John Henry Newman: Justifying Righteousness Consists in the Coming and Presence of the Holy Spirit in Our Hearts Tuesday, Jun 18 2013

The presence of the Holy Ghost shed abroad in our hearts, the Author both of faith and of renewal, this is really that which makes us righteous, and…our righteousness is the possession of that presence.

Justification actually is ascribed in Scripture to the presence of the Holy Spirit, and that immediately, neither faith nor renewal intervening.

For instance, St. Peter speaks of our being “elect through sanctification,” or consecration “of the Spirit, unto,” that is, in order to, “obedience and sprinkling of the blood of Jesus Christ,” that is, the Holy Ghost is given us unto, or in order to, renovation and justification.

Again: we are said by St. Paul to be “washed, sanctified, and justified, in the Name of the Lord Jesus, and by the Spirit of our God.”

The same Apostle says, “Ye have not received the spirit of bondage again to fear, but ye have received the Spirit of adoption, whereby we cry, Abba, Father.”

Again: “The law of the Spirit of life hath made me free from the law of sin and death.” Again: Christ says, “It is the Spirit that giveth life,” life being the peculiar attribute or state of “the just,” as St. Paul, and the prophet Habakkuk before him, declare.

These passages taken together…show that justification is wrought by the power of the Spirit, or rather by His presence within us.

And this being the real state of a justified man, faith and renewal are both present also, but as fruits of it;—faith, because it is said, “We through the Spirit wait for the hope of righteousness by faith;” and renewal, because in another passage, “renewing of the Holy Ghost” is made equivalent to “being justified by His grace.”

[...] Justification may fitly be called an “inspiration of the Spirit of Christ,” or a spiritual presence. Again in the Baptismal Service, in which we pray God that the child to be baptized may “receive remission of his sins,” which surely implies justification, “by spiritual regeneration,” which is as surely the gift of the Spirit.

[...] We are told, by way of comment upon St. Paul’s words, “Who rose again for our justification,” that Christ “rose again to send down His Holy Spirit to rule in our hearts, to endow us with perfect righteousness.”

[...] In this way David’s words in the 85th Psalm are fulfilled, “Truth hath sprung out of the earth, and righteousness hath looked down from heaven,” in that “from the earth is the Everlasting Verity, God’s Son, risen to life, and the true righteousness of the Holy Ghost, looking out of heaven, and in most liberal largess dealt upon all the world?”

Justifying righteousness, then, consists in the coming and presence of the Holy Ghost within us.

John Henry Cardinal Newman (1801-1890): Lectures on the Doctrine of Justification: Lecture 6, The Gift of Righteousness.

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Cyril of Alexandria: Partakers in the Divine Nature through Communion with the Holy Spirit Thursday, May 9 2013

The Son…brought Himself as a Victim and holy Sacrifice to God the Father, reconciling the world unto Himself, and bringing into kinship with Him that which had fallen away, that is, the race of man.

[...] Indeed, our reconciliation to God could not have been accomplished through Christ who saves us except by communion in the Spirit and sanctification.

For that which knits us together, and, as it were, unites us with God, is the Holy Spirit.

If we receive the Spirit, we are proved sharers and partakers in the divine nature, and we admit the Father Himself into our hearts, through the Son and in the Son.

Further, the wise John writes for us concerning Him: Hereby know we that we abide in Him, and He in us, because He has given us of His Spirit. 

And what does Paul also say? And because ye are sons, God sent forth the Spirit of His Son into your hearts, crying, Abba, Father. 

For if we had chanced to remain without partaking of the Spirit, we could never at all have known that God was in us.

And, if we had not been enriched with the Spirit that puts us into the rank of sons, we should never have been at all the sons of God.

How, then, should we…have been shown to be partakers in divine nature unless God had been in us, and unless we been joined to Him through having been called to communion with the Spirit?

But now are we both partakers and sharers in the divine substance that transcends the universe, and are become temples of God.

For the Only-begotten sanctified Himself for our sins. That is, offered Himself up, and brought Himself as a holy sacrifice for a sweet-smelling savour to God the Father.

He did this in order that, while He as God came between and hedged off and built a wall of partition between human nature and sin.

This was so that nothing might hinder our being able to have access to God, and to have close fellowship with Him through communion – that is, with the Holy Spirit moulding us anew to righteousness and sanctification and the original likeness of man.

For if sin sunders and dissevers man from God, surely righteousness will be a bond of union, and will somehow set us by the side of God Himself, with nothing to part us.

