The first part of this sermon, up to the words "the thirsting hearts of the peoples," is found in codex M.E. of Turin, where it also bears the name of Saint Maximus with the title: "Likewise, on Pentecost, Homily 19," and it is noted that two folios are missing. The same sermon is read entire among the Maurists in the appendix to the Sermons of Saint Augustine, class 2, number 182, Antwerp edition 1700. But since the second part of the sermon, whose beginning is "Let us inquire in this place," seems to differ from Maximus's diction, we judge that it should rather be attributed, with the Maurists, to an uncertain author, than, with the writer of the aforesaid codex, to Maximus.
After that singular and remarkable victory by which the public champion did battle for the world and conquered, after He had not only rescued the frailty of our condition from the lower regions, but also lifted it up into the heights of His kingdom, on this day, according to His word, He gave the Holy Spirit, of whom He had already said to His apostles: "And I will ask the Father, and He will give you another Paraclete" (John 14). "Another" indeed, not lesser; "another Paraclete," that is, of like glory and nature, and of the same substance: so that the faith of the disciples, prepared by a truthful promise for the expectation of so great a gift, might recognize that the one whom they remembered had been promised them by the Lord in the place of God was truly God. "And another," He says, "Paraclete":
understand a companion in majesty, whom you perceive to be compared to majesty. "And I will ask," He says, "the Father, and He will give you another Paraclete." How well, under the heading of a promise, He applied the distinction of the Trinity! It is the Father who is indicated as the one to be asked; it is the Son who is understood to be the one asking; it is the Holy Spirit who is promised to be sent by the Father. How great and how ineffable the loving-kindness of the Redeemer! He carried man to heaven, and sent God to the earth. How great is the Author's care for the restoration of His own creature! Behold, again a new medicine is sent from on high; behold, again majesty deigns through itself to visit its own sick ones; behold, again the divine is mingled with the human, that is, by a vicar of redemption:
so that the benefits which the Lord Savior began, He might consummate by the special power of the Holy Spirit; and what the one redeemed, the other might sanctify; what the one acquired, the other might keep; and thus the unity of the Deity is confirmed through the unity of grace and gift, so that the Holy Spirit, God, one in substance, other in person, is to be worshipped as unique in equal mercy. Therefore on this day the Holy Spirit glided down, like a rain of sanctification, upon the temples of His apostles that had been prepared for Him; no longer a sudden visitor, but a perpetual consoler and an eternal indweller. For just as He had said of Himself to His apostles: "Behold, I am with you all the days, even to the consummation of the age" (Matt. 28);
so likewise concerning the Holy Spirit He says: "The Father will give you the Paraclete, that He may be with you forever." He was present therefore on this day to His faithful ones, no longer through the grace of visitation and operation, but through the very presence of His majesty; and into the vessels flowed no longer the fragrance of balsam, but the very substance of the ointment, from whose fragrance the breadth of the whole world might be filled, and those drawing near to their teaching might be made capable of God and partakers of Him. He sat therefore upon each one as it were fire, of whom our Savior testifies: "I came to send fire upon the earth" (Luke 12); of whom it is said: "Our God is a consuming fire" (Deut. 4).
He therefore drenched His apostles from the fountain of living light, so that they might afterwards illuminate the whole world like twelve rays of the sun and as many lamps of truth, and, inebriated with new wine, fill and water the thirsting hearts of the peoples. Let us inquire in this place, after the resurrection or ascension of the Lord, what could still be added to the perfection of the apostles through the participation of the Holy Spirit. There was indeed faith in them, but the constancy of confidence was lacking. Already indeed they could preach Christ throughout all places, but as yet they could not contend for Christ even unto death; so much so that no one of the disciples was crowned with the palm of martyrdom before the coming of the Holy Spirit.
Moreover, the Lord Jesus had now departed from their eyes, He who by visible preaching, speaking to them face to face, strengthened them and instructed them with the miracles of His powers: and while they were with Him, they easily believed what they saw. Faith was aided by sights, confirmed by present works, fed by signs and mighty deeds. But after the Lord Jesus, taken up from their eyes, withdrew into heaven, their astonished and trembling minds were not sufficient, as was fitting, to contemplate heavenly and eternal things, nor did their narrow breasts yet prevail to bear the greatness of divine perceptions;
so that they could understand Christ, how He was the Word, God with God, as the Lord Himself, while still established in the body, plainly intimates to them, saying: "I have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now; but when the Spirit of truth comes, He will teach you all truth" (John 16). Do you see that after the departure of the adorable and supreme Power, the breasts of the disciples were dilated to sustain the greatness of the divine light and the understanding of truth? God therefore it is who can, after His bounty, accumulate grace, increase wisdom, confirm constancy. Let us see therefore, before the visitation of the heavenly Consoler, how much was lacking to them of magnanimity, how much of perfection.
For first, when they had seen Him walking upon the swelling ridges of the sea with the waves laid low beneath Him, and when the wave, His handmaid, made firm the unstable path of the waters beneath His divine footsteps, they were troubled, saying: "It is a phantasm," and for fear they cried out. But after the infusion of the Holy Spirit, they no longer say "it is a phantasm"; but, "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God"; and again, "There was," he says, "the true light which enlightens every man coming into this world" (ibid. 1); and the Apostle says: "For He is before all, and all things consist through Him" (Col. 1).
But one of the disciples, Thomas, not yet enriched with the blessing of this gift, when he sought God in the body already glorified, in the body already heavenly, through the wounds of the flesh, and needed the testimony of the piercings of the nails and of the scars in order to believe in the incorruptible divinity, said: "Unless I see in His hands the mark of the nails, and put my hand into His side, I will not believe" (John 20). But another, already filled with the instruction of the Holy Spirit, confidently exclaims: "That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon, and our hands have handled, concerning the word of life; and we announce to you eternal life, which was with the Father, and has appeared to us" (1 John 1).
