Pentecostal Pensées

Gift of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost, Rabbula Gospels (6th c., Syriac)

Creator Spirit, Giver of Life, when you were poured out on the apostles, you came with “a sound like the rush of a violent wind” (Acts 2:2).  You came on them in Jerusalem like the “wind from God” that hovered over the waters in the beginning (Gen. 1:2).  Greatest Comforter, the sound of your coming was like the wind that blew over the earth to end the Flood, like the wind that parted the Red Sea, like the wind that “went out from the Lord” and brought quails to your people in the wilderness (Gen. 8:1; Ex. 14:21; Nu. 11:31).  O Lord, whose way “is in the whirlwind and storm” (Nah. 1:3b), you rushed on them that day, that day when you came to “renew the face of the earth” (Ps. 104:31).

Fire of love, when you were poured out on the apostles, “divided tongues, as of fire, appeared among them” (Acts 2:3).  You appeared among them as you did “in a flame of fire out of a bush” on Mount Horeb (Ex. 3:2); you blazed on them, and they were not consumed.  Consuming fire, “in the last days” (Acts 2:17), you came on them like “a refiner’s fire” (Mal. 3:2).  You came on them in Jerusalem

With flame of incandescent terror*

as when you descended on Mount Sinai in fire, and “the smoke went up like the smoke of a kiln, while the whole mountain shook violently” when you gave your commandments to Moses (Ex. 19:18, cf. 24:17).  Fire proceeding from Fire, when you came to lead them to the ends of the earth, it was as when “your provided a flaming pillar of fire as a guide for your people’s unknown journey” (Wis. 18:3).  

Gift of God most high, when you were poured out on the apostles, a tongue of fire “sat upon each of them” (Acts 2:3, KJV).  True Promise, when the Son was raised and exalted at the right hand of the Father, he received you from the Father and poured you out on his own (2:32–33).  When the Son sat down, he sent you down that you might sit upon, settle on, rest on, them, the members of his body.  The seated Son sent you to unite them to himself, to cry out in their hearts, “Abba! Father!” (Gal. 4:6).

Icon, Descent of the Holy Spirit (16th c., Russian)
(Here is an explanation of the old king and the empty chair.)

All-holy Spirit, when you were poured out on the apostles as tongues of fire, you gave them ability “to speak in tongues,” so that “devout Jews from every nation under heaven” heard them “speaking about God’s deeds of power” in their own tongues (Acts 2:4, 5, 11).  Giver of gifts, when the apostles received your power in Jerusalem, they became Christ’s witnesses to all nations.  Father of the poor, in coming to guide Christ’s own into the truth (Jn. 16:13), “you have revealed the fishermen as most wise” and “through them you drew the world into your net.”†  O Lord, when you “came down and confused the tongues, [you] divided the nations; but when [you] distributed the tongues of fire, [you] called all to unity.”‡

Spirit of Truth, when you empowered the apostles to truthfully proclaim Jesus as “both Lord and Messiah” (Acts 2:36), you exposed the world by the light of your truth (Jn. 16:8).  You declared to Peter what you hear from the Son and the Father (Jn. 16:13–14), what he heard he declared, and those who heard his preaching “were cut to the heart” (Acts 2:37).  Through his words, you shone out and revealed to them their hatred of the one who dared to claim, “I am the way, the truth, and the life” (Jn. 14:6).  Light of eternal wisdom, you laid bare their love of darkness, their self-love to the point of hating you (cf. Jn. 3:19–21).  O most blessed Light, you overwhelmed them, and called them to repentance (Acts. 2:38).  And those who welcomed the message of your apostle were baptized (2:41); by your gift, they turned from love of self to the love of you, “beauty so ancient and so new.”§

Veni, Sancte Spiritus,
Et emitte cœlitus
Lucis tuæ radium.

Come, Holy Spirit,

send forth the heavenly

radiance of your light.

Note: The titles for the Holy Spirit come from the Nicene Creed, the hymns Veni Creator Spiritus and Veni Sancte Spiritus, and from the Orthodox liturgy for Pentecost.

* T.S. Eliot, “Little Gidding,” IV.

† From the Orthodox Troparia for Pentecost.

‡ From the Orthodox Kontakion for Pentecost.

§ Augustine, Conf. 10.27.38.

"He Ascended into Heaven"

The Ascension, Rabula Gospels (6th c., Syriac)

“God has gone up with a shout,

the LORD with the sound of the ram's-horn.”

— Psalm 47:5

Christ our God “has gone up with a shout” (Ps. 47:5).  He went up with a shout when “the Father of glory”—his Father and our Father, his God and our God (Jn. 20:17)—raised him in the power of the Spirit and “seated him at his right hand in the heavenly places, far above all rule and authority and power and dominion” (Eph. 1:17, 20–21).  Jesus the Messiah, the King of glory, lives and reigns over the nations.  Seated at the Father’s right hand, he is destroying “every ruler and every authority and every power,” subduing all his enemies until even death is destroyed (1 Cor. 15:24–26).  His reign is not like that of the nations, for he reigns as the Lamb who was slain.    He reigns over the powers, because “all things have been created through him and for him” and because “he disarmed the rulers and authorities and made a public spectacle of them,” triumphing over them in his cross (Col. 1:16; 2:15).  His weakness is mightier than the nations, who display only an empty simulacrum of strength.  He is “mighty in battle” (Ps. 24:8), trampling down death by death.

Christ has gone up with a shout, that those who believe might know “the immeasurable greatness” of God’s power for us (Eph. 1:19).  He returned to the Father that he might pour out on his church the Gift, the promised Holy Spirit.  He fills his church, which is his body, with his Spirit, “the pledge of our inheritance towards redemption as God’s own people” (1:14).  He pours out his Spirit as the pledge that we are, with Christ, children of God and joint heirs of his kingdom (Rom. 8:16–17).  The Spirit bears witness that Christ, who “ascended in the flesh to the bodiless Father,” has lifted up all our humanity and brought it to his Father.*  Christ sends the Spirit “that we, his members, might be confident of following where he, our Head and Founder, has gone before.”†

Christ has gone up with a shout, bearing our humanity in his body into the life of the Triune Lord, and giving the Spirit that his members might bear his life in their bodies.  Through the gift of the Spirit they share in his life.  He gives them to become a people capable of witnessing to his peaceful reign in the midst of the idolatrous and death-bound kingdoms of the world; they do not fear because he has won the victory.

* John of Damascus, Troparia, Canon for the Assumption.

† Missale Romanum, Preface of the Ascension I.