The answer
St Basil the Great says, “the Spirit is often called the place of those being made holy … So, the Spirit is truly the place of the saints, and the saint is the proper place for the Holy Spirit, as he offers himself for indwelling with God and is called a temple of God [1 Cor. 6:19].”895
Also St. John Chrysostom says, “For God bestowed [the mind upon us] that it might learn and receive help from Him, not that it should consider itself sufficient unto itself. For eyes are beautiful and useful, but should they choose to see without light, their beauty profits them nothing; nor yet their natural force, but even does harm. So if you mark it, any soul also, if it choose to see without the Spirit, becomes even an impediment unto itself.”896
And St. Philoxenus of Mabbug says, “For he is our true baptism, and for this reason we remain always baptized, for the Holy Spirit is within us always, and no sin can strip us of our baptism—neither adultery, nor theft, nor fornication, nor false testimony nor any action of this sort: only the denial of God and consorting with demons can do this, for in such cases the Holy Spirit really does depart, for he does not consent to remain in a place where Satan dwells.”897
Fr. Tadros Yacoub Malaty
Notes
895 St. Basil of Caesarea, On the Holy Spirit, trans., Stephen Hildebrand (St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2011) 26.62: p. 101.
896 St. John Chrysostom, Homilies on the First Epistle of St. Paul the Apostle to the Corinthians 7.9 (NPNF I/12:38).
897 St. Philoxenus of Mabbug, “On the Indwelling of the Holy Spirit” in Sebastian Brock and M. A. Mathai Remban eds., Philoxenus of Mabbug (Kottayam, India: St. Ephrem Ecumenical Research Institute (SEERI), undated): p. 47.