We have been justified through faith in Christ, Who was delivered up for our trespasses, according to the Scripture, and was raised for our justification. 

For in Him, as in the first-fruits of the race, the nature of man was wholly reformed into newness of life, and ascending, as it were, to its own first beginning, was moulded anew into sanctification.

Cyril of Alexandria (c. 376-444): Commentary on St John’s Gospel, book 11, c.10 [on John 17:18-19].

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Leo the Great: “They that Live Should Henceforth not Live to Themselves but to Him Who Died for All and Rose Again” Friday, Mar 29 2013

(Following on from here…)

Let us, then, dearly-beloved, confess what the blessed teacher of the nations, the Apostle Paul, confessed, saying:

“Faithful is the saying, and worthy of all acceptation, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners.”

For God’s mercy towards us is the more wonderful that Christ died not for the righteous nor for the holy, but for the unrighteous and wicked.

And though the nature of the Godhead could not sustain the sting of death, yet at His birth He took from us that which He might offer for us.

For of old He threatened our death with the power of His death, saying by the mouth of Hosea the prophet, “O death, I will be thy death, and I will be thy destruction, O hell.”

For by dying He underwent the laws of hell, but by rising again He broke them, and so destroyed the continuity of death as to make it temporal instead of eternal.

“For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive.”

And so, dearly-beloved, let that come to pass of which S. Paul speaks, “that they that live, should henceforth not live to themselves but to Him who died for all and rose again.”

And because the old things have passed away and all things are become new, let none remain in his old carnal life, but let us all be renewed by daily progress and growth in piety.

For however much a man be justified, yet so long as he remains in this life, he can always be more approved and better.

And he that is not advancing is going back, and he that is gaining nothing is losing something.

Let us run, then, with the steps of faith, by the works of mercy, in the love of righteousness, that keeping the day of our redemption spiritually, “not in the old leaven of malice and wickedness, but in the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth,” we may deserve to be partakers of Christ’s resurrection.

Leo the Great (c.400-461): Sermon 59, 8.

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Ignatius Brianchaninov: That All-Powerful Healing Offered to Us by the All-Powerful Doctor, God Monday, Feb 25 2013

For the Son of man is come to seek and to save that which was lost (Luke 19:10).

Zacchaeus admits his greed and resolves to cleanse himself, to sanctify his property and his heart with abundant almsgiving. The Lord is quick to accept Zacchaeus’s repentance.

[...] Incomprehensible to fleshly minds was and still is the mystery of redemption, which heals all human sins with equal power and ease, both the little and the great, and wrenches sinners from any destroying abyss, no matter how deep that abyss may be.

For such an amazing work, faith in a Redeemer and sincere repentance is demanded of a person.

[...] Explaining the unfathomable, and revealing the boundless power of redemption, the Lord said: the Son of man is come to seek and to save that which was lost.

Having taken humanity upon Himself, God, whom man neither sought nor called, came out of His own inexpressible goodness to seek and to save the human race, lost because of its alienation from God.

He came to seek and to save every person drawn to destruction by sin, if only that person would not reject God, Who seeks and wishes to save him.

The Holy Gospels can be compared to a mirror. Each of us can see, if we so desire, the state of our soul reflected in them, and find that all-powerful healing offered to us by the all-powerful doctor, God.

The God-Son calls Himself the Son of man, because He took on human form and lived among human beings, not differing in appearance from them in any way. This is the result of infinite divine love and inexpressible divine humility.

The Son of man—we’ll say in the manner of humans—had the right to forgive all of people’s sins as One Who brought Himself, the all-perfect God, as a redeeming sacrifice for mankind; and as the One Who destroyed all human sins, of both little and great significance, at an immense, immeasurably significant, redeeming price.

The judgment of the Son of Man over people, as we see in the Gospels, is completely different from that of ordinary human beings, who judge their neighbors out of their own righteousness—a righteousness rejected of God and corrupted by sin.

The Savior has justified all sinners who received redemption through repentance and faith—although other people condemned them.

[...] We have seen this sinner, condemned by people, justified by God for his faith and true repentance. This is a consoling, encouraging scene!

And as He faithfully promised, the Savior still abides among us; He still heals our souls wounded by sin.

And His Divine ordinance has not passed away: The Son of man is come to seek and to save that which was lost.

