3. What is this sacrament? - That which figuratively represents what you do on holidays. The lamps that you light represent the light of thought in order to remind you that just as the church is all in the light of the multitude of lamps, so the house of your soul (which is also God's), which is more honorable than a temple made with hands, must be all in spiritual light, that is, all spiritual virtues must shine in it, having been kindled by the divine fire of grace, and illumine all of you in such a way so that there is not a single place in your soul that is unlit. The multitude of lighted candles signify bright thoughts, which should shine in you, like candles, so that there will not be a single gloomy thought in the house of your soul, but so that all will be fiery and shine with the light of the Holy Spirit, and you will not lack any of the light-bearing thoughts of reasoning. The fragrant ointments that pour out the incense indicate to you the spiritual myrrh, that is, to the grace of the Holy Spirit, and by the fact that they are composed of various spices, they teach you that this spiritual myrrh must also be acquired in such a way that it is diverse, that is, it is composed of the various gifts of the Holy Spirit. Foreshadowing this spiritual myrrh, the prophet calls it in the Psalms either the dew that descends on the mountains of Zion, or the myrrh that descends on Aaron's breast, and on the pools of his garments (Psalm 132:2,3). Such is the Holy Spirit, Who descends from the Father of lights on worthy spiritual men, and from them He is transmitted to others, and refreshes all like dew. The incense of incense, which, when burned, emits fragrant smoke, points to the same grace of the Holy Spirit, but in the same way as it ascends from within the mountain, or as it is poured out from one who has received the action of the Holy Spirit, like a fountain of water flowing into eternal life. Here it illuminates with radiance, and at the same time ennobles the senses with a spiritual fragrance: it illuminates like the light seen by those who are pure in heart; it is fragrant like the tree of life, which, mortifying the desires of the flesh, pours everywhere the fragrance of spiritual strivings and feelings, and rejoices the hearts of all the faithful with pure joy. - And not only does this mean what happens on feasts, but it also gives rise to many other spiritual thoughts. Thus, if God has so adorned and glorified this soulless myrrh with fragrance, then will He not adorn you also, whom He created in His image and likeness (of course, if you wish)

And it behooves thee to be fragrant with the stench of understanding and wisdom, so that those who hear the words of thy teaching may be perfumed in the senses of their souls, and rejoice in spiritual joy. "And the crowds of people who gather for the feast and loudly sing the praises of God, signify the heavenly ranks and the innumerable hosts of Angels, who sing and glorify the heavenly Lord for the great salvation arranged for your sake. The praise and song sung by the people represent this mysterious singing, silently performed by the Angels, in order to teach you to become an earthly angel and to sing mysteriously and silently with the immaterial lips of the heart of God, Who created you. - Friends, and acquaintances, and nobles, who have gathered for the feast, teach you by their presence that you too should be zealous that, through the observance of all the commandments and through the richness of virtues, you should be numbered and become cohabitants with the apostles, prophets, martyrs and all the saints. If thou dost thus celebrate thy feasts, beloved, and if thou art such as my word has shown, then thou dost truly celebrate a spiritual feast and celebrate it with the angels. But if thou dost not celebrate in this way, and hast not made thyself so, as we have said, then what profit shall thy feasts profit thee? I am afraid that you will not hear from God either, as the ancient Jews did: I will turn your feasts into pity, and all your songs into mourning (Amos 8:10). Perhaps you will ask me: Do you think that if we are not like this, as your word has shown, then we should not celebrate feasts, even if they are bodily and sensually? "No, brother, I don't tell you that. Celebrate fervently and do everything that has to do with the worship of God and the honoring of the Angels as much as you can. Summon to the feast, if thou canst, all kings, nobles, bishops, priests, deacons, laity, that through thee God may be glorified by all, and that this glory, which they send to God, may be imputed to thee as the author of it, and that thou mayest appear pleasing to God. But do not think that this is all that you must do for the glorification of God and in honor of His angels, and even more so, as if by doing so you add something to the glory of the Most High or the saints. For, as the Apostle says, "That which is glorified is not glorified for its surpassing glory" (2 Corinthians 3:10). And the saints have no need of human earthly glory. And celebrate, so that you may find mercy with God through the prayers of His saints, but at the same time do not again think that the visible and sensual that you do for the feast is a real feast, but that it is only a shadow and an image of the feast.