And again in another place the apostle Paul, enriched by the influx of such great majesty, faithfully protests: "And if we have known Christ according to the flesh, yet now we know Him so no longer" (2 Cor. 3). Blessed Peter, with the Lord's passion now near at hand, not yet grounded by the divine inspiration of the Paraclete, unwilling to be bodily separated from Christ, draws his sword against the traitor and the swordsmen, and judges that force must be repelled by force. But Stephen, full of the Holy Spirit, no longer seeks Christ on earth, but with heaven opened saw the glory of God; nor does he now think of vengeance, but for his own persecutors he prays and supplicates: "Lord, do not lay this sin to their charge" (Acts 7).
But before the coming of the Holy Spirit, at the very time of the Lord's cross, some of the disciples are put to flight, others are terrified by the voice of a single maidservant, and, with fear penetrating their trembling hearts, they are compelled to deny their Lord. But after the illumination and confirmation of the Holy Spirit, tortured in prisons, afflicted with beatings, they went rejoicing that they were counted worthy to suffer disgrace for the name of Christ; and those who before had denied with an oath, "We do not know this man," now glory in torments for His sake, and, with the Holy Spirit working in them, they think it a small thing that they suffer for the love of Christ.
And those who before were deterred by words, are now strengthened by punishments and torments, and confess Christ the Lord not by words alone but by their conduct, and testify the greatness of their love by the shedding of their blood; and amid these things, warmed and kindled with the pure wine of the Lord's charity, they exclaim: "The sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory to come, which shall be revealed in us" (Rom. 8). Therefore the blessed apostles, fervent with that fire of faith, of which the Lord Himself says, "I came to send fire upon the earth, and what will I but that it be kindled?" (Luke 12), were thought by the impious multitude to be drunk and full of new wine; and they said to one another: "These men are full of new wine" (Acts 2).
But in truth they were filled with new wine, because they had now been renewed by the Holy Spirit, and there appeared in them what He Himself had said to the Lord: "New wine must be put into new wineskins" (Matt. 9). But let us not suppose that the apostles alone then received this new wine. With this new wine are inflamed, and with this glorious cup are daily inebriated, the hearts of the faithful also and the souls of those turning to God.
This we frequently see happen, when out of desire for their own salvation they flee their parents and their homeland, they go out from their land and from their kindred with no one compelling them, and, dead to this world, they seek others spiritually as parents of souls, and children come under the yoke; and those who a little before were illustrious and lofty now reach after humble things, disdain proud things, and desire to be what they had before despised, and begin to hate what they had been; guests of things present, seekers of things to come, they sigh after that eternal homeland, the falsehood of temporal things being despised. And so, inebriated with this new wine and utterly transformed, spiritual souls prefer abstinence to delights, vigils to sweet sleep, poverty to riches:
they reckon the arduous labor against vices to be the most delightful pleasure. Base things become sweet to them, and things that before had been precious become cheap. They love their enemies, and do good to those who hate them: they are not overcome by those who are indignant, they are not provoked by reproaches, they are not provoked amid injuries; they feel none of these things at all, on account of the fervor of the Holy Spirit and on account of the eternal recompense. With this spiritual wine the martyrs grew warm, when, casting off and flinging behind them all the allurements of the world, they went to their passions, forgetting their possessions and affections, their patrimonies and their marriages;
and overcoming the natural affection armed against them by the weepings of their little pledges, while their parents indeed cried aloud, casting dust upon their heads, and their mothers tore their faces, plucking out their hair. But those men, like drunken men, did not see all these things, nor did they recognize their own kin: because, the Holy Spirit having been poured into their hearts, they hastened to pains, to tortures, as though to consolations and to rewards. And so we celebrate the anniversary day of the coming of the Holy Spirit. But let us so act, that we may daily invite Him to us with chaste works and chaste hearts. For so ought we to be pure and cleansed in our senses and thoughts;
so ought we to set a guard upon mouth and heart, that we may make ourselves ever worthy of His visitation and illumination, and may be seen to be free from all uncleanness of thoughts; because, as I have said, perverse thoughts separate from God (Wisdom 1). Let us strive to be free from all detraction and all malice: because into a malevolent soul wisdom does not enter, nor will it dwell in a body subject to sins. Through anger and pride the souls of the negligent are stripped of the guardianship and protection of the Holy Spirit. Let us not therefore grieve the Holy Spirit through passions of this kind, but rather let us call Him to the seat of our heart through the grace of humility and the gentleness of peace, and let us gladden Him with our works and advances:
for He Himself says: "Upon whom shall I rest, but upon the humble and the quiet and him who trembles at my words?" (Isa. 66). If therefore we desire to earn the entrance of so great a visitor, let us first cleanse the house of our soul from the unworthy passions of carnal concupiscence, from the abomination of pride, from the stench of boasting, from the horror of lukewarmness, of which the Lord Himself says: "Would that you were cold or hot; but now, because you are lukewarm, I will begin to spew you out of my mouth" (Rev. 3:16), that is, to spit you out from the bowels of the inmost heart. Let us therefore prepare this house daily for the coming of the sacred King, and adorn it with the various flowers of praiseworthy manners.
Let us fill it with the joyous and precious incense of chastity, faith, and compunction, with the balsam of benevolence and the frankincense of charity: so that, vices being cut away and virtues inserted, and the dwelling of the devil being destroyed in us, we may be transformed into a temple of God; so that so blessed a Guest, delighted by the shining lodging, may make a stable and perpetual dwelling in us. For to this end He descended to us, that we might be able to ascend to Him: to whom is glory with the Father and the Holy Spirit forever and ever. Amen.