Ignatius Brianchaninov (1807–1867; Russian Orthodox): Homily on the 32^nd Sunday after Pentecost, on Zacchaeus, translated by Nun Cornelia Rees @ Pravoslavie

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Dorotheus of Gaza: The Tax-Collector and the Pharisee Tuesday, Jan 29 2013

Condemning a man is saying ‘he is a wicked liar,’ or ‘he is an angry man,’ or ‘he is a fornicator.’

For in this way one judges the condition of his soul and draws a conclusion about his whole life, saying it is of such a kind and condemns him as such.

This is a very serious thing. For it is one thing to say, ‘He got mad’, and another thing to say, ‘He is bad-tempered’, and to reveal, as we said, the whole disposition of his life. It is serious to judge a man for each one of his sins.

As Christ himself says, ‘Hypocrite, first take the board from your own eye, then you can see to take the splinter out of your brother’s eye.’

[...] That Pharisee who was praying and giving thanks to God for his own good works was not lying but speaking the truth, and he was not condemned for that.

For we must give thanks to God when we are worthy to do something good, as he is then working with us and helping us.

Because of this he was not condemned…because he said, ‘I am not like other men’, but he was condemned because he said, ‘I am not like this tax-collector’.

It was then that he made a judgment. He condemned a person and the dispositions of his soul—to put it shortly, his whole life. Therefore, the tax-collector rather than the Pharisee went away justified.

[...] Why do we not rather judge ourselves and our own wickedness which we know so accurately and about which we have to render an account to God?

Why do we usurp God’s right to judge? Why should we demand a reckoning from his creature, his servant?

[...] An angel brought Isaac the Theban the soul of someone who had fallen into sin, and said to him, ‘Here is the person you have judged. He has just died. Where do you order him to be put, into the Kingdom or into eternal punishment?’

Can you imagine a more terrible situation to be in? What else could the angel mean by these words than, ‘Since you want to be the judge of the just and the unjust, what do you command for this poor soul? Is he to be spared or to be punished?’

The holy old man…spent the rest of his life praying with sighs and tears…, for the angel said to him, ‘You see, God has shown you how serious a thing it is to judge; you must never do it again.’

Dorotheos of Gaza (505-565 or 620): Discourses and Sayings, trans. Eric P. Wheeler (Kalamazoo, MI: Cistercian Publications, 1977) @ Orthodox Christian Information Center.

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Cyril of Alexandria: Isaac’s Blessing of Jacob Wednesday, Jun 27 2012

(On Isaac’s blessing of Jacob – Genesis 27:26-29)

Isaac’s words…are fulfilled in Christ and in those who are justified through faith, who are also made sons according to the promise in Isaac.

The words of the blessing, I believe, signify the sweetness of the spiritual perfume in Christ, like that of a garden or a plentiful field spreading a sweet and beautiful perfume from its spring flowers.

And so Christ described himself to us in the Song of Songs: I am a flower of the field, the lily of the valleys.

He was actually a lily and a rose born of the earth for the sake of humanity. Since he did not know sin, he was the most divine of all those who inhabited the whole world and produced a perfume through his works.

For this reason Scripture compares Christ with a field blessed by God, and with very good reason, because he is the perfume of the knowledge of God the Father.

As the divine Paul says, But thanks be to God, who in Christ always leads us in triumphal procession, and through us spreads in every place the fragrance that comes from knowing him.

These things therefore fit with Christ and also fit quite reasonably with the new people: May God give you of the dew of heaven and of the fatness of the earth and plenty of grain and wine.

The dew of heaven and the fatness of the earth is the Word, was given to us by the Father, together with the participation through the Spirit, and therefore we were made sharers in the divine nature through him.

And we also received plenty of grain and wine, that is, strength and happiness. In fact, it is said truly, Bread strengthens the heart of man, and wine makes glad his heart.

Bread is the symbol of spiritual strength, wine of the physical. They are given to those who are in Christ through him.

How else are we made stable and firm in piety and immovable and aware to think the right things?

Afterward the power of blessing is transferred again to the Emmanuel himself. And let nations serve you, and princes bow down to you, and be lord of your brother.

The Emmanuel was called the firstborn when he became so with reference to us, among many brothers. But for this reason we must not forget that he is God and Lord of the universe.

We worship him as God, and he has reigned as God over those who were called from the brothers through grace. Who in the heavens shall be compared to the Lord among the sons of God?

[...] This is the blessing of Jacob, whose strength refers to the Emmanuel himself and to those who are justified in the faith.

