PENTECOST
Fr. James Cleondis, ANNUNCIATION, Mobile, AL

The Feast of the Pentecost (June 7th) is sometimes said to be the beginning of the Church of our Saviour Jesus Christ. On the 50th day after the Resurrection, the Apostles were assembled in the Upper Room with Blessed Virgin Mary. And as it is told in Acts 2:1-6, "And suddenly there came a violent wind coming from heaven, and it filled the whole house where they were sitting. And there appeared to them parted tongues of fire which settled on them. And they were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in foreign tongues even as the Holy Spirit prompted them to speak."
Nothing has ever been the same since this first Pentecost. The Apostles were comforted on that day from the strength bestowed on high. They had been through the loneliness and shame of Good Friday. They had experienced the wonder of Easter and of the days following when they has seen the Lord and had talked to Him. They had seen Him taken up into heaven and they had come to Jerusalem to wait patiently as He had told them to do. Now on this day of Pentecost, something happened which was hard to imagine. They described it as a day of holy fires and trembling earth and rushing winds, a day when the barriers of language and nationality dissolved before the power of the Lord, the Holy Spirit.
The handful of people in that room became the Church. These men who had gathered in the locked room for fear of the Jews went boldly out to proclaim the Good News to the world. Never again would they depend entirely upon their own strength. Never again would the threat of death or suffering frighten them. Going forth in His name, they would never be without Him.
At the celebration of Pentecost, the Holy Church gathers all of us, as the Apostles and others were gathered in the Upper Room, and calls upon the Spirit of God, the Comforter, the Spirit of Truth to "Come and dwell with all of us."