Today is the great day of the Feast of Pentecost, on which we celebrate the descent of the Holy Spirit upon the disciples of the Lord, gathered together, undoubtedly for prayer and worship; and the establishment of the Church, the ark of our salvation. Today is also one of the turning points in our liturgical year. In a way, we said, “goodbye” to Pascha at the Feast of the Ascension, ten days ago. At that time, we cease the Paschal greeting, “Christ is risen – Truly, He is risen!” In our worship services, we stopped the three-fold singing of “Christ is risen from the dead…” with that feast; and yet, things were still incomplete, because we did not resume the use of the prayer, “O Heavenly King…” until the Vigil service for Pentecost, last night. Thus, in a way, Pascha is completed: Our Lord Jesus Christ, risen from the dead, has ascended in both His human and divine natures to be at the right hand of God the Father; but has also kept His promise not to leave us as orphans – He has sent us the Holy Spirit, the Comforter, to lead us into all truth, and to teach us, and to empower us in living the life we received in our baptism, the very life of Christ Himself, risen from the dead. As every Sunday is a remembrance of, and participation in, the Pascha of our Lord, so, too, is every Sunday a remembrance of, and participation in, the day of Pentecost.
The day of Pentecost marks a transition in the liturgical cycle of the Church. In a way, this corresponds to our own lives as believers in Christ. We begin as Christ is born in us, enlightening us, and calling us into communion with Him – the feast of our Lord’s Incarnation at Nativity, and His Theophany. This is quite often accompanied by an awakened sense of our sins, and our captivity to our passions, and the need to be set free from death – celebrated in the Pascha of our Lord. Now, realizing that the power of death has been broken, and no longer has a hold on us, we are empowered to go forth and live the life of Christ in every aspect of our being, and in every place we go. Pentecost is our empowering to go forth and bear witness to the power of the risen Lord dwelling in us: praying and fasting and giving and struggling to overcome our sins and passions, living the life we find modeled for us in the Church by the saints. The season after Pentecost symbolizes the time between our Lord’s Resurrection and the coming of the Holy Spirit – Pascha and Pentecost – and the great and terrible Day of Judgment that is yet to come. It is, in a way, “ordinary time”; and the time in which we “work out our salvation with fear and trembling.”
Brothers and sisters! We have seen the true light; we have received the heavenly Spirit; we have found the truth faith. Let us worship the undivided Trinity, Who has saved us, by humbly asking God to empower us to bear witness to His Son by our repentance and turning from the ways of sin and death, through the power of the Holy Spirit.
No comments:
Post a Comment