Cyril of Alexandria (c. 376-444): Glaphyrorum in Genesim, 3.5 (PG 69.172-173); ACC 2 (2002) tr. Sheridan; from the Monastic Office of Vigils, Sunday of the 4th Week of Ordinary Time, Year 2.

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Leo the Great: The Ascension Perfects Our Faith Tuesday, May 15 2012

The mystery of our salvation, dearly-beloved, which the Creator of the universe valued at the price of His blood, has now been carried out under conditions of humiliation from the day of His bodily birth to the end of His Passion.

And although even in “the form of a slave” many signs of Divinity have beamed out, yet the events of all that period served particularly to show the reality of His assumed Manhood.

But after the Passion, when the chains of death were broken, which had exposed its own strength by attacking Him, Who was ignorant of sin, weakness was turned into power, mortality into eternity, contumely into glory.

All of this the Lord Jesus Christ showed by many clear proofs in the sight of many, until He carried even into heaven the triumphant victory which He had won over the dead.

At the Easter commemoration, the Lord’s Resurrection was the cause of our rejoicing; so the subject of our present gladness is His Ascension.

On the feast of the Ascension we commemorate and duly venerate that day on which the Nature of our humility in Christ was raised above all the host of heaven, over all the ranks of angels, beyond the height of all powers, to sit with God the Father.

On this providential order of events we are founded and built up, so that God’s Grace might become more wondrous.

Notwithstanding the removal from men’s sight of what was rightly felt to command their awe, faith did not fail, hope did not waver, love did not grow cold.

For it is the strength of great minds and the light of firmly-faithful souls, unhesitatingly to believe what is not seen with the bodily sight, and there to fix one’s affections whither you cannot direct your gaze.

And whence should this godliness spring up in our hearts, or how should a man be justified by faith, if our salvation rested on those things only which lie beneath our eyes?

Hence our Lord said to him who seemed to doubt of Christ’s Resurrection, until he had tested by sight and touch the traces of His Passion in His very Flesh:

“Because thou hast seen Me, thou hast believed:  blessed are they who have not seen and yet have believed.”

Leo the Great (c.400-461): Sermon 74, 1.

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Ignatius Brianchaninov: When the Heart is Filled with a Feeling of Repentance… Thursday, Apr 5 2012

The disciples of prayer who lean upon its breast—the holy Fathers—correct a major mistake that deprives the praying ascetic of all the fruits of his ascetic labor.

They instruct us to pronounce the words of short prayers and of all kinds of prayer without haste, observing scrupulous attention to the words of the prayers.

When the prayers are read unhurriedly, it is possible to have such attention, while hurried reading leaves no place for attention.

Prayer without attention is like a body which the soul has left: it has no fragrance of humility, it does not ascend to God.

Stricken and deadened by dispersed thoughts, it crawls along the earth of corruption and foul smell, imparting this corruption to those who pray carelessly and coldly.

Mental attention at prayer is reflected in the heart by blessed grief over sins, which is that very repentance that God commands us to have.

When the heart is filled with a feeling of repentance, it in turn draws the mind to increased attention.

Once there is attention and tender feeling, all the gifts of the Holy Spirit enter into the soul, making it a temple of God.

Let us provide our prayer with two qualities: attention and repentance. Let it fly up to the heavens with them as upon two wings, then appear before the face of God, and intercede for us to gain His mercy.

The blessed publican’s prayer had these two qualities. Penetrated by the awareness of his sinfulness, he did not have any hope in his own deeds to receive salvation; he had hope only in God’s mercy, which calls all sinners to repentance, and grants them salvation for repentance alone.

As a sinner who had no goodness of his own, the publican took the last place in the temple. As a sinner who is unworthy of heaven, he did not dare to lift his eyes unto heaven.

His eyes were directed toward the ground; and beating upon his heart with repentance from deep within his heart, he pronounced with his whole soul the prayer united with his confession: God be merciful to me, a sinner.

His prayer was so effective and strong, that the sinner left the temple of God justified.

Ignatius Brianchaninov (1807–1867; Russian Orthodox): Homily on the Sunday of the Publican and the Pharisee on Prayer and Repentance translated by Nun Cornelia Rees @ Pravoslavie.

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John Henry Newman: “Blessed are they that Do His Commandments, that they may have Right to the Tree of Life” Thursday, Oct 20 2011

(On 2 Kings 22:19-20.)

