In Prayer: When the Holy Spirit Enters

Continuing with the teaching on Prayer by Elder Aimilianos: He has lead us from a dry struggle to silence, to a desire for the Holy Spirit and the awareness of the nature of the Kingdom of Heaven, waiting in anticipation of the Holy Spirit which seems to be nearby. Now he tells us about the entrance of the Holy Spirit into our prayer.

He writes,

The Holy Spirit begins to blow. It is the Holy Spirit who unites me to God, Who brings me into contact as regards His energies and I begin to have an inkling of what is happening. Then the Holy Spirit, Who is light, when He enters into me, reveals to me the depths of my heart.

We are unaware of what lingers in the depths of our hearts. So much of who we are lies hidden from us until the Holy Spirit enters.

He says,

When the Spirit comes close, He reveals to me, my beloved brethren, the blackness inside me, my sins, and I begin to have knowledge of myself. In physical silence, in spiritual silence, God begins to communicate with me by revealing what lingers in the depth of my soul.

 The Elder says it is “like a spotlight and illumines my heart.” ...I come to understand two things. God shows me through the entrance of the Holy Spirit that it is in the center of my soul, my heart, where I will be united with God. And second this is where the obstacles are that separate me from God. These are “ignorance and heedlessness”.

He says,

I neither remember Him nor know Him. Why? Because He is hidden by my passions...My heart is closed by my own passions; that’s what it means. What happens now is that I begin to learn what passion is and how I am controlled them. My ignorance is exposed and I now know why I have been repeating the prayer, “Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me a sinner.” I now know what it means in the Psalm that says “cleanse and make me whiter that snow.” I now can see what is the extent of the cleansing needed to be united with God in prayer. Now I really know I need His mercy. Now what is necessary for life in the Kingdom of Heaven is clear. I now know what passions are and all of them that are in me. I understand the needed battle that needs to take place to cleanse my heart. I now know how much I need His help.

The Elder says that now is the time “for us to see if we’ll accept or reject Him.” He also reminds us that up to this time we have only been playing a game with God.  Now the real struggle begins and if we accept Him we have the Holy Spirit to help us.

What do we have to do? He says we must be wary of our egotism that we have been hiding behind, we must accept this sinfulness that has been revealed.

I have to shatter my being...just as you use a nut-cracker to smash a nut and it makes a “crack” and splits open and you pick up the pieces, that’s what I have to do to my heart! So I can get out the rubbish and throw it away, so I can discover that what I am, what I have loved, what I have desired, what I have asked for in my prayer so far, all that is what Saint Paul calls refuse and I am called on to deny it. To understand that it is refuse, so I can be filled with God. 

He says that if feel that I really need to know God and need to clean out all the “rubbish,”  and that I will not deny God for the sake of myself and accept the challenge to clean up the mess, then I will find the first tears flowing from my eyes.

He says,

In my pain, I begin to cry out again: “My God, my God”. Now I’m saying “Come, Holy Spirit and cleanse me of my sin. Heavenly King, Comforter, the Spirit of Truth, come and teach me in my ignorance, come abide in me, who am so bad, so full, and cleanse me of every stain. Take out whatever is inside me, so that you can come and dwell there”. Not I can say the prayer of the Spirit.