Clarion

“Testing the Spirit” – Lazar Puhalo

May 26, 2022 |

6a00d834890c3553ef0278801fb76f200d-320wiQUESTION: Vladika, can you say something about the meaning of "testing the Spirit." What does that mean and can you give an example?
 
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.
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