In conclusion, my brethren, I would have you observe in what Josiah’s chief excellence lay.

This is the character given him when his name is first mentioned; “He did … right in the sight of the Lord, and walked in all the ways of David his father, and turned not aside to the right hand or to the left.” (2 Kings 22:2).

[...] Now what is this strict virtue called? it is called faith. It is no matter whether we call it faith or conscientiousness, they are in substance one and the same:

where there is faith, there is conscientiousness—where there is conscientiousness, there is faith; they may be distinguished from each other in words, but they are not divided in fact.

They belong to one, and but one, habit of mind—dutifulness; they show themselves in obedience, in the careful, anxious observance of God’s will, however we learn it.

Hence it is that St. Paul tells us that “the just shall live by faith” under every dispensation of God’s mercy.

And this is called faith, because it implies a reliance on the mere word of the unseen God overpowering the temptations of sight.

Whether it be we read and accept His word in Scripture (as Christians do), or His word in our conscience, the law written on the heart (as is the case with heathens); in either ease, it is by following it, in spite of the seductions of the world around us, that we please God.

St. Paul calls it faith; saying after the prophet, “The just shall live by faith”;

and St. Peter, in the tenth chapter of the Acts, calls it “fearing and working righteousness,” where he says, that “in every nation he that feareth God and worketh righteousness is accepted with Him.”

It is all one: both Apostles say that God loves those who prefer Him to the world; whose character and frame of mind is such.

Elsewhere St. Paul also speaks like St. Peter, when he declares that God will render eternal life to them, who by “patient continuance in well-doing seek for glory” (Rom. 2:7).

St. John adds his testimony: “Little children, let no man deceive you. He that doeth righteousness is righteous, even as He is righteous.” (1 John 3:7).

And our Saviour’s last words at the end of the whole Scripture, long after the coming of the Spirit, after the death of all the Apostles but St. John, are the same: “Blessed are they that do His commandments, that they may have right to the tree of life” (Rev. 22:14).

John Henry Cardinal Newman (1801-1890): Parochial and Plain Sermons, vol. 8,  Sermon 7. Josiah, a Pattern for the Ignorant. 

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Bernard of Clairvaux: In Christ We See the Object of Our Love, by the Spirit We are Empowered to Love Him Saturday, Jun 4 2011

No one who loves God need have any doubt that God loves him.

God gladly returns our love, which was preceded by his own.

How could he be reluctant to love us in response to our love for him, when he already loved us before we ever loved him at all.

Yes, I say, God loved us.

We have a pledge of his love in the Spirit and a faithful witness to it in Jesus – a double and irrefutable proof of the love God bears toward each one of us.

Christ died, and so deserves our love.

The Spirit moves us by his grace and so enables us to love.

Christ gives us the reason, the Spirit gives us the power.

The one sets before us the example of his own great love, the other gives us the love itself.

In Christ we see the object of our love, by the Spirit we are empowered to love him.

We can say then that the former supplies the motive for charity, the latter the volition.

How shameful it would be to see God’s Son dying for us without being moved to gratitude!

Yet this could easily happen if the Spirit were lacking.

Now, however, the love of God has been poured into our hearts by the Holy Spirit he has given us, and so we love him in return for his love, and by loving him we deserve to be loved still more.

If while we were still his enemies we were reconciled to God through the death of his Son, how much more, now that we are reconciled, shall we be saved through his Son’s life!

[...] We possess, then, a double token of our salvation, the twofold outpouring of blood and Spirit.

Neither is of any profit to us without the other.

The Spirit is only given to those who believe in the Crucified, and faith is only effective when it works through love.

But love is the gift of the Spirit.

[...] To say that the Spirit gives life is only another way of saying that the Spirit justifies us by rectifying our relationship with God.

[...] And who are the just? Are they not those who pay their debt of love to the God who loves them?

Now it is impossible for them to do this unless they have received in faith the Spirit’s revelation of God’s eternal plan for their future salvation.

That revelation is none other than an infusion of spiritual grace, through which, as we mortify the works of the flesh, we are made ready for the kingdom which flesh and blood cannot possess.

In the one Spirit we receive both the audacity to believe ourselves loved and the power to love in return, so that God’s love for us may not go unrequited.

Bernard of Clairvaux (1090-1153): Letter 107.8-9 (PL 182:246-247), from the Monastic Office of Vigils, Monday of the Seventh Week of Easter Year I

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