Today is the feast of Pentecost. Today God’s promises are
fulfilled, our hope is accomplished, and the Church is born. Today the curse of
Babel is reversed. Long ago men sought to make a name for themselves by
building a tower to reach heaven, and by divine judgment their tongues were scattered. But today the Holy Spirit is
poured out in tongues of flame, and God unites
men and women and children of every race and tribe and tongue, by giving them
the name of the consubstantial Trinity, one in essence and undivided.
Those of us who came from western Christian traditions
knew the Sunday after Pentecost as
the Sunday of the Holy Trinity. But in the Orthodox Church, we mark the day of
Pentecost itself as the day of the Holy Trinity—and there is wisdom in this choice. For on this day,
at last the Spirit is most clearly revealed
as he comes to the Church in fiery tongues. Here is how St. Gregory the
Theologian puts it:
“The
Old Testament proclaimed the Father openly, and the Son more obscurely.
The New manifested the Son, and suggested the Deity of the Spirit. Now
the Spirit Himself dwells among us, and supplies us with a clearer
demonstration of Himself.“
But
why this ordering of revelation? St.
Gregory continues, “For it was not safe, when the Godhead of the Father was not
yet acknowledged, plainly to proclaim the Son; nor when that of the Son was not
yet received to burden us further (if I may use so bold an expression) with the
Holy Ghost; lest perhaps people might, like men loaded with food beyond their
strength, and presenting eyes as yet too weak to bear it to the sun’s light,
risk the loss even of that which was within the reach of their powers; but that
by gradual additions, and, as David says, Goings up, and advances and progress
from glory to glory, the Light of the Trinity might shine upon the more
illuminated.” Thus far Gregory.
So
the order in which God shows himself is Father, Son and
Spirit. But the order by which we come to know him, reverses the order. We come in
the Spirit, through the Son, to the Father. The Spirit makes us
to know the Son, for “no one can say that Jesus is Lord except by the Holy
Spirit,” as St. Paul says, and Christ himself says, “when the Comforter comes, he
will bear witness about me.”
By the grace of the Holy Spirit, we
come to know the Son. In the 19th
century, some liberal theologians wrote lives of Jesus. Finally, Albert
Schweitzer wrote a history of those books. He remarks that the Jesus each of
them portrayed looked a lot more like an idealized portrait of the theologian.
And it happens again today, as people take Christ out of context to make him
support their own agendas. At the end, we begin to wonder who Jesus is.
The Holy Spirit makes it clear. He brings us to know
Jesus as the Son of the Father, Light from Light, true God from true God,
one in essence but distinct in Person. He also makes us to know his own relation to the Son, for at the
Baptism of Jesus he comes from the
Father and rests on the Son. And so we believe, and so we confess, that
the Spirit proceeds, not from the Father and
the Son, but from the Father alone, and rests on the Son.
So
in the Second Comforter, we come to know the First Comforter, the Word of God
made flesh for us men and for our salvation. And through the First Comforter,
we come to know the Father. On the night of Christ’s betrayal, Philip said,
“Lord, show us the Father and we will be satisfied.” Jesus responded, “Have I
been so long with you, and still you do not know me? Whoever has seen me, has
seen the Father…I am in the Father, and the Father is in me.”
Note
carefully: Christ distinguishes his
Person from the Person of the Father. He does not say, “I am the Father,”
but “I am in the Father, and the
Father is in me.” But he shows their unity of essence by speaking of
“Father” and “Son,” for all fathers are the same essence as the sons they
beget. Horse fathers beget horse sons, human fathers beget human sons. Since,
in this case, the Father is God, the Son must also be God.
Through the Son we know the Father. “For God so loved the world that he gave his only-begotten
Son.” The cross of Christ is not that of an innocent child crushed by an angry,
abusive father. At Christ’s cross,
rather, we see the complete, self-giving
love of the Father. Such love!—that he gives us the one in whom dwells all
the fullness of deity bodily—utterly and completely gives him, life into death,
that through his death we might share the life of the Holy Trinity.
And
now, let us never go further. Let us
never seek to innovate, or be creative. Let us remain in the teaching we have
received, the faith given once for all to the saints. Each week we say, just
before the Creed, “Let us love one another, that with one accord we may confess
Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, the Trinity one in essence and undivided.”
To
remain in the Orthodox faith is to remain
in love—love for God who has revealed himself, and love for all those who
faithfully handed down this truth to us. And the reverse is true. To depart from
love—to act out the pride of Babel—is to depart from the Orthodox faith.
So
on this day of Pentecost, let us, like them, remain together and in one accord.
Let us love each other fervently, not only in word but in deed and truth. By
this all men will know that we are Christ’s disciples; and by this we will
come, in the Spirit and through the Son, to know the Father.
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