TRUE OR FALSE - PENTECOST IS THE BEGINNING OF THE CHURCH

TRUE OR FALSE – PENTECOST IS THE BEGINNING OF THE CHURCH

Today the Church celebrates the Feast of Pentecost.  The great tragedy of our day is that the feast day will hardly be mentioned if at all in most churches of contemporary Christianity.  Even when it is mentioned, it is only mentioned in passing, so to speak, and its meaning and significance for our salvation is hardly known or recognized.

Many think the New Testament Day of Pentecost was the birthday of the Church but this is not technically the case.  The Feast of Pentecost was, of course, a feast of the Old Testament instituted 50 days (Pentecost means 50^th day) after Pascha when the Paschal Lamb was slain and the people of God were delivered from Egyptian bondage. All of this, of course, is a picture of our salvation and the celebration of Pascha (Easter) each year and every Sunday in the Church.  Then on the 50^th day after Israel’s deliverance God gave the Law to Moses on Mt. Sinai and this day was celebrated and commemorated by the Israelites each year.   

After the Resurrection and at the Ascension of the Saviour on the 40^th day, the disciples were told to wait in prayer in Jerusalem for the fulfillment of Pentecost.  As God had given the Law to Moses to empower him to form and govern the Israelites into the promised kingdom, so now the Holy Spirit is given to the Apostles to empower them with “power from on high” to form and govern the New Israel into the Kingdom of God.

The Church is the assembly of the angles, the holy Fathers, Patriarchs, Prophets, Apostles, Evangelists, and Martyrs who have been from the very beginning, to whom were added all the nations who believed with one accord. 

That which came to pass at Pentecost was the ordination of the Apostles, the commencement of the apostolic preaching to all the nations and the inauguration of the priesthood of the New Israel.  The old Israel with its Mosaic law had been left desolate with the destruction of Jerusalem and the temple.  On its ruins now rises the New Israel, Jew and Gentile, a new holy nation, a new royal priesthood, created by the Holy Spirit through the priesthood of the Apostles – the first bishops of the New Testament Church.  St. Gregory Palamas says, “Now, therefore…the Holy Spirit descended…showing the Disciples to be supernal luminaries…and the distributed grace of the Divine Spirit came through the ordination of the Apostles upon their successors”.  On this day commenced the celebration of the Holy Eucharist by which we become “partakers of the Divine Nature” (II Peter 1:4).  For before Pentecost, it is said of the Apostles and disciples only that they abode in “prayer and supplication” (Acts 1:14); it is only after the coming of the Holy Spirit and the priesthood that they "continued" in the “breaking of bread,” – that is, the communion of the Holy Mysteries – “and in prayers”.  (Acts 2:42)  [excerpt from the Pentecostarion]

On the Day of Pentecost there was formed one Church of all nations, holding one Faith, One Lord, one hope, one Baptism under one Divine Government of the Apostles – one holy Priesthood.  This is how the Church continues today as one Church with one Faith through the priesthood of the successors to the Apostles who, as conduits, pass on the same Faith by the same Holy Spirit as one unbroken Body of Christ from Pentecost to the present and unto the ages of ages.  Amen.