Below are three of Fr. Abbot's homilies: for the Ascension of Our Lord, the Feast of Pentecost, and the Sunday of All Saints, 2007.

We have a relatively rare occurrence at today's Liturgy, which is the fact that both readings are taken from the works of the same Apostle (Acts and the Gospel of Luke). We hear a few of the same post-resurrection sayings of Jesus in both of the readings. One thing that is different, at first glance anyway, is that in the Gospel it looks like Jesus ascended to Heaven immediately after his Easter evening appearance to them, while in Acts it is said that He was with them 40 days before He ascended. Since that was made explicit, we'll accept that as the historical fact. As for the Gospel, it probably is an example of Luke's stylistic device of telling the end of the story before all the preceding events actually happened, especially since this is the very end of his Gospel. For example, at the birth of John, right in the middle of the story, he says that all these things—some of which, like Zechariah's prophecy, hadn't happened yet in the course of his narrative—were talked about through all of Judea, something that only happened later. He seems to have liked to conclude his story before actually telling the whole thing! So I think that his apparent placement of the Ascension right after the Resurrection was just a way to tidy up and conclude the story, the details of which would be provided in his other work, the Acts of the Apostles.

Perhaps Luke also wanted, in his Gospel if not so much in the Acts, to make a clear theological link between resurrection and ascension, as John does in his Gospel. They are both integral parts of the same mystery, that is, the glorification of our Lord Jesus Christ, and hence are inseparable. Jesus rose from the dead—and kept on rising, as it were, until He returned to his Father in Heaven, to the glory He had with the Father before the world began, as He said in his high-priestly prayer in John 17. The mystery of descent (that is, Incarnation) and ascent (that is, glorification) are concisely summed up in these words of Jesus recorded by St John: "I came from the Father and have come into the world; again I am leaving the world and going to the Father" (16:28).

Jesus never really "left" the Father, since they are eternally and inseparably united, but from the viewpoint of the Apostles, Jesus entered their lives and their world visibly, and then visibly departed. But there is a sense of leaving and returning that has to do with the Incarnation. From our time-space perspective (the only one we can have by experience in this present world), we can say that the Son of God was not always incarnate, but entered our time and space on a certain date in a certain location. Then He departed on a certain date and from a certain location. The point is not to wrestle with the mysteries of time and eternity here, or what it means in the intra-trinitarian life that the Son of God became man. Rather, it is to celebrate the fact that as man Jesus returned to the Father, thus securing a place for other human beings in the divine dwelling-place we call Heaven. Jesus said before He departed: "I am going to prepare a place for you, that where I am you also may be." Is that not one of his most precious promises? Because Jesus became man, died and rose from the dead, and ascended into Heaven, we can be where He is. Otherwise it would be impossible. So the liturgical texts constantly rejoice over the fact that our humanity has a place in Heaven, because Christ did not shed his human nature once his mission on earth was completed. Now it is part of his glory, and even his wounds now shine with the splendor of God, brilliant witnesses to his everlasting love for his fellow human beings.

His mission, however, was not quite complete even when the heavenly portals were opened to let the King of Glory enter. There was still something He had to do, something indispensable for our salvation: He had to send the Holy Spirit. Jesus wasn't kidding when He said: "I am leaving the world and going to the Father." He left. Yet how could He also say: "I am with you always"? He is with us always through the grace and gift of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit would be for the disciples what Jesus was, only in a less visible and tangible way. The Spirit would be "another Paraclete," Jesus said, meaning that Jesus Himself was the first one. A "paraclete" is an advocate, a counselor, a comforter, literally one who is called to our side to help us.

Jesus knew how much we needed his Spirit, so He sent the Holy Spirit a mere ten days after his ascension—during which time all the disciples, along with the Mother of God and the other holy women, as Luke recounts, persevered in earnest prayer. This is the origin of the devout practice called the novena, which is prayer for a specific purpose for nine days straight, recalling the days between Ascension and Pentecost. That is why we also pray special prayers during these days. We join the Apostles and holy women in praying for the Holy Spirit. That's exactly what they were praying for, because just before He ascended, Jesus told them what to pray for: "wait for the Promise of the Father… before many days you shall be baptized with the Holy Spirit." That is, they will be immersed in Him, in his divine grace and power. "You shall receive power," Jesus went on, "when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you shall be my witnesses…" That is the kind of power they would receive: the power to witness, which is the power of wisdom and persuasive preaching, and the power to work signs and wonders in the name of Jesus, so that all might believe in Him and be saved, so that all might ultimately be where He is, in the glory of his Father in Heaven.

