Blessed Isaac of Stella: Sermon for Pentecost

The grape harvest is traditionally celebrated after the harvest of the crops, and we know that the cycle of the seasons is at the service of the Heavenly mysteries; for the face of Creation likewise enables us to know the face of the Creator, and spiritual realities can be seen through the world that is a creature of God.

At the recent paschal solemnity, we harvested our heavenly bread. Cut down and beaten in His arrest and scourging, then ground between the Jews and the Gentiles by so many investigations and requests, “this bread that comes down from Heaven and gives life to the world” was then baked in the fires of the Passion and the oven of the Cross.

“Eat, friends,” this bread prepared by the enemy. For, as it is written elsewhere, “the fool will become the slave of the wise.” He who refuses to eat can never be a friend.

Today, my dearly beloved, after this harvest, we are in a way celebrating a similar grape harvest. For, fifty days after the holy feast of Easter, this Paraclete, in whom the saints, in peace and tranquility, take their Sabbath rest far from all evil works, poured Himself out most abundantly, of the fullness of the true vineyard of which the Father is the wine-grower, into the heart of the disciples: He filled their souls, like so many barrels carefully rinsed and solidly bound by the Son of God, with a strong and clear wine.

Yes, the Spirit of the Lord, sent by the Father and the Son, “has filled the universe”: in His vigor, taking all for Himself, memory, senses, and will, He has taken over all things; taking men out of themselves as would a generous wine, He had taught them His own “knowledge of the Word.”

The Holy Ghost, who is, properly speaking, neither wine nor water, is given both of these names in a figurative sense: wine, because He inebriates with the fervor of charity; water, because He chills the ardor of desire.

Indeed, charity is prepared like wine, especially when Wisdom lays the table, prepares the wine, and invites the little ones to His banquet. For only humility is invited to the banquet of Wisdom, where the bread is Truth and the wine is Charity.