Today we celebrate the great feast of Pentecost, which marks both the fulfillment and the beginning of the Church’s faith.
Pentecost is the fulfillment and culmination of our celebration of Christ’s resurrection, and the Church has been preparing us for it for the last fifty days since Pascha. It is the final feast of the great Mystery of God’s coming to us in the incarnation, passion and resurrection of His Son, Jesus Christ.
Pentecost is also the fulfillment of God’s revelation of Himself as the Holy and Undivided Trinity. With the coming of the Holy Spirit on the apostles, as Saint Luke tells us in today’s reading (Acts 2:1-11), the Three Persons of the Holy Trinity are clearly revealed. For that reason today is also referred to as Trinity Sunday.
But Pentecost also marks a new beginning in the life of the Church. The Holy Spirit is not simply revealed as an abstract truth, but He comes to the Church in order to strengthen it, and to empower it to carry out Christ’s mission in the world. With Pentecost we see the beginning of the public preaching by the apostles that was accompanied by signs and healings, and that would result in repentance and many baptisms. We also see that in addition to gathering for prayer, which they had been doing, the disciples and apostles gather together “for the breaking of the bread” (Acts 2:42) for, with the coming of the Holy Spirit, the apostles receive their authority and the liturgical and sacramental life of the Church begins.
“Acquire the Holy Spirit,
and a thousand around you will be saved.”
St. Seraphim of Sarov