At this profound moment just before his ascension, the disciples, who still hadn't quite caught on yet, couldn't help but manifest their lack of comprehension. They were still thinking of power in earthly terms. So they asked: "Lord, will you at this time restore the kingdom to Israel?" We shouldn't chuckle at their cluelessness here, because we're just as dense, but we have no excuse, because we're at the other end of 2000 years of Christian witness and teaching and experience. And unlike the Apostles, we can look things up in the Acts of the Apostles! Don't we ourselves ask from time to time: "Lord, when are you going to [fill in the blank yourself], or "Lord, why don't you…?" His answer will most likely be the same one He gave to his disciples: "It is not for you to know…what the Father has fixed by his own authority." But whatever we do need to know will be given to us; that's where the Holy Spirit comes in. The Spirit of God isn't sent to satisfy our curiosity or foretell the future or even to make things easier for us. He is sent to speak the word of God to us and enable us to live it, to bear fruit as Jesus' disciples. He is the personal means by which Jesus will be with us always.

Along with the profound connection with the Resurrection, the Ascension is linked in Luke's account in Acts with the Second Coming, so there is an eschatological as well as a paschal and pentecostal character to this mystery. As the disciples stand gazing up into the sky after Jesus left them on a cloud, two angels appeared to them—one marvel after another!—and said: "This Jesus, who was taken up from you into heaven, will return in the same way as you saw him go into heaven." This not only testifies to the truth of the Second Coming, it makes it clear that it will be a visible and glorious coming, as Jesus also said elsewhere. Some people try to qualify the Second Coming out of existence by saying it will be a "spiritual" return, without all those apocalyptic events and final judgment. I think I prefer to believe the word of God.

Finally, Jesus leaves them with a gesture of blessing. In almost every icon of Christ, He is depicted as blessing. This is his primary "attitude" toward us. Everything that comes from Him is a blessing, for God is holy and God is love. Even things that don't seem like blessings—trials and sufferings, etc—are surely so if they come from the hand of God. Heaven will reveal it all to us, but for now we await enlightenment from the Holy Spirit, whom Jesus will send again and again from the Father, until we are with Him where He is, in his eternal light and joy. So let us glorify his holy ascension, which He accomplished for our blessing and salvation!

In the first of the Vespers hymns for Pentecost, we hear the solemn announcement of this feast: "Behold, we celebrate today the feast of Pentecost, the descent of the Holy Spirit, the fulfillment of the promise…" Also at Vespers we sing a hymn that has come into the Divine Liturgy as a post-Communion hymn: "We have seen the true light; we have received the heavenly Spirit; we have found the true faith; and we worship the undivided Trinity for having saved us." The Offices for this feast continue with rich and extravagant praise of the All-holy Trinity and especially of the Holy Spirit, whose manifestation on Pentecost offered the world a clear indication that there are indeed three Persons sharing the divine nature of the one God.

Pentecost is a day of enlightenment, as the Liturgy says, a day of divine gift-giving, the conclusion of the 50 days of celebration following Easter, and the beginning—hopefully—of a time of spiritual renewal and a deeper life in God. Indeed, in the Gospel today (Jn 7:37-52 & 8:12) we are invited to drink deeply of the "rivers of living water" that flow from the Heart of Christ. The evangelist explains that Jesus was speaking here about the Holy Spirit, who would be received by those who believe in Him. But the Spirit was given only after Christ had been glorified and returned to Heaven, both to reign and to intercede—and also to be with us by means of his Holy Spirit.

