The answer
St. Macarius the Great calls us to seek refuge in the Holy Spirit whose holy winds revive the soul and grants it illumination and a spirit of power that defies the dark and violent squalls of sin. The saint says, “As in a gloomy black night a fierce wind blows, and stirs and searches and shakes all the plants and seeds, so when man falls under the power of the darkness of the devil’s night, and is in night and darkness, he is agitated by that dreadful wind of sin that blows [on him], and is shaken and stirred, and searched through all his nature, his soul, his thoughts, his understanding; and all the limbs of his body are shaken, and no member of either soul or body escapes free and immune from the sin that dwells in us. In like manner there is a day of light and a divine wind of the Holy Spirit, which blows and refreshes the souls that are in the day of the light of God.”839
Fr. Tadros Yacoub Malaty
Notes
839 See St. Macarius the Great, Fifty Spiritual Homilies of St. Macarius the Egyptian, trans., A. J. Mason (London: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 1921) Homily 2.4: p. 14, amended.