Pentecost Sunday

Thoughts for the Week - Fr. R. Taouk 
24th May 2015

1. Bodily Abstinence - The first proper and necessary disposition for receiving the grace of the Holy Ghost is corporal abstinence from excessive food, drink, sleeping, speaking, laughing, delights in looking at women or men, and conversations with people. Such abstinence is the proper and necessary disposition for receiving the Holy Ghost. This I explain through this story. If branches are green or soaking wet, and are thrown into the fire they will not burn, at least until the wood becomes dried out. Drying of wood necessarily precedes burning. And so of you. Persons dissolute in food and drink etc., are like green wood. How dissolute and green you are! If therefore you wish that the fire of the Holy Ghost to be inflamed and burning in you it is necessary that you be dry, and don't eat so often and drink so often, or sleep so much and so with the rest. Abstain, keep yourself from worldly things, from corporeal pleasures and the like and then the fires of the Holy Ghost will burn in you.

2. Devout Prayer - Some people pray in a way which properly speaking is not called prayer. Affective prayer is when a man, on bended knees, raises his hands to Heaven, with eyes and heart, just as one might plead before a pope or a king. Think that you were seeing Christ, in the cathedral of glory, and you were frightened, and then terror comes in your heart and you begin your prayer.

3. Fraternal Concord - Not to have any rancour, hatred, ill will or desire of revenge towards your neighbour. The Holy Ghost does not dwell in a town or a divided community. Think how the whole community is one body and it has many members, diverse members, like a human body. The eyes are the speculative part, the men of knowledge; the ears are the judges and the lords who have to hear justice; the noses are the devout filled with the odour of Christ and the saints; the mouths are the priests who prepare the Sacrament of the Eucharist, by which all its members are fed and nourished, etc. The arms are the soldiers who defend the whole body, the workers are those who sustain the whole like the feet; the head is Christ. And as long as we are united and joined in good peace and concord - when the nobles have love for the commoners, the commoners honour the nobles, the clergy get along with the laity and vice versa, a husband with his wife and vice versa, the father with his son, and the son with the father - as long as that happens, the Holy Ghost vivifies the body of the community. But if the members are divided through injuries and resentments, etc. the Holy Ghost immediately departs. "These are they, who separate themselves, sensual men, having not the Spirit" (Jude 1:19).

4. Doctrinal Hearing - To hear freely the word of God. "While Peter was yet speaking these words, the Holy Ghost fell on all them that heard the word" (Acts 10:44).