He has not belied them. But if in our day men reject knowledge of Christ, then they belie Him.

As it has been possible for us to be together this year at the time of the Whitsun Festival, I wanted to speak to you of the Christ Mystery in relation to Pentecost. People often speak of Anthroposophy as if it were at variance with Christianity. But if you truly receive into yourselves the spirit of Anthroposophy, you will find that it will again open the ears, the hearts and the souls of men to the Mystery of the Christ.

Anthroposophy would wish its destiny to be one with the destiny of Christianity. This requires that men to-day shall turn, not merely to dead words which speak to them of Christ, but to knowledge which leads them to the light wherein is contained the living Christ—not the historical figure who centuries ago dwelt on the earth—the Christ who lives now and will live through all future time among men, because He who was once their God has become their divine Brother.

And so among our thoughts at Whitsun, let this too be included: that through Anthroposophy we will seek the way to the living Christ, realising that the first Whitsun Mystery can thereby be renewed in every Anthroposophist, and that with knowledge of Christ Himself dawning in his heart, he will feel inwardly warmed and enlightened through the fiery tongues of a Christian understanding of the world.

May our way to the Spiritual through Anthroposophy be at one and the same time the way to Christ through the Spirit.

If, even in small numbers, men make solemn avowal of this, the Whitsun Mystery will take firmer and firmer root in many human beings living at the present time and particularly in the future. Then there will come that which humanity so sorely needs for its redemption and salvation; then the healing Spirit will speak to a new faculty of understanding in men—the Spirit by whom the sickness of human souls is healed, the Spirit sent by Christ. And then will come that which is a need of all mankind: WORLD-PENTECOST!

Brothers and sisters, Australians in NSW, join us by reaching out here, scott@greenwood.media and on X.com/scottmannion

We must, especially in today’s abstracted epoch of the ungrounded and unreal world concept, be active in true spiritual remembrance of Christ’s Ascension, and Pentecost; we truly encounter a living spiritual world when we actively participate in liturgical life (especially once we’ve dedicated ourselves to a daily morning hour of Hesychastic Prayer). We must, in short, fill ourselves with Reality and be purified of semblance.

As we approach Pentecost join us (meeting at Malgoa Village) as we hike just outside Malgoa to the west, in the country (western Sydney), to the Shrine of St. Mary, and then participate in bringing Christ to remembrance as we cherish and celebrate His Ascension, and the descent of the Holy Spirit in Pentecost, venerating the Icons and reading Pentecost material from the Canon in preparation for the coming of the Holy Spirit in us (as a mystic fact of experience, or ‘Empirical Theology’ as Saint Sophrony calls it)

Each year the seasons and stages of Christ’s life penetrate as a living reality into Man’s being and world—if only he can transform himself to hear and see them (or rather, prepare himself to be transformed).

The pilgrimage will be broadcast live for those who are disabled and unable to join in person in Australia, NSW.

Send me a message at scott@greenwood.media or x.com/scottmannion if you would like to join us. I will fill you in on all the details.

This coming Christmas we will be on doing our final pilgrimage of the year in Scotland and England, visiting the tomb of Hesychast Saint Sophrony of Essex, and the Holy island of Iona, among other sites. Feel free to reach out to me if Europeans would like to join us (and if you want to travel out from abroad, costs will be around 4-3000 USD).

God bless you, and I hope to see you this Friday.

We must, especially in today’s abstracted epoch of the ungrounded and unreal world concept, be active in true spiritual remembrance of Christ’s Ascension, and Pentecost; we truly encounter a living spiritual world when we actively participate in liturgical life (especially once we’ve dedicated ourselves to a daily morning hour of Hesychastic Prayer). We must, in short, fill ourselves with Reality and be purified of semblance.

As we approach Pentecost join us (meeting at Malgoa Village) as we hike just outside Malgoa to the west, in the country (western Sydney), to the Shrine of St. Mary, and then participate in bringing Christ to remembrance as we cherish and celebrate His Ascension, and the descent of the Holy Spirit in Pentecost, venerating the Icons and reading Pentecost material from the Canon in preparation for the coming of the Holy Spirit in us (as a mystic fact of experience, or ‘Empirical Theology’ as Saint Sophrony calls it)

Each year the seasons and stages of Christ’s life penetrate as a living reality into Man’s being and world—if only he can transform himself to hear and see them (or rather, prepare himself to be transformed).

The pilgrimage will be broadcast live for those who are disabled and unable to join in person in Australia, NSW.

Send me a message at scott@greenwood.media or x.com/scottmannion if you would like to join us. I will fill you in on all the details.