Let it shine in you all the days of your life more than the rays of the sun. Let it shine in all Christians with the pure light of the word, so that by the grace of the Holy Spirit the commandment may be fulfilled in them: "Thus let your light shine before men, that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father who is in heaven" (Matt. 5:16). Instead of many lamps, let there be in you radiant thoughts, from which the fabric for the adornment of virtues is composed, and through which all the beauty of the spiritual temple of your soul is manifest to those who have the right intellectual sight. Instead of fragrant incense, let the inexplicable fragrance of the Holy Spirit perfume fragrant you. Instead of a multitude of people, let a host of holy Angels be with you, who would glorify God for your good deeds and rejoice in the salvation and prosperity of your soul. Instead of friends, nobles and kings, let them celebrate thee as thy spiritual friends, saints, more venerable than nobles and kings. Let these saints be thy beloved, preferably before all, that after thy death they may receive thee into their eternal dwellings, as Abraham received Lazarus into his bosom.

4. Instead of a meal laden with various viands, let there be for you one animal bread, which for the senses is seen as bread, but mentally is the Body of Christ. This is the bread that comes down from heaven and gives life to the world, from which the eater is not only nourished, but also gives life and is raised as if from the dead. Let this bread be for you both food and delight, insatiable and inexhaustible. And the wine, which in this sacrament is truly the Blood of God, may be for you an ineffable light, an ineffable sweetness, an eternal joy. If you drink from this wine worthily, then you will not be thirsty forever, only drink with spiritual feeling and with a peaceful mood of spiritual strength. - And kindly delve into the meaning of the verb. If you partake of the heavenly bread and wine, that is, the Body and Blood of Christ, with a sense and awareness of what they are, then know that you are worthy of them; but if you do not receive Communion in this way, then you eat and drink unworthily. Communing with a pure heart and faith, you are worthy of the sacramental meal, but if you are not worthy of this, then you do not have unity with Christ.

5. Those who partake of the Divine Mysteries unworthily should not think that through them they are so easily united with God, because this does not happen to them and can never happen as long as they are so. Only those who, through communion of the Divine Flesh of the Lord, are vouchsafed to see with an intelligent eye, to touch with an intelligent touch, to taste with intelligent lips the invisible, intangible, and untasteable Divinity – only these know that the Lord is good. They do not only taste sensual bread, and not only sensual wine they drink sensually, but at the same time they taste and drink God mentally, soul and body with the double senses: they taste the flesh sensually, and God mentally, and in this way they are united both bodily and spiritually with Christ, Who is dual in nature, as God and man, and there are co-incarnates with Him and accomplices of His glory and Divinity. In this way, those who partake of the Holy Communion worthily are united with God, those who eat of the bread and those who drink of the chalice, with the knowledge and contemplation of the power of the sacrament, and with the feeling of the soul. And those who partake of Communion unworthily are empty of the grace of the Holy Spirit, and nourish only their bodies, and not their souls.

6. But, O beloved, do not be indignant against me, when you hear the truth that I declare to you, for it is the truth. For if you believe and confess that the Body of Christ is the bread of life and gives eternal life to those who eat it, and that His Blood is for those who drink it a source of water flowing into eternal life, then tell me, I beseech you, why do you, partaking of these Divine Mysteries, receive into your soul nothing special in comparison with what you had before communion. But even if you feel a little joy when you receive Communion, then after a short time you again become the same as you were before, and you do not at all feel in yourself any influx of life or any influx of light. For those who have not risen above the sensual, this bread is simple bread, although mysteriously it is an incomprehensible and unapproachable light, just as wine is mysteriously light, life, fire, and living water.

But this light shines upon you, and you are blind, and you are not illuminated; and this fire radiates warmth upon you, and you remain cold; and this life has entered into you, but you do not feel it and remain dead; and the living water flowed through your soul like a gutter, but did not remain in you, because it did not find in you a worthy container to dwell within you. Therefore, if you partake of the Most-Pure Mysteries in this way, without feeling any grace in your soul, then you partake of Communion only in appearance, and you do not receive anything into yourself. For those who worthily approach these sacraments and worthily prepare themselves to receive the Son of God in them, this bread of the beast that descends from heaven, to them He touches sensibly and unites with them without confusion, allowing them to feel His grace-filled presence.

To Him is due all glory, honor, and worship, now and ever, and unto the ages of ages. Amen.

Homily Forty-Two. 1. What is the mystery of Christ's Resurrection? How does the Resurrection of Christ happen in us, and how does the resurrection of the soul take place along with this? - It is said on Tuesday of the second week after Pascha.

My beloved brethren!

