The Holy Spirit Comes Upon Us and is Ever-Present with Us!

“Heavenly King, Comforter, Spirit of Truth, present in all places and filling all things, treasury of good things and giver of life: come; take Your abode in us; cleanse us of every stain, and save our souls, O Good one.”   ~Prayer to the Holy Spirit and of Pentecost

Dearest Spiritual ‘Ohana,

We come to the conclusion of the “Moveable Cycle of Feasts for the 2022 Year” with celebration of Pentecost and the commemoration of All Saints the following week.  Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, the 2nd Person of the Holy Trinity, completed and accomplished His Mission/Purpose and what He came to do in this world through His Incarnation, Baptism, Death, Descent into Hades and Resurrection.  He prepared His disciples for His departure from them by saying to them, “ Nevertheless I tell you the truth. It is to your advantage that I go away; for if I do not go away, the Helper will not come to you; but if I depart, I will send Him to you.” (John 16:7) The Lord prepared them (and us/all generations to come) for the coming of the Holy Spirit, Who is that “Helper.”  Before He was taken up into Heaven to sit at the Right Hand of the Father in the Ascension, He left us with the Holy Spirit Who gives us the opportunity to be impacted always and forever by God’s Presence.

The Holy Spirit plays many roles in our lives.  Here is a “bullet” list of some of those roles, plus some of the attributes of the Holy Spirit:

  • 3rd Person of the Holy Trinity (the All-Holy Good and Life-creating Spirit)
  • Most Mysterious Person of the Holy Trinity
  • Present in all places and fills all things
  • Reveals and manifests the Father and the Son (allows us to experience Christ in the present)
  • In the Nicene Creed we confess the Holy Spirit as fully Divine.
  • A Person and Force that is more powerful than any power.
  • The Holy Spirit is the “author” and the “giver of life”
  • The Holy Spirit illumines us and inspires us
  • We can only pray through the Holy Spirit.

The Holy Spirit is able to be in all places at the same time and not limited to any space.  Christ took on human flesh in His Incarnation and moved about in His flesh as we are able to move about, and could not be physically present in all places, at the same time while He was physically present on earth.  The Holy Spirit, being the Most Mysterious Person of the Holy Trinity, allows us to experience Christ’s Presence everywhere, without any bounds.  This is why we can truly affirm that “Christ is in our midst” and “He was, is, and always shall be!”

It is through the Ever-Presence of the Holy Spirit that we experience the Love of God the Father, and Christ through all the Holy Mysteries, including:  Holy Communion, Baptism, Chrismation, Repentance, Holy Unction, Marriage, Ordination, etc.

Have you ever experienced inspiration or a deep feeling of God’s Presence?  You can attribute these to the Holy Spirit!

When we pray, it is only through the Holy Spirit that we have the ability to pray.  You may notice that when you begin your daily prayers from your prayer books or when we begin specific services such as Orthros, that we begin by invoking the Holy Spirit.  (see the prayer to the Holy Spirit/Pentecost at the beginning of my message)

As we come to the end of this Moveable Festal Season of the year, let us take the time to consider, meditate and reflect on how God has impacted our lives through all that He has accomplished and continues to, through His Love and Mercy, and respond to His All Mighty Presence by glorifying Him and sharing His impact on us by loving one another and all our fellow people made in “His Image and Likeness.” For the world is always and ever in great need of His Fulfilling Presence, as we are conduits/instruments through which the Holy Spirit is able to work through us.

I leave you with a quote on the Holy Spirit, by one of our Great Fathers and Saints of the Church:

“Through the Holy Spirit comes our restoration to paradise, our ascension into the kingdom of heaven, our return to the adoption of sons, our liberty to call God our Father, our being made partakers of the grace of Christ, our being called children of light, our sharing in eternal glory, and, in a word, our being brought into a state of all “fulness of blessing,” both in this world and in the world to come, of all the good gifts that are in store for us, by promise hereof, through faith, beholding the reflection of their grace as though they were already present, we await the full enjoyment.” ~St. Basil the Great

“The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God and Father, and the communion of the Holy Spirit, be with you all.”

With Love in Christ,

+Fr. Alexander