Pentecost
nicknospamcobb
Archpriest George M. Benigsen
THE DESCENT OF THE HOLY SPIRIT upon the Apostles on the day of the
Pentecost represents the conclusion of Christ’s salutary task and the
birth of His Church in this world. The Holy Spirit descended upon the
Apostles in the form of fiery tongues and endowed them with the gift of
preaching which was understood and accepted by all people, all nations.
Thus, the first gift of the Holy Spirit to the newly born Church was the
gift of the Word. It was in God’s will for the new and good message of
Christ to be understandable and, therefore, reasonable. This represented
a complete confirmation of what was the very foundation of the world
since the first moment of its creation. "In the beginning, there was the
Word . . . ," says the first line of St. John’s Gospel, thus
establishing the life-creating nature of the Word – the Logos – that
naturally suggests the second person of the Holy Trinity, the Son of God.
In this way, the logical principle was placed into the foundation of the
Divine Creation since its very beginning. This principle was penetrated
by mystery and remains such because every cognizance only deepens the
mystery of the incomprehensible. But as in the beginning of the creation
of the world, so also in the miracle of the birth of the Church, the
Divine Providence placed the primacy of the Word, of the Tongue, of the
Logos, of the Reason as the foundation of the relations between God and Man.
Therefore, the gift of Pentecost was the gift of the "tongues." The
Apostles, enlightened by the fiery tongues of the Holy Spirit, "were
filled with the Holy Spirit, and began to talk in different tongues as
the Spirit gave them to speak." (Acts 2:4) By the time of Pentecost,
Jerusalem usually became a "microcosm" with faithful Israelites or
converts to Judaism who congregated there from all the ends of the
contemporary world. Many of these people did not speak or understand
Hebrew. Therefore, the initial preaching of the Apostles through the
gift of the Holy Spirit was comprehensible for all. This principle of
comprehension constituted the entire foundation of the missionary task
of true Christianity and remained as such through the entire history of
universal Orthodoxy. Wherever the Orthodox missionaries went in their
apostolic labors, everywhere they spoke, taught, glorified God and
worshiped in the understood language. From Bulgaria to the Baltic. From
Russia to America. From Japan to Uganda. From China to Alaska. Orthodoxy
always sounded in the language understood by the nations and tribes that
populate our planet. So, the first gift of the Pentecost was the gift of
understanding. This gift was entrusted by God and the Apostles to the
whole Church. From the Babylonian "confusion of tongues" the Divine
Providence has led humanity to the unity of faith in all its
multilinguicity to the "unison glorification of the All Holy Spirit"
(Pentecost Kontakion).
Much less attention is given to the second gift of the Pentecost.
Everything is concentrated on the "gift of tongues." Many Protestant
sects – and presently Catholics and even some scattered "charismatic"
Orthodox groups – are searching for the gift of the so-called "speaking
in tongues" which, as a rule, leads to a certain lingual "abracadabra."
Even those who are not involved in this search are also paying central
attention to the "sounding" – words, sentences, expressions. Wonderful
sounds of hymns come from our choir lofts and give musical expression to
the theological thoughts of the liturgical texts. Sacramental formulas
are resounding from the sanctuaries. Sermons, sometimes of great and
important contents, are delivered from the pulpits. Thus, the first gift
of the Pentecost remains a very important aspect of our ecclesiastical
creativity. And the churches respond with frightening emptiness. And the
way of life remains semi-paganistic. And the message of Christianity
remains deprived of the Apostolic dynamics. And the fire of faith barely
smolders instead of producing the bright flame of witness. WHY?
Because the second gift of the Pentecost remains forgotten: THE GIFT OF
HEARING. We listen, of course, but we do not hear. We accept what we
listen to aesthetically, emotionally, externally, and therefore, it
passes out of our life with such ease and without a trace. Once in a
while we don’t even like to understand what we hear, giving a definite
preference to the sacredly incomprehensible. We don’t give the Word the
chance to burn our hearts, to purge our conscience, to transfigure our
life, to nourish our faith, to weave us into the Body of Christ – full
of life and joyful action found only in the Holy Spirit.
Through the Incarnation, as also through the Pentecost, God enters the
history of this world. Although this entry happens in the context of the
time and the history, it does not remain historical data alone. As
Christ’s Incarnation, Passion, Crucifixion and Resurrection, so also the
Pentecost does not stay in the prison of historical chronology. With the
same spiritual reality in which they happened almost two thousand years
ago, they continue in the times present, and will continue until the end
of this history. The Church needs the Pentecost not as an historical
landmark, but as a living, eternally continuing spiritual reality. When
referred "into the past," it ceases to be that living, transfiguring,
life creating, moving force without which the Church would remain an
historical fact, a museum, an archive. We all, our entire Church, needs
a new Pentecost, a new descent, or rather a new acceptance of the
eternally descending Holy Spirit so that we could not only speak, not
only sing, not only preach, but also hear. And to transform what we hear
into a joyfully creative churchliness.
