I thought I'd share a few thoughts about the feast day of Pentecost. This is one of my favorite feast days of the Church, coming 50 days after the glorious celebration of Pascha, the resurrection of our Lord God and Savior Jesus Christ. It's one of my favorites because being the cumulation of the Paschal cycle, this feast recounts the pouring of the Holy Spirit on the Apostles, and the Apostles response by going out into the world to preach the Gospel to all nations. We celebrate our victory over death and sin at Pascha, and we who partake and avail ourselves of this victory, begin to experience life as God intended it to be, in a union of love with Himself, with others, and with the world around us, and begin to experience the healing of our broken, wounded hearts. How can we keep this to ourselves? How can we take this Good News, put it in a box, and place it on a shelf. No, if we, for example, find a cure for a terrible, terminal illness, do we keep this information to oursleves, or do we share it with as many people as possible, getting the word out in as many ways as we can? How much more with the Gospel! I love the troparion of Pentecost. This hymn expresses two things, one, that true wisdom comes from God, and that even unlettered fishermen can become more wise then the most erudite scholar, and how the Apostles became fishers of men, drawing the world to God.
"Blessed art Thou O Christ our God, who has revealed the fishermen as so wise, by sending down upon them the Holy Spirit, through them, Thou hast drawn the world into Thy net, O Lover of mankind, glory to Thee."
I also think of how Pentecost is a reversal of the tower of Babel. The story of the tower of Babel, as many may know, is from the book of Genesis. The people, because of pride, wanted to build a tower to reach the heavens. God put a stop to their attempts to build this tower by confounding their language, causing them to speak many different languages, thus, rendering them unable to communicate with each other. In this one way, human kind became more separated and alienated from each other. However as the kontakion for Pentecost says;
"When the Most High came down and confused the tongues, he divided the nations. But when he distributed the tongues of fire, he called all to unity. Therefore, with one voice, we glorify the All-Holy Spirit!"
On Pentecost we have the final fulfillment of the mission of Jesus Christ and the first beginning of the messianic age of the Kingdom of God mystically present in this world in the Church of the Messiah. For this reason the fiftieth day stands as the beginning of the era which is beyond the limitations of this world, fifty being that number which stands for eternal and heavenly fulfillment in Jewish and Christian mystical piety: seven times seven, plus one.
Thus, Pentecost is called an apocalyptic day, which means the day of final revelation. It is also called an eschatological day, which means the day of the final and perfect end (in Greek eschaton> means the end). For when the Messiah comes and the Lord's Day is at hand, the "last days" are inaugurated in which "God declares: ... I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh." This is the ancient prophecy to which the Apostle Peter refers in the first sermon of the Christian Church which was preached on the first Sunday of Pentecost (Acts 2: 1 7; Joel 2: 28-32).
Once again it must be noted that the feast of Pentecost is not simply the celebration of an event which took place centuries ago. It is the celebration of what must happen and does happen to us in the Church today. We all have died and risen with the Messiah-King, and we all have received his Most Holy Spirit. We are the "temples of the Holy Spirit." God's Spirit dwells in us (Rom 8; 1 Cor 2-3, 12; 2 Cor 3; Gal 5; Eph 2-3). We, by our own membership in the Church, have received "the seal of the gift of the Holy Spirit" in the sacrament of chrismation. Pentecost has happened to us.
We go back to praying "O Heavenly King, O Comforter, the Spirit of Truth, who art in all places and fillest all things, treasury of good things and Giver of Life, come and abide in us, and cleanse us from every stain, and save our souls, O Gracious Lord."
This makes me think of how the secular world some times has this dichotomy between God and the world. In Orthodoxy we do not have this dichotomy. As we say "who art in all places and fillest all things." Everywhere we are, every place we go, we are surrounded by God, there is no place where He is not. As the psalmist says, "Where can I go to flee from your Spirit, and from your presence, where can I hide, behold up in Heaven, You're there beside me, in the depths of the darkness, you're by my side." We proclaim in this prayer that God is in all places and fills all things. We do not exist on our own. "In Him we live, and move, and have our being."
We do not see the world rightly if we see it apart from God. It is difficult for us, sometimes due to our modern habit of thought, to think of things existing only relationally - but this is the teaching of the Church. When we are united to Christ, we do not become something other than we were created to be - we finally become in fact what we were created to be.
We do not exist alone - we are contingent beings. The truth of our existence is found only as we are known in relation to God and to one another. Thus love, rather then rational thoughts becomes the most fundamental existential reality. We would say, as Orthodox, rather then "I think, therefore I am", but, "I love, therefore I am."
"Blessed art Thou O Christ our God, who has revealed the fishermen as so wise, by sending down upon them the Holy Spirit, through them, Thou hast drawn the world into Thy net, O Lover of mankind, glory to Thee!"
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