Слово на день Пятидесятницы. Блаженного Августина

A celebration pleasing to God, in which piety flourishes and love blazes! For this is the effect of the presence of the Holy Spirit, as the Apostle teaches: the love of God, he says, is poured out into our hearts by the Holy Spirit given to us (Rom. 5:5). So, the descent of the Holy Spirit filled one hundred and twenty people... gathered in one place. So many were gathered then, as we heard when reading the Acts of the Apostles (Acts 1). And these one hundred and twenty received the promise of Jesus Christ, who said to them, let them remain in the city until they are clothed with power from on high: and behold, I will send the promise of My Father to you (Luke 24:49). He who promised is faithful, He who gives good is good. He promised this on earth, and ascending into heaven, he fulfilled his promise. We already have a guarantee of future eternal life and the kingdom of heaven. He justified His promise to us in the present; will He not also justify our expectations in the future? All people, when they come to an agreement with each other on a matter and want to assure their benefits, for the most part receive or give a deposit or assurance. Christ also gave us the gift of assurance—the Holy Spirit. He who cannot deceive, for greater assurance, gave us this gift, although He who promised, even without this assurance, would undoubtedly have fulfilled what he promised. What did He promise? – Eternal life, the assurance of which is the gift of the Holy Spirit. Eternal life is the possession of those already living in the kingdom, and assurance serves as consolation in the journey. It is more fair to call it a gift of assurance rather than a pledge. For although both are given so that what is promised will be fulfilled exactly; but when a pledge is given, after the work is completed, it will be returned to those who accepted it; when a gift of assurance is given, it is no longer returned, but completed and supplemented. So we have the gift of assurance; let us strive for the source from which it flowed, we have a gift - a certain irrigation of the Holy Spirit in our hearts: whoever feels this dew, let him desire the source. For is it not for this reason that we have this gift, so that we will not weaken from hunger and thirst in our passion? We hunger and thirst if we only recognize ourselves as strangers. Why? - Because a wanderer who recognizes himself as a wanderer desires the fatherland, and when he desires it, he cannot help but feel the burden of the journey. If he loves the wandering life, then it means he has forgotten his fatherland and does not want to return. But our fatherland is not such that anything should be preferred to it. Those who prefer a foreign country to their homeland are those who, having been poor in their homeland, enrich themselves by traveling, and therefore do not want to return to it. But we, from the time the Lord breathed the breath of life into the first man, and were born strangers, depart from the Lord (2 Cor. 5:6), and have heaven as our fatherland, and Angels as our fellow citizens. From this fatherland of ours a scripture was sent to us inviting us to return - that scripture that is read by the people every day. Let us give up our attachment to the world, and let us love Him by Who created the world. Amen 120. Word 377 according to the edition. Venetsiansk 1763; see Resurrected. Read XI (1847¬–48), pp. 70–71. You might be interested in: