Am I Truly Clean?
By Ereeny Mikhail
“When an unclean spirit goes out of a man, he goes through dry places, seeking rest; and finding none, he says, ‘I will return to my house from which I came.’ And when he comes, he finds it swept and put in order. Then he goes and takes with him seven other spirits more wicked than himself, and they enter and dwell there; and the last state of that man is worse than the first.” – Luke 11:24-26
Every year after Passion Week and the Resurrection feast, sometime in the following week, this is the first passage from the Bible that pops into my head. One moment we are attending prayers every morning and night, fasting, doing prostrations, singing at the top of our lungs, sleepless nights filled with prayer, not distracted by television, secular music and social media and spending the week in repentance. And then in a moment…everything changes.
When it should for the better because of what we just witnessed during Passion week, it becomes overeating, catching up on T.V., changing back to our normal Spotify playlist and our time with God drops dramatically. Of course, every year it takes me a few days to come out of the food coma in order to realise that this is the case. That is when this parable (which is also in some of the other gospels) comes to mind. Likewise, following confession this parable again arises. Every time I walk out of confession, I am cautious of my actions, my words and my thoughts. However, as humans we have weakness and we fall back into old ways.
So, I asked myself, what is the solution? How do we try to the best of our ability to maintain that spirituality? How do we not fall back? This parable tells us that when we become clean and our sin is wiped away, we then find that same sin and seven others make their way back into our hearts. Why? Aren’t we clean?
St Augustine of Hippo contemplates on this and says, “When there is forgiveness of sins through the sacraments, the house is cleaned; but the Holy Spirit must be a necessary inhabitant.”
It makes a lot of sense. We may be clean, but we are empty. We need to fill our home with good.
Think back to King David, who flourished in strength and victories but still fell like any of us. He saw Bathsheba bathing and lusted over her, fell into sin with her and left her with child. To cover up for his sin, he sent Bathsheba’s husband, one of his most trusted soldiers, Uriah the Hittite, to the front line of battle to get him killed. Let me just emphasise the loyalty of Uriah, so after his sin, David sent for Uriah in hope that Uriah would go home and lay with his wife and she would appear to have conceived from her husband. But Uriah was so loyal that when he found no one was protecting the king that night, he slept at David’s footsteps two nights in a row even after David tried to convince him to leave. It says “Uriah slept at the door of the king’s house with all the servants…” After all this loyalty, David sent him to the front line of battle and Uriah died. Although his sin was so great, he repented. But he says something very specific, “Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a steadfast spirit within me. Do not cast me away from your presence, and do not take your Holy Spirit from me.” (Psalm 51:10-11). He repents and is sorrowful, but he specifically asks the Lord not to take the Holy Spirit from him. The Lord obviously saw his sorrow and repentance and amongst all his sins of murder and adultery, in Acts 13:22 it says: “I have found David the son of Jesse, a man after My own heart, who will do all My will.” But to reach this, the importance of the Holy Spirit to him was tremendous. Why was it so important?
Again, St. Peter was not without fault. A number of times in the gospels St. Peter fell, to which the Lord answered and said to him, “Get behind Me, Satan! You are an offense to Me, for you are not mindful of the things of God, but the things of men.” (Matthew 16:23). Or when he denied the Lord, “I tell you, Peter, the rooster shall not crow this day before you will deny three times that you know Me.” (Luke 22:34) Contrast his actions here to following the resurrection of our Lord, he showed acts of desperation to return to Christ, “But Peter arose and ran to the tomb…” (Luke 24:12) and “…when Simon Peter head that it was the Lord, he put on his outer garment (for he had removed it), and plunged into the sea.” (John 21:7) Likewise, when the Holy Spirit descended on the disciples and they began to bring all nations to Christ, St Peter says “Silver and gold I do not have, but what I do have I give you: In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, rise up and walk,” (Acts 2:6) and “…Peter, filled with the Holy Spirit, said to them…” (Acts 4:8) He was not about the things of the world anymore, he only filled himself with the Lord. And he continued on to become one of the most important Saints of the church, with no more fear. To the extent, that he requested to be crucified upside down, because he felt unworthy to be crucified like Jesus. Why was the Holy Spirit also so important in this transition?
On both accounts, and many others, two of the greatest Saints in the church became the greatest Saints because they filled their life with the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit already abides in us, but we must provide its fruits. In Galatians 5:22-23 it says, “But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, long suffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. Against such there is no law.”
Against such there is no law.
Yes, we must repent like King David and we must desperately run to the Lord like St. Peter. But we cannot just repent and leave our house empty. We must fill it with the Holy Spirit like the both of them. They changed their life after the repentance. They didn’t just return to their old ways. They didn’t switch back to their secular Spotify playlist. They didn’t fill their lives with T.V. shows. They didn’t overindulge. When we do this, there is no space for Christ. They continued to fill their lives with the Lord. Because if we leave our house empty of the Lord, it will only be filled with more sin. It isn’t a fast solution. We will fall. But “…narrow is the gate and difficult is the way which leads to life, and there is few who find it.” (Matthew 7:13-14) We must become resilient in the way to life by continuing to fill it with the fruit of the Holy Spirit.
St Cyril of Alexandria says; “For just as the Holy Spirit, when he sees a person’s heart desisting from all uncleanness, abides and dwells and rests in that one, so also the unclean spirit likes to take lodging in the souls of the lawless.”