There may be a little analogy here with something else Jesus did in his earthly ministry. At a certain point, He was asked whether He was going up to Jerusalem for a certain feast, and He said no. He didn't go with those who asked Him, and he stayed behind a few days, but later decided to go up secretly. It was at the end of this same feast that Jesus made his solemn proclamation about the gift of the Living Water of the Holy Spirit that He wished to give. Similarly, Jesus, before He left the world to ascend to the Father, said: "I am no more in the world." Yet a few days later He sort of snuck back through his Holy Spirit, so that Jesus would be with us always, as He promised. "If I go [to the Father], I will send [the Holy Spirit] to you" (Jn 16:7). So the Holy Spirit is sent by Jesus, but it is an essential part of the mission of the Spirit to bring Jesus along with Him!

In one of our mid-Pentecost texts, we read the following: "From Christ we have learned a new way of life; let us strive with all our hearts to follow this, so that we may enjoy the coming of the Spirit." I think it is important to reflect on this if we are fruitfully to celebrate and live this mystery of Pentecost. First of all, we see that Christ has taught us a new way of life. We learn that from the Gospels especially, but also from the rest of the New Testament and the teachings of the Church. We have been singing about this new life in a more concentrated way during the paschal period, as we have been celebrating the presence of the risen Lord in our midst. As Luke recounts, during the forty days after the first Easter, Jesus spoke to his disciples about the Kingdom of God. I hope you've been listening, for now He has gone back to the Father! But, you might say, He will still speak to us through the Holy Spirit. This is true, but let's look at the rest of that text, for there is a condition given.

Once we say that we have learned a new life from Jesus, we say: let us strive with all our hearts to follow this, so that we may enjoy the coming of the Spirit. Having learned precepts of salvation from Christ will not do us any good if we do not put them into practice, as He Himself has said in different ways throughout the Gospels. By striving with all our hearts to follow Jesus' words, we will dispose ourselves well for the coming and indwelling of the Holy Spirit. Notice too that the text says: that we may enjoy the coming of the Spirit. The Holy Spirit is coming no matter what, but if we have not been striving to follow Jesus, we may find that his coming is not enjoyable at all, but rather fearful and even painful. For if we are unfaithful, the Fire of the Spirit will not refresh but will burn, because He has to rid us of all the pollutions and the crusty coverings we've allowed to obscure the image of God in our hearts. Ready or not, the Holy Spirit is coming to clean house! But we should be grateful even for that, because if we refuse to submit to the purifying fire of the Holy Spirit, which is an expression of his love and desire for our salvation, we will ultimately end up in the punishing fires of Hell, which have no medicinal value and cannot prepare us for salvation.

So, at the risk of sounding like a killjoy on this feast, I'd like to share with you some reflections on the Holy Spirit found in a little leaflet entitled: "How Christians can Hinder the Holy Spirit." It was given to me by a rather plump and bubbly lady at the Divine Mercy Conference in Oakland at which I spoke last March. Her own "message of the Spirit" was quite upbeat—all about having a happy heart and all that—but the message of this leaflet is rather sober, but quite salutary, I believe, for it helps prepare us to enjoy the presence of the Spirit by living as He would have us do.

Searching the Scriptures, the author has come up with three ways we can hinder the Spirit: to ignore Him, to grieve Him, and to quench Him. First, to ignore the Spirit is, in practice, to diminish his full personality and divinity as the third Person of the Holy Trinity. This happened for a while in the early Church, before the divinity of the Holy Spirit was defined in the Ecumenical Councils. It happens often enough today, simply out of indifference or ignorance. If you are ignorant, you will ignore the Holy Spirit. We ought to be determined, out of faith and love, to learn as much as we can about the Holy Spirit from Scripture and Tradition.

To grieve the Spirit is probably the most common way of hindering his activity, because it consists of things we commonly do, most of which are listed in chapter 4 of Ephesians. I'll quote the author for most of this section. "'Corrupt communication' covers a wide category of conversation. Exaggerating, gossiping, lying, suggestive innuendos, dirty stories… are corrupting influences in a person's life that will grieve the Holy Spirit…

Bitterness in the life of a Christian is also devastating, for Scripture says that by it many are defiled. "The Holy Spirit is grieved when bitterness takes over in a heart. He cannot function in His fullness in such a life… 'Wrath' is poison to the soul… anger…is fatal to spirituality. Its fruits are animosity and resentment, which are deadly works of the flesh. 'Clamor' is usually the conduct of very immature Christians. Bickering, quarreling, contentious people are, by their own conduct, ruling out the full function of the Holy Spirit in their lives… 'Malice' is a deadly foe of the Spirit-controlled life. To be spiteful and hold ill will is to notify the Holy Spirit that He is being substituted with an unholy spirit." That list is not at all complete, but it gives us an idea of what it means to grieve the Holy Spirit.

