Tag Archives: Pentecost

All of them were filled.

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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!

 “When the day of Pentecost came, they were all together in one place.  Suddenly a sound like the blowing of a violent wind came from heaven and filled the whole house where they were sitting.  They saw what seemed to be tongues of fire that separated and came to rest on each of them.  All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit enabled them.”

The Holy Spirit Comes at Pentecost

He thirsted, and drank deeply.

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When I arrived on the church property this morning on St. Justin’s day, I saw three trees in pots sitting by the front porch, waiting to go in and become part of the decoration for Pentecost Sunday. I walked around and took pictures of the landscape with its ever changing color display. Throughout the morning people were coming and going, for the service and for other activities connected to the upcoming feast. A crew was cooking in the kitchen, and out on the patio women arranged flowers.

Four of us were in the temple ironing green altar cloths and replacing the white ones that have been the theme since Pascha, almost fifty days ago. A few of the icons are so heavy, it takes two of us to lift the big box frame from its stand, while the third set of hands slides off the white satin hanging and arranges the fresh green cloth as straight as possible; then the saint’s image is laid down to rest again.

Before any of that, the Liturgy in honor of St. Justin was served in our little church; one of our group who bears the name of Justin was directing the minimal choir. It may be that I never before attended a Divine Liturgy for St. Justin, though I have mentioned him on my blog. In any case, I didn’t remember the hymns of the feast, which draw attention to his title as Philosopher, and his ability to defend the faith in words, and to witness to it by his death. I was moved by their poetry.

You emptied the cup of the wisdom of the Greeks,
but you thirsted again,
until you came to the well where you found
water springing unto eternal life.
And having drunk deeply,
you also drank from the cup
which Christ gave to His disciples.
Therefore, O Justin,
we praise you as a Philosopher
and Martyr of Christ.

O Justin, teacher of divine knowledge,
you shone with the radiance of true philosophy.
You were wisely armed against the Enemy.
Confessing the truth, you contested with the Martyrs,
with them, O Justin, always entreat Christ to save our souls.

On this page, you can read the life of the saint: St. Justin the Philosopher.

He lived in the second century, and wrote his second Apology, addressed to the Roman Senate, in 161, soon after Marcus Aurelius became emperor. He had been able to persuade the previous emperor, Antoninus Pius, to stop persecuting Christians, at least for a time. The Cynic philosopher Crescentius, who reportedly always lost debates against Justin, had a part in his death, as out of envy he denounced him to the Roman court, after which Justin and six friends were imprisoned, tried and beheaded. The following is considered to be the court record of the trial (Wikipedia):

The Prefect Rusticus says: Approach and sacrifice, all of you, to the gods. Justin says: No one in his right mind gives up piety for impiety. The Prefect Rusticus says: If you do not obey, you will be tortured without mercy. Justin replies: That is our desire, to be tortured for Our Lord, Jesus Christ, and so to be saved, for that will give us salvation and firm confidence at the more terrible universal tribunal of Our Lord and Saviour. And all the martyrs said: Do as you wish, for we are Christians, and we do not sacrifice to idols. The Prefect Rusticus read the sentence: Those who do not wish to sacrifice to the gods and to obey the emperor will be scourged and beheaded according to the laws. The holy martyrs glorifying God betook themselves to the customary place, where they were beheaded and consummated their martyrdom confessing their Saviour.

I admire this saint’s search for the truth, and am glad that it didn’t take his whole life to try out, in turn, the Stoics, the Peripatetics, the Pythagoreans and the Platonists, until he at last found Christ. Even more inspiring is his resolve, once he knew the Truth —  the way he clung firmly to Christ who is the true Logos, the Word of God. I want to follow St. Justin’s example in drinking deeply of True Philosophy.

As a breath from Paradise,
the dew descending upon Hermon,
Christ the Power and the Peace and Wisdom of God the Father,
came upon your thirsting spirit, O Martyr Justin,
making you a Fount of Knowledge for all the faithful,
when with true valor you endured death as a Martyr,
to live forever in Christ.

We are not describing the Holy Spirit.

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In the Orthodox Church, when we celebrate a feast commemorating an event in our salvation history, such as Pentecost, also known as Holy Trinity Sunday, it is followed directly by another feast honoring a person who figures heavily in the previous day’s event. In the present case, tomorrow is Holy Spirit Day. It seems a good time to post these thoughts from Metropolitan Anthony:

When we say that God is spirit, we say simply that he is not matter as we know it, that he is something quite different. In that sense it is a negative description that belongs already without the word, to that form of theology which is negative theology, apophatic theology, a theology of paradoxes, a theology that uses words to point toward the ineffable — that which can neither be described nor put into words and yet which must be indicated somehow in speech.

One could avoid speech. In Siberia there were pagan tribes that had deliberately rejected every human word for God. And when in conversation they wanted to indicate God they raised their hand towards heaven. This is possible in a civilization of direct communication by speech. It is no longer possible in a civilization of books. But whatever words we use we have got to be aware of the fact that we are not describing, we are not defining what God is, because the very thing we know about God is that he is beyond defining, beyond describing. So that when we say of God that he is a Spirit, when we speak of the Holy Spirit in particular, we do not mean to give a concrete definition or any description of what he is. We point towards the fact that he is beyond our conceptual knowledge, beyond every formulation, that is is what we don’t know, and this is what we mean to say by saying that he is a spirit as contrasted with us.

–Metropolitan Anthony Bloom, excerpt from “Our Life in God,” from Essential Writings

Pentecost icon (fresco)

Pure words and healing.

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Current events had got me musing about words, silence, speech, and idle talk, even before my dear friend Myriah came to visit. She and I grant each other the exercise of free speech, even civil discourse, but I found that more than those are required by the law of  love. I hope to write further on these topics soon, though I feel woefully inadequate. Meanwhile…

After Myriah had gone home, she wrote to thank me, and to apologize for what she thought was her own “noise” as she “tried to make sense of everything.” She said, “I came home and planned to curl up and read the Bible.” But family demands prevented her. I realized that I had robbed her of what should have been a respite from confusion, talking as I had as though raging and clanging could be truly rational. Probably we should have spent some part of our two-day visit reading the Gospel together. (The garden did rescue us several times.)

These were my thoughts this Saturday morning, as I prepared to attend Divine Liturgy for the Leavetaking of Pentecost. I was present to receive Communion, but I had read the Gospel for the day at home. It washed over me as a healing balm, not because its subject matter or meaning are any more pertinent than they have ever been, but because I know the Speaker to be Truth and Love incarnate, and His speech is in stark contrast to the loudest human sounds that accost our ears and eyes. I remembered this verse:

The words of the LORD are pure words,
like silver refined in an earthen furnace,
purified seven times.
-Psalm 12:6

The Psalmist does not mean that God has to make seven rough drafts before He speaks, but that even our most refined and precious earthly things are only “something like” the Logos. These words of Christ from what is called “The Sermon on the Mount” were the Gospel reading for the day:

Give to the one who asks you, and do not reject the one who wants to borrow from you. 

You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbor’ and ‘hate your enemy.’  But I say to you, love your enemy and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be like your Father in heaven, since he causes the sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous.  

For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Even the tax collectors do the same, don’t they? And if you only greet your brothers, what more do you do? Even the Gentiles do the same, don’t they?

So then, be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.