This coming Christmas we will be on doing our final pilgrimage of the year in Scotland and England, visiting the tomb of Hesychast Saint Sophrony of Essex, and the Holy island of Iona, among other sites. Feel free to reach out to me if Europeans would like to join us (and if you want to travel out from abroad, costs will be around 4-3000 USD).

God bless you, and I hope to see you this Friday.

See below:

“…the word ‘Dobrotolubiye’ is the translation of the Greek

title of the book, ‘Philokalia ‘, which means love of the beautiful,

the exalted, the good. More precisely it contains an interpreta-

tion of the secret life in our Lord Jesus Christ. Secret life in our

Lord Jesus Christ, which is the truly Christian life, begins,

develops and rises to perfection (for each in his own measure),

through the good will of God the Father, by the action of the

grace of the Holy Spirit present in all Christians, and under the

guidance of the Lord Jesus Christ Himself, Who promised to

abide with us for all time.

God’s grace calls all men to such a life; and for all men it is

not only possible but obligatory, for it is the essence of

Christianity- Not all who are called participate therein, and not

all who actually participate, do so in equal measure. The chosen

enter deeply into it and gradually climb high by its steps.

The manifestations of this life, as well as the richness of the

realm where it is revealed, are no less abundant and varied than

the manifestations of ordinary life. And, if it were possible

clearly to understand and to depict all that takes place there:

hostile attacks and temptations, struggles and victories, falls and

recoveries, the birth and strengthening of various manifestations

of spiritual life, degrees of general progress and the state of mind

and heart corresponding to each of those degrees, the interaction

in everything of grace and freedom, the sensations of God being

near or far, the perception of the power of God’s Providence

over all and one’s own final and irrevocable surrender into God’s

hand, the renunciation of all one’s own methods of activity,

together with a constant and intense activity-if all this, we

repeat, and many other things, representing an integral part of

true life in the Lord, could be clearly and plainly described, it

would give a picture as attractive as it is instructive, a picture

like a journey round the world.

Travellers write accounts of all they see worth noting on their

journey. So did the chosen of God, who had explored, in various

directions, all the paths of spiritual life, write notes of all they

met with and experienced in their arduous journeying. But the

purpose and meaning of these notes is different.

Those who have no possibility of travelling may form, without

moving from where they are, a fairly accurate idea of foreign

lands, through reading the travel notes of other wayfarers,

because the mode of life of all creatures is more or less similar in

all countries. It is quite different in spiritual life. Only those

can understand such notes as are following the path of that kind

of life. For those who have not entered this path, it is quite an

unknown science. But even those who have entered upon it,

cannot understand everything in those notes at once. Their ideas

and conceptions become more and more clear as they advance

further and penetrate deeper into the country of the spirit.

As personal experiences of spiritual life accumulate, indications

derived from experience, which had been noted down by the

holy fathers, gradually become more clear and intelligible to them.

At the same time, however, descriptions of various manifesta-

tions of spiritual life, contained in the writings of the holy

fathers, may be a gift useful even to all Christians in general.

They give everyone to understand, that if he has not yet had

experiences contained in such descriptions, it means that his

established mode of life (though capable of being reconciled with

Christian conscience) is not the final perfection, above which

there is nothing to wish for and beyond which there is nowhere

to go. To understand this, cannot but excite zeal for achieve-

ment; it must beckon a man to move on, pointing to something

better than he has.

For those who have already entered the path leading to the

best and the most perfect, such reading provides the necessary

guidance in doubtful and puzzling circumstances, both when the

guidance of direct experience is lacking, and when this latter

(guidance) encounters problems which it cannot solve, and

which do not permit of final decisions that would banish all

vacillation from the traveller. It is often very important, in some

particular case, to know how and where to put one’s foot, so as

to avoid a mistake. And here one or another saying of the fathers

dispenses the darkness, shining like a streak of lightning in the

night.

Generally speaking, these writings are a spiritual forcing

house, into which the faithful enter with their consciousness and

their heart, by reading instructions concerning phenomena of

spiritual life. A man is there subjected to the palpable influences

of the contemplations so evoked. Thus stimulated, he feels that at

those moments he floats in another atmosphere, life-giving and

light-giving. Those are moments of joy, and it is at such moments

that fresh shoots are born and strengthened on the tree of spiritual

life. Therefore it is not to be wondered at that he, who has had

this experience, hastens to read descriptions of spiritual life from

the experience of others as soon as he finds a free moment, just

as a man who likes making profit hastens to places which promise

him profit, and as a man bent on pleasure is drawn to places of

amusement. Such a man often longs to breathe the inspiring and

revitalising spiritual air. And yet it is not idle curiosity. No, it is

a matter of essential necessity for the progress and welfare of our

spirit.