Finally, we are not to "quench" the Spirit, which means to put out the fire. As I mentioned above, one aspect of his fire is purifying the dross out of our souls. We should not try to limit his activity within us out of fear of what it might cost us to be purified. St Paul also says not to quench the Spirit by spurning his gifts or inspirations. We have to exercise discernment, but "hold fast to what is good." Conforming to the mentality of this world and trying to please people instead of speaking the clear truth of the Gospel is a way of quenching the Spirit.

Ignoring, grieving, or quenching the Spirit, says the author of this tract, "produces a sub-standard, depleted, anemic brand of Christian"—something I'm sure none of us would wish to be! So we should rather worship, love, obey, live and rejoice in the Holy Spirit, so that we can become fruitful, faithful, and enthusiastic followers of Him whose living water of grace is sanctification and salvation for our thirsty souls. Christ is calling us not only to drink the Living Water that flows from Him, but also to become ourselves reservoirs of this grace, so we can pour it out on others. For the grace of the Spirit is inexhaustible, and as we freely receive we should freely give. Glory be to the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit!

As we re-enter "ordinary time" after the long Lent-Paschal cycle, we celebrate, in the Byzantine tradition, the feast of All Saints, which always falls on the first Sunday after Pentecost. It is as if we are given a glimpse of the entire life of the Church from beginning to end, from the manifestation of the Holy Spirit on Pentecost to the consummation of the mission of the Church, which is to produce saints, citizens of the everlasting Kingdom of Heaven. I once read a complaint from someone about the long-winded yet vacuous "mission statements" often found in parish bulletins or websites, which sound more like those of secular organizations than of fervent followers of Christ. He said, What if a parish's mission statement was simply this: "We are here to make saints"? That cuts through all the jargon, all the trendy platitudes, and gets to the heart of Christianity. We most fittingly honor the saints not by singing their praises—though that is still a good thing to do—but by actually joining their ranks! This is the goal of our lives, and it is worth every effort we expend to attain it.

If we're going to strive to be saints, we must first ask: What is a saint? A saint is, first of all, a genuine and faithful disciple of Jesus Christ. We have begun to read in the Liturgy this past week the Gospel of Matthew, beginning with the Beatitudes and the rest of the Sermon on the Mount. Here is where we learn what it means to be a disciple of Jesus Christ. It's not enough to possess a baptismal certificate, nor is it enough to say your prayers and come to church. To be a disciple of Christ is to live each day according to his word, to accept the hardships and demands that following Him requires, to think with the mind of Christ and to act in his Spirit. The Beatitudes give us the outline of a life of the true followers of Christ. Pope Benedict, in his new and excellent book Jesus of Nazareth, masterfully summarizes the Beatitudes in one sentence: "The Beatitudes are the transposition of Cross and Resurrection into discipleship." Each beatitude has its image of Cross and Resurrection. Poverty, mourning, persecution, hunger, the struggle for purity and peace, all represent the Cross. But the other half of each beatitude reflects the mystery of Resurrection: the Kingdom of Heaven, consolation, fullness of righteousness, divine sonship, the vision of God, and eternal reward. To be a disciple of Christ means to accept both dimensions of the Beatitudes, the Cross and the Resurrection, the hardship and the reward, the sorrow and the joy.

There's something else about saints that we can reflect upon in the light of Pentecost. Saints are those for whom Pentecost has made a real difference in their lives. They don't merely go through the motions and emerge untouched by the grace of the Holy Spirit. They are changed, transformed, renewed, and more fully enlightened through their openness to the grace of the Holy Spirit, and the communication of it through the sacraments of the Church, especially when the Holy Spirit is celebrated at Pentecost. St Paul asked the Corinthians: Do you not know that God's own Spirit dwells in you? The saint are those who know that God's Spirit dwells in them—not in a merely conceptual way, or even as an article of faith. They know it by experience, by the recognition of the Divine Presence within them, for they have had their capacity for spiritual perception sharpened by prayer and fasting and a real hunger for the things of God. And they live like those who know that God's Spirit is in them.

