Homily on the Holy Spirit

This publication of Elder Aimilianos “Homily on the Holy Spirit” is an English translation of a talk that was given to a group of his spiritual children at the Rousanou Monastery of Meteora, Greece on 13 June, 1970. It was the day before the feast of Pentecost according to the Orthodox ecclesiastical calendar of that year, a fact that makes the Elder’s desire perfectly clear to us: He wanted to pre pare his spiritual children for their “inebriation” by the Spirit’s Divine Presence.

The original Greek text of this homily was published in 2006. In that publication, our revered Elder’s successor, Archimandrite Elisaios, the current Abbot of Simonopetra Monastery on Mount Athos, Greece, wrote the following description in his prologue: “The personal experience which the Elder was transmitting to our youthfulness at that time, forever reminds us, even today, that the only way, the only purpose and the only joy of our life is communion with the Holy Spirit. By desiring this exclusively and striving for it, it is gifted to us abundantly.”

It is our prayer, through the circulation of this translation, that the teachings of our revered Elder will be handed over to a larger group of people who are also desirous of the same experience lived by him, which is none other than ‘life in the Spirit’.