Baptized in the Spirit

He will baptise you with holy spirit and with fire. Luke 3: 16

As Seraphim enthused about people in the Bible whose lives overflowed with the Holy Spirit , his young friend Nicholas Motovilov interjected: ‘But how can I know that I myself have this grace of the Holy Spirit?’

Seraphim gripped him firmly by the shoulders and said: ‘My friend, both of us this moment are in the Holy Spirit, you and I. Why don’t you look at me?’

‘I can’t look at you, because the light flashing from your eyes and face is brighter than the sun and I am dazzled!’ Nicholas replied. ‘Don’t be afraid, friend of God, you yourself are shining just like I am; you, too are now in the fullness of the Holy Spirit, otherwise you wouldn’t be able to see me as you do’.

Nicholas later wrote about what he saw: ‘You can see only the blinding light which spreads everywhere, lighting up the layers of snow covering the glade, and igniting the flakes that are falling on us both like white power.’

Then Seraphim drew out of him, step by step, what he was feeling ‘An amazing well-being… a great calm in my soul… a peace which no words can express… a strange unknown delight… an amazing happiness..’. Seraphim related each of these to experiences recounted in the Bible.
Seraphim of Zarov

In whom does the Holy Spirit dwell? In the one who is pure without sin. It is then that a person is a vessel of the Holy Spirit, when the virtues have come in place of the vices.
Colman mac Beognae The Alphabet of Devotion

O Thou who camest from above
The pure, celestial fire to impart
Kindle a flame of sacred love
On the mean altar of my heart.
Charles Wesley