Monastery of the Holy Cross

“For it is impossible to restore again to repentance those who have once been enlightened, who have tasted the heavenly gift, and have become partakers of the Holy Spirit, and have tasted the goodness of the word of God and the powers of the age to come, if they then commit apostasy.”

Hebrews 6: 4-6

While studying the letter to  the Hebrews in preparation for my next talk on the Catholic priesthood, I came across something interesting in this quote.  Verse 6: 4 contains three consecutive verbs describing the initiated Christian as one enlightened, one who has tasted the heavenly gift, and one who is a partaker of the Holy Spirit.  To someone familiar with the Catholic and Orthodox teaching on the rites of initiation, this sounds remarkably like the description of baptism (very commonly referred to as ‘enlightenment’ in the early Church), Eucharist (tasting the heavenly gift/food of angels/the true Bread come down from heaven), and Confirmation or Chrismation (the sealing with the Holy Spirit and activation of the Spirit’s gifts).  This looked so obvious all of a sudden that I couldn’t believe that I had discovered it.  So far, in a brief walk through the commentaries, I haven’t found a reference yet.  Part of the reason that this escapes the reader is that it is couched in the highly charged assertion that repentance after initiation and apostasy is apparently not permitted.  The early Church struggled mightily over this question and arrived at the teaching that baptism and confirmation cannot be readministered, but that apostasy could be repented, albeit after a lengthy and public period of penance.  This is the focus of most commentaries on this verse, at least what I’ve found so far.  The truth is that there are not all that many commentaries on Hebrews, compared, say, to Romans.  But I would be interested to find out if this pattern has been observed before.