Lvov, June 10, 2020
Photo: velychlviv.com In an interview offered on the occasion of the feast of Pentecost, His Eminence Metropolitan Philaret of Lvov and Galicia of the canonical Ukrainian Orthodox Church spoke about a miracle that occurred on the day of his personal Pentecost, his consecration to the episcopacy in 2011.
“There is an extraordinary day in the life of a bishop. It is the bishops who are the successors of the holy Apostles and the heirs of Divine grace. During an episcopal consecration, it is customary to congratulate them with their personal Pentecost, that is, with their personal involvement in receiving the grace of the Holy Spirit. This happened in my own life,” Met. Philaret, a monk of the Kiev Caves Lavra before his consecration, said in his interview with the Spiritual Greatness of Lvov publication.
“During my personal Pentecost, when my episcopal consecration took place, I felt an extraordinary power, the grace of God, which completely filled up my service to the Church and burned up everything in my heart and mind, even the smallest doubt, with fire,” His Eminence continued.
Such was the grace present on that day, that Met. Philaret even felt as though the altar had turned into the Upper Room, where the Holy Spirit had descended upon the Apostles on the day of Pentecost.
“My heart trembled with fear and nervousness, and my entire life in the Church passed before my eyes in a short time. Everything in the altar was filled with energy and some kind of noise, although in fact it was very quiet, as always, and you could hear how the late-Metropolitan Vladimir was reading the mystical prayers in a low voice,” the UOC hierarch recounted, drawing a parallel to the rushing mighty wind heard in the Upper Room before the Holy Spirit descended (Acts 2:2).
“Then this noise stopped, my heart became calm, and an inexhaustible grace and unusual joy came in place of the fear and nervousness, and at that precise moment I felt happening to me what happened to the holy Apostles,” Met. Philaret emphasized.
As His Eminence recalls, this state of grace lasted for a period of 40 days, which he tried to devote more to prayer and celebrating the Liturgy. According to the other hierarchs he spoke with, this feeling is experienced by all newly-consecrated bishops.
Perhaps the main goal of life is to ever preserve the feeling of being in the Upper Room, Met. Philaret reflected. And the annual feast of Pentecost aids Orthodox Christians in this endeavor: “Prayerfully, through the Sacrament of the Holy Eucharist and the special prayers for the grace of the Holy Spirit to descend upon the Church, we fill our hearts again with this grace and we renew the activity of the Holy Spirit within ourselves, returning to the previous state of grace.”