This is why among true Christians there always has been and

still is a need to have the writings of the holy fathers on spiritual

life within their reach. But just as this craving is praiseworthy, so

also its satisfaction is obligatory, for those who have such duty

and the means to satisfy it.

Now it is clear what ‘Philokalia’ is. It gives us the teachings

and the salient points of sacred sobriety, that is, both complete

discourses and short sayings, concerning the inner spiritual life,

with all the manifestations and activities accompanying it. This

book has been composed to satisfy the spiritual need of men

striving towards spiritual achievement. Those who read it know

what treasures of spiritual wisdom are contained in the ‘Philo-

kalia ‘-they read and they rejoice...” —St. Theophan the Recluse

ONE: Europe FRIDAY 8th 9am London time.

TWO: United States: 9pm New York City time THURSDAY 7th

Lord’s blessings to you all. HE IS RISEN! I’m hoping to see you all there, important spiritual impulses are granted in these meetings. Share and receive, especially at this important time moving toward His Ascension and the sending of the Holy Spirit Pentecost. This is a fact of living spiritual reality, building each day.

To join us live on the discord, sign up here or at https://scottmannion.com/fellowship to join us.

As we approach Pentecost join us as we hike just outside Malgoa to the west, south of Penrith in the country, to the Shrine of St. Mary, and then participate in bringing Christ to remembrance as we cherish and celebrate His Ascension, and the descent of the Holy Spirit in Pentecost, venerating the Icons and reading Pentecost material from the Canon in preparation for the coming of the Holy Spirit in us (as a mystic fact of experience, or ‘Empirical Theology’ as Saint Sophrony calls it)

Each year the seasons and stages of Christ’s life penetrate as a living reality into Man’s being and world—if only he can transform himself to hear and see them (or rather, prepare himself to be transformed).

We must, especially in today’s abstracted online society, be active in true spiritual remembrance of Christ’s Ascension, and Pentecost; we truly encounter a living spiritual world when we actively participate in liturgical life (especially once we’ve dedicated ourselves to a daily morning hour of Hesychastic Prayer)

The pilgrimage will be broadcast live while we are there for those who are disabled and unable to join in person in Australia, NSW.

Send me a message at scott@greenwood.media or x.com/scottmannion if you would like to join us. I will fill you in on all the details.

This coming Christmas we will be on doing our final pilgrimage of the year in Scotland and England, visiting the tomb of Hesychast Saint Sophrony of Essex, and the Holy island of Iona, among other sites. Feel free to reach out to me if Europeans would like to join us (and if you want to travel out from abroad, costs will be around 4-3000 USD).

God bless you, and I hope to see you around Pentecost.

Find Samuel’s work at

/ smlbarnes

Read more

Friday the 27th of March is Greenwood Fellowship’s second pilgrimage.

Each year the seasons and stages of Christ’s life penetrate as a living reality into Man’s being and world—if only he can transform himself to hear and see them.

We must, especially in today’s abstracted gnostic online society, be active in true spiritual remembrance of Christ’s Passion; we truly encounter a living spiritual world when we actively participate in liturgical life (especially once we’ve dedicated ourselves to a daily morning hour of Hesychastic Prayer)

As we approach Passover and Holy Week, join us as we hike to Yellowrock Monastery, and then participate in bringing Christ to remembrance as we cherish and celebrate Him, venerating the Icons and reading Passover material from the Canon in preparation for Passover

We have permission to visit the Orthodox Holy Monastery of St George, Yellow Rock in the Blue Mountains to venerate the Icons and pray. Everyone is welcome if they are close enough to the area (providing you join the fellowship. There are free options on my website if you can’t afford it).

We are arriving at 11:30 am at Springwood station in the Blue Mountains, West of Sydney in New South Wales, Australia, for those who’d like to join us. We will meet here for a walking approach, and grab some food and drinks for afternoon tea after worship (don’t forget to bring a little cash for a small donation while we are there, we forgot this last pilgrimage and card facilities are not available).

After the walk back to Springwood, we will likely grab some refreshments . Finishing at around 6.

I will be streaming some of it for those overseas and the immobile, I hope that’s okay.

Please DM me on twitter (@scottmannion) or email me, if you’d like to come. And I can give you my details. Scott@greenwood.media

And do join the fellowship at https://scottmannion.com/fellowship

I’ll be taking the train west from Sydney,

God bless you,

Scott Mannion