Homily on the Feast of Holy Pentecost – Trinity Sunday
Acts 2: 1-11; John 7: 37-52; 8: 12.
Today we celebrate the Feast of Pentecost; the Feast where Christ’s promise was fulfilled of the sending down of the All-Holy Spirit on the Holy Apostles.
The Disciples would have been devastated to lose their resurrected Lord and Saviour; yet He promised that He would not leave them alone and would send the Comforter. This happened on the Feast of Pentecost 50 days after His resurrection a Feast originally connected to the Old Covenant.
This Feast in the Old Covenant was a celebration the All-Holy Trinity revealing to Saint Moses the inspiration of the Torah. This is significant for it is on this day that the Apostles received the Holy Spirit and began their official mission to convert the nations and bring the Holy Gospel that they may be saved.
The Gospel being the fulfilment of the Jewish Scripture and the revelation of the Word of God who was made flesh and dwelt among us to paraphrase Saint John’s prologue to his Gospel. Filled with the All-Holy Spirit, these same Apostles proclaimed the truth of Christ to all, and all heard this truth in their respective tongue.
This miracle being a command, if you will, that we as the Church are to preach the Gospel to people in a language which they can understand. We are not to hide the truth of the Gospel in liturgical or secret languages which a select few know. This message of love is to be preached in all languages all over the earth.
This why it is interesting that people place certain values on certain languages. We know that our Lord and saviour would have been educated in Aramaic, Greek, and Latin but to place these languages on pedestal is to miss the point of Holy Pentecost. The Gospel must not be kept enchained in the prison house of a dead language.
Do not get me wrong, I love languages and am in the process of learning a few new ones. However, what Pentecost shows is that the Gospel must be preached in ways that people clearly understand it’s message. For example, there is no point preaching to a group of tradies using the English of the King James Bible; they will just shake their heads and move on.
Moreover, Pentecost is a fulfilment of God’s Prophesy in the book of Joel where he states:
“After this it shall come to pass that I will pour my spirit on all flesh: your sons and daughters shall prophesy, your old men shall dream, and your young men shall see visions… and it shall be that whoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved, for in Mount Zion and in Jerusalem shall be deliverance, as the Lord Himself said, and there shall be proclamation of the good news to those whom the Lord Himself called (Joel 3).”
On this day, the Apostles preached the glad tidings to men and women from all parts of the world showing God’s desire that all who call upon His name may have the opportunity to be saved. This is the mission of the Church to bring people to Christ through preaching, the worthy reception of the Holy Mysteries, and through lives anchored in Christ having put on Christ through Holy Baptism.
Many of the great saints were at pains to preach the Gospel in ways that people would understand it’s message.
St John of San Fransisco was one of these saints. Born in 1896 he grew up in the village of Adamovka of the Izyumsky Uyezd of the Kharkov Governate of the Russian Empire.
Saint John loved his beloved Russia but was soon forced to flee to Belgrade in the year of 1921.
He entered Belgrade University, graduating in the year 1925. He was a saintly young man and helped his family financially by selling newspapers on the street.
In the year 1926 he was tonsured a monk and ordained to the order of deacon to serve the Church there. It was here he lost his earthly name of Mikhail and was named John by Metropolitan Anthony Khrapovitsky.
Later that same year he was ordained to the order of priest by Bishop Gabriel Chepur of Chelyabinsk. He was a very holy Priest who took his faith seriously to the point of never sleeping in a bed ever again. Rather, he preferred to sleep in his chair, or he would nap kneeling before holy icons.
In 1929 the Holy Synod of the Serbian Orthodox Church appointed him a teacher in their seminary at Bitola. During his time at the seminary, he became greatly respected for his acts of charity especially visiting the poor and the sick and to the latter distributing Holy Communion.
In the year of 1934, he was consecrated a Bishop of the Russian Church Aboard. ROCOR had separated from the Communist infested Patriarchate of Moscow after it became apparent that these Muscovite clergy were more concerned with making the Communists happy than spreading the Gospel.
He was then assigned to the See of Shanghai which had a big diaspora of Greeks, Serbians and Russians at that time. Things were not to be easy for our beloved saint as the Church had become divided along ethnic lines – meaning that conflicts were common, and discord was the norm.
Through his ascetical labours and prayer, he was able to bring the various groups together reminding them that the Orthodox Church was one and not an ethnic association This showed him to be a true modern-day Apostle living up to Christ’s prayer that they might all be one (John 17:21).
Roman Catholics might try and claim that this disunity was a sign that Orthodoxy needs the Pope of Rome; however, the Church has only ever recognised one Supreme authority and that is Christ who is the Bishop of Bishop’s and guide of His Holy Orthodox Church.
Moreover, St John became very well esteemed in Shanghai as it was impossible for him to hide his ascetic way of life from his flock. He did not let the rulers of Shanghai during the war, the Japanese, get in the way of his labours in the vineyard of Christ. He would often ignore the curfew imposed on foreigners never once being pulled up by the Japanese.
In the year 1946 he was elevated to the rank of Archbishop of China by the Holy Synod of ROCOR. However, in 1959, Mao took over China expelling all foreigners as enemies of his Communist revolution. As a result, he was forced to flee China to a refugee camp in the Philippines. From there he travelled to Washington DC to make sure that his beloved community of refugees would be accepted in America.
In the year 1951 ROCOR assigned him to the Archdiocese of Western Europe where he first served in Paris then later, Brussels. During his time in Europe, he came to see that there were many pre-Schism Western Saints who had been forgotten by Holy Orthodoxy. Ever the advocate for all people, he then began to compile the lives of these saints so that their feast days could be celebrated by the Church.
Moreover, he began to be an advocate for the restoration, as accurately as possible, of Pre-Schism Liturgies. As a result, many western-Rite orthodox parishes to this day use pre-Schism Liturgies that were edited by him. This again being a sign of him being a champion for all people finding ways to best communicate the Gospel of love to these people.
Whilst in Europe, he became known for his charitable and pastoral work amongst his flock and the people of Europe.
In the Year 1962 Saint John was assigned by the Holy Synod of ROCOR to the city of San Fransisco in America. Here too, he entered into a Church fractured along ethnic lines and like in Shanghai he was able to bring some unity amongst the Orthodox Christians of different ethnicities.
However, due to his good works some people began to slander him, and they filled false lawsuits for him supposedly stealing money related to the completion of his Cathedral of the Holy Virgin. This caused the great Saint great sorrow even though he had been declared innocent by the courts, as all he desired was a Church united where all could come under one roof and pray together as the Body of Christ.
On July 2, 1966, he fell asleep in Christ after having celebrated the Divine Liturgy in the city of Seattle. He was officially canonised by ROCOR in the year 1994 and his incorrupt relics rest in the Cathedral he completed in honour of the Holy Theotokos.
The legacy of Saint John’s life is to show that the Gospel is to be preached to all and that the Church is one even if there are different parts of Christ’s Body in different jurisdictions and countries. This is a reality we cannot deny and as Christ’s Body we must realise that all the Canonical Churches in different lands are all part of Christ’s body, meaning that the Church must never just be an ethnic club or association.
Let us pray this week that all Canonical Churches may come together as one and that all the division brought about by political and worldly concerns may be laid aside that we may preach the Gospel of Christ to all lands and all peoples.