Let us now look at the Gospel for this feast, a composite from Matthew, to learn more about what a saint is. A saint is a witness to Christ and his Gospel, for Jesus said: "Everyone who acknowledges Me before men, I will acknowledge before my Father who is in Heaven." The opposite of a saint is, well, one who does the opposite! "But whoever denies Me before men, I also will deny before my Father who is in Heaven." To deny Christ is not only to publicly and verbally disown Him. We deny Christ simply by not living as He commands us to live, by acting out of selfishness and pride, or by doing anything that scandalizes the simple believers. There are many in the Church today who acknowledge Christ in words, but who deny Him in deeds.

There is a theologian, for example, who was recently censured by the Vatican for promoting theological errors. The man says he loves Jesus Christ, but He denies that Jesus is the Incarnation of God and that his death has atoned for our sins, and he resists any attempt of the Pope to correct him, instead bitterly criticizing him. So, is he acknowledging Christ merely by saying he loves Him, or is he in fact denying Christ by arrogantly contradicting divine revelation? I think the answer is clear. A saint acknowledges not a Christ of his own construction, one who serves his own agenda, but the divine Son of the true and living God revealed in the Scriptures and rightly interpreted and celebrated by the Church.

The Gospel continues: "He who loves father or mother… son or daughter more than Me is not worthy of Me. And he who does not take his cross and follow me is not worthy of me." In Luke's Gospel, Jesus says that he who does not take up his cross and follow Him cannot be his disciple. So we have the connection again between sainthood and discipleship, as well as between the Cross and discipleship—which means there is a connection between the Cross and sainthood! In an absolute sense, we can never be worthy of Christ, but in a relative sense we can, since He told us so. We can be worthy of Him, that is, worthy of being a disciple, a saint, a friend and follower of Him, by first loving Him above all others—all others, even ourselves, which means our own desires and opinions and idiosyncrasies—and then by accepting everything that constitutes the mystery of the Cross in our lives. This is no small task, and it will require, as He said elsewhere, our whole heart, mind, and soul, and all our strength.

Jesus goes on: "He who finds his life will lose it, and he who loses his life for my sake will find it." People are often going off to "find themselves," and more often than not this is little more than a concentrated indulgence in their own narcissism. Jesus never asked us to find ourselves; rather, He asks us to lose ourselves! But this isn't an act of raw self-denial merely for its own sake, as if self-abnegation were a goal in itself, nor is it some sort of suicidal spirituality. For Jesus says that who lose themselves for his sake—an essential qualification—will find their lives, their true selves, in Him. The search for self will yield nothing but self, and that is such a poor return for all our efforts. But the loss of self—for Christ's sake—turns out to yield an infinitely rich reward. We finally realize who we are when we abide in Christ and He in us. We become aware of our human dignity, our potential for sanctity, and our eternal destiny. Therefore the self isn't really lost, it is rediscovered in the light of Christ; it is transformed by his grace and the recovery of the divine image within us; it is elevated to a level of faith and love at which we can truly manifest the face of Christ, and then it is, as St Paul so eloquently exclaimed: "No longer I, but Christ who lives in me." The "no longer I" doesn't signify annihilation of the self, but rather deification. It is no longer the old, false, corrupt self, but the renewed, transformed, Christ-like self that is the characteristic mark of the saint.

So let us begin anew this quest for sanctity, this supreme effort to lose our lives in order to find them in Christ, by following the words of the author of Hebrews, from the epistle of the feast: "Since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses"—that is, by all the saints—"let us also lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with perseverance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the Cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God."

Let not the grace of Pentecost lie dormant in our souls, but let us rouse ourselves, accepting the "transposition of Cross and Resurrection into discipleship," that is, living the life of the Beatitudes, and thus finding our place in the joyful choirs of all those who have loved, and witnessed to, and followed even unto death Jesus Christ our Lord.

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