REPLY: One of the surest ways in our regular experience to "test the Spirit" is in the Divine liturgy. Ask yourself if, when the priest exclaims "let us depart in peace," has he left you in a condition where you can do that? The Divine Liturgy will always bring you to a spirit of peace, hope and joy. If you find yourself driven into an unpeacefulness during the liturgy it will be because of the sermon that the priest has given.
We have priests who would try to imitate the fanaticism of certain Evangelicals, raving, shouting preaching in an agitated and very unpeaceful manner, often gesticulating, waving their arms about and pacing back and forth like a man possessed or with some kind of mental illness.
But even without all the theatrics, if a priest is regularly preaching sermons that agitate your soul and agitate you against other people, then he is not preaching the gospel, rather he is preaching from his own passions, out of the fullness of his own heart, out of his own agitation of soul and unpeaceful spirit.
Too often, some of our priests who have forgotten for the moment that they are Orthodox rather than fundamentalist sectarians, will preach "culture wars," and secular politics rather than the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ. Did Christ preach the "sermon on the Mount" with agitated unpeaceful shouting, waving of arms and pacing about in an agitated manner?
The Divine liturgy brings us to the threshold of that "peace that passes all understanding," and while the priest may preach in a strong and firm manner, if he is truly Orthodox he will not be preaching in a raving, hysterical, gesticulating and unpeaceful manner. He will remember that the sermon is a part of the liturgy and is, therefore, liturgical in itself.
This is certainly one way to test the Spirit. After listening to the sermon of the priest can you truly "depart in peace?" Has his sermon brought you closer to the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ, to the things that Christ himself taught and preached, or has it brought you to a kind of unpeaceful spirit of agitation and chaos of soul?
Had the apostle Paul entered into a synagogue and preached in such an agitated and wild-eyed manner that fundamentalist sectarians, and fundamentalist priests preach, the members of the synagogue would have cast him out as a demon or one who was demon-possessed.
Apostle Paul was intent on preaching the gospel and not some kind of hysterical fear and agitation. He reserved his comments on the conditions of society to his letters and instruction time. And we see no evidence that he even spoke about these things, and he approached them only with regard to their effect upon the faithful, in a raving and hysterical manner.
The sermon is a part of the Divine liturgy, not some kind of sidetrip out of the liturgy, and it should be liturgical and focused on the Scripture readings for that day and perhaps an example from the lives of the Saints of the day.
To test the Spirit in this case, ask yourself, immediately following the sermon, did it leave your soul in a spirit of unpeacefulness and agitate your heart, or did it convey the peace, hope and joy of the gospel of Jesus Christ into your heart? Did the sermon breathe with the spirit of the great moral imperatives of Jesus Christ or was it filled with pharisaic legalism?
Even when the priest is attempting to convey moral precepts, you must ask yourself, are moral precepts of Christianity concepts that leave you agitated, angry, at enmity with others, and unpeaceful?
There may be a place and a time to discuss the conditions of the world, but not in an agitated and hopeless manner. Satan is the prince of this world and so the world is being faithful to itself, and why should that be so surprising? But the time and place is not in the Divine Liturgy, in a liturgical sermon in which we are supposed to be preaching the gospel and not politics. Outside of the liturgy, and outside of the church building, we may discuss many things and lament over many things, but in the liturgy, in the Temple, we are to be focused on the gospel, on our salvation, on our great gratitude to our Lord Jesus Christ. It is the time and place where we strive to feel the grace of the Holy Spirit imparting that peace that passes all understanding into our hearts and souls so that we may truly "depart in peace."
Why should a passion-filled agitated priest want to interrupt the flow of the Divine grace that permeates the Divine liturgy? The liturgy lays out before us the path back to the father's house for the prodigal, it opens for us the doors of paradise and gives us a window into eternity. It is the time and place to open our hearts to the grace and peace of the Holy Spirit so that we may receive of the great holy mystery of the body and blood of our Lord Jesus Christ in a spirit of repentance, forgiveness of others, and the hope and expectation of everlasting life. This is a spirit that you may easily test.
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