The Orthodox Church, August 1978
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nicknospamcobb
"The feast of the descent of the Holy Spirit." I say these words I've known
since childhood, and all at once they strike me as if I'm hearing them for
the first time. Yes, from the time I was a child I knew that ten days
following the Ascension, meaning fifty days after Pascha, Christians from
time immemorial celebrated and continue to celebrate the descent of the Holy
Spirit in a feast known by its church name as Pentecost, or more popularly
as "Trinity," the day of the Trinity.
For centuries, to prepare for this feast the churches were cleaned and
adorned with greenery and branches, and grass was strewn about the floor...
On the day of the feast, at the solemn vespers, the faithful stood in church
holding flowers in their hands. These customs explain how the feast of
Pentecost entered Russian popular consciousness and literature as a kind of
sun-filled, bright celebration, the feast of flowering, a kind of joyful
encounter between human beings and God's world in all its beauty and grace.
All religions, including the most ancient and primitive, had a feast of
summer flowering, a feast to celebrate the first appearance of shoots,
plants, fruit. In ancient Judaism, this was the feast of Pentecost. If in
Old Testament religion Passover celebrated spring's resurrection of the
world and nature, then the Jewish Pentecost was the feast of movement from
spring to summer, celebrating the victory of sun and light, the feast of
cosmic fullness. But in the Old Testament a feast common to all human
societies acquires a new meaning: it becomes the annual commemoration of the
ascent of Moses up Mount Sinai, where in an inexpressible mystical encounter
God revealed himself, entered into a Covenant, gave commandments, and
promised salvation. In other terms, religion ceased being simply nature, and
now became the beginning of history: God had revealed his law, his
commandments, his plan for humanity, and had shown the way. Spring, summer,
the eternal natural cycle, became a sign and symbol not only of nature, but
of man's spiritual destiny and the commandment to grow into fullness of
knowledge, life and perfect wholeness... Finally, in the very last phase of
the Old Testament, through the teaching and insight of the prophets, this
feast became a celebration directed toward the future, to God's final
victory in his creation. Here is how the prophet Joel speaks of this:
And it shall come to pass afterward that I will pour out my spirit on all
flesh; your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, your old men shall dream
dreams, and your young men shall see visions. Even upon the men-servants and
maidservants in those days, I will pour out my spirit. And I will give signs
in the heavens and on the earth...before the great and terrible day of the
Lord comes. And it shall come to pass that all who call upon the name of the
Lord shall be delivered... (Joel 2:28-32)
Thus, the Jewish feast of Pentecost is a feast of nature and the cosmos, a
feast of history as the revelation of
God's will for the world and human beings, a feast of future triumph, of
God's victory over evil and the coming of the great and last "day of the
Lord." All this must be kept in mind in order to grasp how the first
Christians experienced, understood, and celebrated their feast of Pentecost,
and why it became one of the most important Christian celebrations.
The Book of Acts, devoted to recounting the history of the first Christians
and the initial spread of Christianity, starts precisely with the day of
Pentecost, describing what took place fifty days after Christ's resurrection
and ten days after his ascension into heaven. Just before his ascension
Christ had told the disciples "not to depart from Jerusalem, but to wait for
the promise of the Father, which he said, 'you heard from me..." (Acts 1:4).
So in ten days, according to St Luke's account,
When the day of Pentecost had come, they were all together in one place. And
suddenly a sound came from heaven like the rush of a mighty wind, and it
filled all the house where they were sitting. And there appeared to them
tongues as of fire, distributed and resting on each one of them. And they
were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues, as
the Spirit gave them utterance... And all who heard were amazed and
perplexed, saying to one another, "What does this mean?" But others mocking
said, "They are filled with new wine." (Acts 2:1-4, 12.13)
To those witnesses who remained skeptical, the apostle Peter explained the
meaning of the event using the words of the prophet Joel quoted above. "This
is what was spoken by the prophet Joel," he said, "And in the last days it
shall be, God declares, that I will pour out my Spirit on all flesh..."
(Acts 2:16,17).
For the Christian, therefore, the feast of Pentecost is the completion of
all that Christ accomplished. Christ taught about the Kingdom of God, and
here it is, now opened! Christ promised that the Spirit of God would reveal
the truth, and now this is fulfilled. The world, history, life, time, are
all illumined with the final, transcendent light-all are filled with
ultimate meaning. The last and great day of the Lord has begun!
[Taken from, "Celebration of Faith" Sermons, Vol. 2, "The Church Year" by
the late Protopresbyter Alexander Schmemann, available at: 800-204-book.]