According to St. Symeon, one must be distinctly aware of God’s presence in Holy Communion in order to truly participate in the Grace of the Mystery. Otherwise, “the fire warms you without touching you; the life overshadowed you but was not united with you.” This recording is presented here for the edification of Orthodox Christians and Catechumens. Prepare your soul to be united with your Lord, receiving him consciously and joyfully, with holy fear and trembling, unto the healing of soul and body and the celebration of the eternal Pascha, Who is Christ Jesus.
This recording is from the final section of Discourse 14 by St. Symeon the New Theologian, published by St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press. Purchase here: https://svspress.com/on-the-mystical-life-the-ethical-discourses-st-symeon-the-new-theologian-volume-i-the-church-and-the-last-things/
St. Symeon the New Theologian (+1022) is one of three saints of the Orthodox church to have been given the title of Theologian. Born in Galatia and educated at Constantinople, he became abbot of the monastery of St. Mamas and is known as one the most authoritative and charismatic (not Pentecostal) Saints of the Church. His feast day is March 12/25, or Oct 12/25 as his feast day often falls within Great Lent.
The text of this recording in full:
“Beloved, please do not make an uproar on hearing the truth made plain to you. For if you confess that the flesh of the Lord is bread which gives life to the world, and if you know His blood also gives life to those who partake of it, that it becomes in him who drinks it as a spring welling up into everlasting life, then how, tell me, do you in partaking of these not sense anything more added to your soul? Though you may probably feel a certain small joy, after a little while you are the same as you were before and feel in yourself no increase of life, or gushing spring, or see any light whatever. Because, while this looks like any fragment of bread to those who have not gone beyond the perception of their senses, yet, to the intellect, it is light uncontainable and unapproachable. So, too, is the wine in like manner light, life, fire, and living water. If therefore, on eating and drinking the bread and wine of gladness, you do not become aware that you live with an indestructible life, that the bread is in the form of light, or that you have received it like the prophet before as a burning coal within you, that you have drink the Master’s blood as water which wells up and speaks within you, if you have in no way arrived at the contemplation of and participation in these things, how do you fancy that you have become a communicant of the life? How can you think that you have touched the unapproachable fire; or how do you suppose that you partake of eternal light? In no way at all has this happened to you, you who have no perception of these matters! Instead, the light shines on you who are blind; the fire warms you without touching you; the life overshadowed you but was not united with you; the living water passed through your soul like [ordinary] water through a pipe because it did not find in you a worthy receptacle. Therefore, while you are thus receiving and thus touching the untouchable and thinking that you eat, you remain without receiving, without eating, without having anything at all within yourself. For the unapproachable Word, the bread which comes down from heaven, is not held by the senses. Instead, it is He Himself Who comprehends and touches, and Who is united without confusion to all who are worthy and well prepared for His reception.
If, then, you celebrate the feast and so partake as well of the divine mysteries, all your life with be to you one single feast. And not a feast, but the beginning of a feast and a single Pascha, the passage and emigration from what is seen to what is sensed by the intellect, to that place where every shadow and type, and all the present symbols, come to an end, and where we who are pure shall in purity rejoice eternally in the most pure sacrifice, in God the Father and the co-essential Spirit, always seeing Christ and seen by Him, ever being with Christ, reigning with Christ, than Whom nothing is greater in the Kingdom of God, and to Whom is due all glory, honor, and worship, together with the Father and His all-Holy and life-creating Spirit, now and ever, and unto the ages of ages without end. Amen.”
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