And so, brethren, let us give thanks to Christ the Lord, Who vouchsafed us to sail the sea of fasting and led us with joy into the harbor of the Resurrection – let us give thanks to all, both those who completed the course of the fast well, in the feats of virtue, with zeal and warm disposition, and those who were not so courageous and faint-hearted in their asceticism, because of weakness of heart and corruption of soul. For He also gives to zealous ascetics crowns and rewards, even much greater than they should; And again He shows condescension to the weakest, as merciful and loving to mankind, because He looks more at the disposition and will of our souls than at the bodily labors with which we exercise and strive in virtue, or more out of greater zeal, or less in comparison with those who are zealous because of the weakness of the body, and thus, according to the diligence of each, He distributes the rewards and gifts of the Holy Spirit, and either makes someone famous and glorious for his zealous feats, or leaves him still in humiliation, as one who needs even greater feats for complete purification.

But if you consider it blessed, let us ponder and investigate more precisely what is the mystery of the Resurrection of Christ our God, which is mysteriously in us, if we ascend, and how Christ is buried within us, as in the tomb, how He is united with our souls, resurrected in us, and together with Himself resurrects us. Christ our God, after He was hanged on the Cross and nailed the sin of the whole world to it, died, descended into the pit of hell; then, having risen from hell, He again entered into His immaculate body, and immediately rose from the dead; and then at last he ascended into heaven with much power and glory. In the same way, now, when we, leaving this world and worldly vanities, while confessing the passions of Christ the Lord, enter into the tomb of repentance and humility, He Himself descends from heaven, enters into our body as into a tomb, unites with our souls and resurrects them, dead in sins, and, having resurrected, gives grace to see the glory of this mysterious Resurrection.

Thus, the Resurrection of Christ is the resurrection of us, who have fallen into sin and are dead. The resurrection and glory of Christ is, as we have said, our own resurrection, which happens, is manifested and seen in us through His Resurrection, which He accomplishes in us. The resurrection of the soul is its union with life (the tasting of life). For just as a dead body, if it does not receive within itself a living soul and does not merge with it without merging, cannot live alone, by itself, so the soul cannot live true and eternal life alone, by itself, unless in an ineffable way it unites itself unmerged with God. The soul, in spite of the fact that it is immaterial and immortal by nature, is dead and insensible before it is united with Christ, before it sees that it has been united with Him and is resurrected, before it knows and feels: since there is no knowledge without vision, nor vision without feeling, that is, before someone sees what thing, and seeing it, cognizes, and then feels. I say this in relation to the spiritual, and in relation to the bodily there is a feeling without vision, as, for example, a blind man, stumbling his foot over a stone, feels pain. In the spiritual, if the mind does not come to a state of contemplation in order to contemplate that which is beyond understanding, then it cannot feel the mysterious effect of it. Therefore he who says that he feels spiritual things before he is able to contemplate that which is above the mind, word, and thought, is like a blind man who feels the good and evil that he experiences, but does not know what is under his hands and feet, and what can live or kill him, because he has no eyes to see and to know them. Why does it happen so many times that he raises a stick to strike an enemy, but strikes a friend, despite the fact that the enemy also stands before him and mocks him!

The Resurrection of Christ is believed by many, but there are few who would see it purely. Those who do not see the Resurrection of Christ in this way cannot worship Jesus Christ as Lord. Why does the sacred hymn, which we often have in our mouths, say: The Resurrection of Christ, having not believed, but what? Having seen the Resurrection of Christ, let us worship the Holy Lord Jesus, the only sinless one. How is it that the Holy Spirit moves us to sing: having seen the Resurrection of Christ, that is, that we have seen the Resurrection of Christ, when we have not seen it, since Christ had risen more than a thousand years before, and even then no one had seen Him risen? Does not the church hymn want to teach us to tell lies?! Let it not be! Stop backbiting! On the contrary, it bequeathed us to proclaim with these words the perfect truth, reminding us of that Resurrection of Christ, which occurs in each of us, the faithful, and is not simple, but luminous, shining with the radiance of His Divinity and incorruption. The light-bearing presence of the Spirit points to the Resurrection of the Lord that has taken place in us, and even more so gives us the grace to see the risen Christ the Lord Himself. Wherefore we sing: God the Lord hath appeared unto us; and, wishing to show his second coming, we add after that: Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord. Thus, in those in whom the risen Christ appeared, He is ultimately both seen spiritually and seen with spiritual eyes. For when Christ comes into us by the grace of the Holy Spirit, He raises us from the dead, as we have been before, and gives us life, and makes us see Him Himself alive in us, immortal and incorruptible. And not only this, but He gives us grace and such that we clearly know how He resurrects us and glorifies us together with Himself, as the entire Divine Scripture attests.