Homily One on Pentecost
By St. Justin Popovich
(Delivered in 1965 at the Ćelije Monastery)
By St. Justin Popovich
(Delivered in 1965 at the Ćelije Monastery)
In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit!
If it were not for this Day, brothers and sisters, there would be no Christianity; there would be no Holy Apostles, no Holy Martyrs, no Holy Confessors, no Righteous Ones, no Desert Fathers. If it were not for this Day, neither would you exist! If it were not for this glorious and great Day, there would be no Church of Christ in the world. This world would have been and remained an arena of death, a prison of sin, a hell. Man would have ceased to be man and would have become some kind of monstrous distortion.
Today's great and holy Feast, today's great and holy Event — the Descent of the Holy Spirit upon the Apostles and the first disciples of Christ — gave being to the Church of Christ. Today is the birthday of the Church of Christ. Today the Church was born through the Descent of the Holy Spirit upon the Holy Apostles. The Lord was in the world in the flesh, preaching, working miracles, suffering, rising from the dead, and ascending into Heaven. And yet, behold, His disciples fled in fear of the Jews and hid themselves. What happened? Where was His power? Where was His promise: "I give you authority to tread upon serpents and scorpions and over all the power of the enemy"?¹ They fled, they hid, they were runaways and cowards...
Where are you going? And today, on the fiftieth day after the Resurrection of the Lord Christ, the Holy Spirit descends in the form of tongues of fire and rests upon each of the Holy Apostles and disciples. And all of them began to speak in different languages. Simple fishermen from Galilee, uneducated and ordinary men, spoke many languages at the very moment the Holy Spirit descended upon them. Seventeen different nations are mentioned, as you heard today in the Acts of the Apostles, and each person heard his own language spoken by those uneducated Galilean fishermen.²
What happened? What was this? The Holy Apostle Peter explains to them that this was the fulfillment of the prophecy of Joel: that the Holy Spirit would descend upon all flesh, that your sons and daughters would prophesy, and that Divine Power would be given to every human being.³ And indeed, that fearful Peter, that fugitive, on the very same day that the Holy Spirit descended upon him, boldly preached the Risen Lord and the Ascended Lord, declaring that salvation is in Him, and that "there is no other name under heaven by which men can be saved."⁴ Saved from what? From sin, death, the devil, and hell.
Who can do that in the world except the Lord Christ? The Holy Spirit descended; the promise was fulfilled — the greatest promise, the greatest hope. The Holy Spirit descended and transformed the weak and powerless disciples of Christ into all-powerful men, into mighty heroes. He transformed mortal men into immortal ones. They were clothed with power from on high, according to the word of the Lord Christ.⁵
On this day the Holy Apostles were clothed with power from on high. What sort of power was it? A power stronger than every earthly power; stronger than sin; stronger than death; stronger than the devil; stronger than hell. What the Holy Apostles experienced on this day never left them. The Twelve, together with those who were with them, scattered throughout the whole world, and they distributed that same Holy Spirit, those fiery tongues, to every human being who believed in the Lord Jesus. And the Holy Spirit, brothers and sisters, became the soul of the Church of Christ.
Behold, the Lord became incarnate; the Lord took a body upon Himself, and into that Body, into the Church of Christ — which is the Body of Christ — the Holy Spirit descended,⁶ that divine Soul of the Church, and gave it omnipotent power. Just as our body lives by the soul, so the Church of Christ lives by the Holy Spirit, its Soul. And the Feast, and the event that began on this Day, has never ceased — not for two thousand years. For what is the Church of Christ? The Church of Christ is an unceasing Pentecost, an unceasing Feast of the Holy Spirit. No one can be a Christian or become a Christian unless the Holy Spirit descends upon him, unless the Holy Spirit enters his being, sanctifies him, regenerates him, renews him, and transfigures him.
Each one of us Christians experiences today's Great Feast as a personal feast. When? When he is baptized. For the Spirit of salvation, the Holy Spirit, descends upon the baptized person, enters him, and remains in his soul for all time and for all eternity — unless a person drives Him away through sins, passions, and a corrupt life. Yet he can never drive Him away completely.
And we in the Church of Christ live continually in the glory of the Holy Spirit, by His power and His energies. He is the One who distributes all gifts in the Church.⁷ He is the One through whom our faith grows, our evangelical love grows, our prayer grows, and the holy virtues increase within us. He is the One who makes the entire gospel of Christ our own. He is the One who gives us the strength to fulfill Christ's commandments in this world...⁸
Notes:
1. Luke 10:19
2. Acts 2:1–12
3. Acts 2:14–17; Luke 24:49
4. Acts 4:12
5. Luke 24:49
6. Ephesians 2:16–22; 4:3–6
7. 1 Corinthians 12:3–9; 13:1–13
8. The sermon was left unfinished because of an interruption in the tape recording. — Editor's note.
Source: Translated by John Sanidopoulos.
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