In the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, amen.
Joyous feast. Zi S'vyatom. Spraznikom. God bless you all on this joyous feast day.
What we see on the day of Pentecost, when the disciples and apostles received the Holy Spirit, knowing that Christ is ascended to be seen at the right hand of the Father, and reigns there and that he is coming again, soon that every knee, would bow before him, and every tongue confess that Jesus is Lord.
And so the disciples and apostles on this day are filled with power from on high to begin their mission, to begin the priesthood of grace that would spread throughout the world and would call everyone, so that no longer within the church would we say things like, "Oh, well they come from Galilee, so they can't be inspired by God."
We would no longer say, "They come from Mexico, they can't be inspired by God." We would no longer say, "They come from anywhere," and assume that they can't be inspired by God because the Spirit has sent the apostles to preach to the entire world.
There's a song verse that we frequently associate with the Apostles” “Their voice has gone out into all the world and to the ends of the universe. Their word to the ends of the universe."
And so reaching everywhere, so much so that even in… Elke actually has an image of one of these older icons of Pentecost, where in the door here, which is kind of the door of the church, the people entering into the church, and there's a king there representing the cosmos and the kingdoms of the world, and he's receiving the teaching of the apostles.
![An icon depicting Pentecost An icon depicting Pentecost](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fe11bbe23-9193-4c5b-859d-9a916715e8c4_2177x2649.heic)
So in some older icons you'll actually see what are essentially kind of monsters, dog-headed people standing in the door that are entering into the church. People that are at the very margin of what it means to even be human, and they're being brought into the church, they're being enlightened, they're being inspired by the Holy Spirit.
And so the church is illumined in order to illumine, to call everyone into a personal relationship with the light. Outside of this relationship, there is no being. There is only the descent into nothing, outside of this relationship with the light.
And I want to share with you a couple things related to that. Father Stamatis Skliris, who is a contemporary iconographer, wrote a book, it's a collection of essays about iconography, and it's called "In the Mirror."
And one of the things that he talks about, he has an essay where he compares the understanding of Western art in the way that they utilize light in painting, and how Byzantine iconography differs, and what it's trying to communicate about the light.
So when you see a painting by Rembrandt, you know that there are figures somewhere in the background, and if they're in the shadow, they almost disappear. But you know that even if they're not in the light, because Rembrandt is painting from a naturalist perspective, that they're still there.
So in the darkness, in the world, as we experience it, as living and bodied human beings, things are still there even if we can't, even if they're not illumined.
In Byzantine iconography, what is communicated, Father Stamati speaks about this, is that nothing is except that it's in the light. And so the way that this is communicated within the painting is when you see the cosmos here, this figure, this man, looks like a king that represents the cosmos, that represents the world. Behind him is black. Behind him is nothing. Outside of the threshold, of the plane of existence, where there is communion with the light, outside of that there is nothing.
Do you see the difference in perspective there? From our natural perspective, we think that things are. What the Church is telling us is no, they are not, until they are in communion with the light. They have no being, they have no substance, there is nothing underneath them. It's blackness. It's a blackness that you can't even begin to fathom or understand. So coming into the light is the very first coming into existence, being in communion with the light.
And he also notes how within iconography, and you can see an example within the icon of Pentecost, the buildings and everything are typically drawn smaller than the people. Even the mountains appear small and dwarfed before the figures, before the persons that are in the icon.
And again, it's demonstrating that it's in personal communion with the light that anyone is. Nothing exists outside of that. Nothing has any substance or being or endurance. Everything is passing away.
And we sing this in our funeral hymns, that everything is a vapor, everything is a shadow, life is a dream that is passing, everything is going, going, going until it's gone. And so without that personal communion with the light, there is no life, there is no existence.
And this is why it is imperative for the Orthodox faithful to be people that just like we do on Pascha when the priest stands and holds the light and says, "Come receive the light from the unwaning light.” Come receive the light that is never overcome by darkness.
It's not just the priest, but every Orthodox believer has a responsibility to call out to others and say to them, "Come receive the light," so that they could live, so that their life is not just a very brief journey to the grave, so that their life is not contained just within the little dash that's between the date of their birth and the date of their death on a tombstone, but so that their life would continue in communion with the living God for all of eternity and that no one would be lost. And so it's a responsibility within the life of the church to proclaim the gospel.
And I want to read to you from St. Gregory Palamas. He speaks about why the Holy Spirit is given to us. And so he says, "The promise was now fulfilled and the Holy Spirit given and sent by both the Father and the Son descended. He shone round about the holy disciples, and with divine power kindled them all like lamps, but rather he revealed them as heavenly lights set above the whole world, who had the Word of eternal life, and through them he illuminated all the earth. If from one burning lamp someone lights another, then another from that one, and so on, in succession, he has light continuously. In the same way, through the apostles ordaining their successors and these successors ordaining others, and so on, the grace of the Holy Spirit is handed down through all generations and enlightens all who obey their spiritual shepherds and teachers."
And so you see, the body of Christ is a living communion in the light of the Holy Spirit. And it's a living communion in the light of the Holy Spirit that is deeply personal and relational.
And so if we have relationships with anyone, our relationship with them as Orthodox believers and as participants in the light is to speak to them and say, "Come receive the light. Come receive life. Come and drink living water. Come and quench your thirst at the fount of wisdom, at the fount of all knowledge, at the fount of all life and source of all blessings." And so may we not shy away from this calling, but be fervent about it.
And may we as well not be like, by the way, Father Stamatis also speaks about how in certain paintings and depictions of the demonic, right, or when you watch a horror movie or something like that, to make the demons really ugly and scary, they're really distorted and like kind of monstrous, and he says, "Well, in iconography, they're just made small, and they just kind of look like a hole was punched in the icon, like there's just a hole. They're nothing, because they refuse to participate in the light. They made a personal decision to just step outside of it, and so that means nothing."
That means they become like a vacuum, just a hole that's unable to be filled until they're, if they were ever willing to participate in the light.
And so that can happen with us, unfortunately, is that we can choose to step into shadows. We can choose to step into darkness. And you may not find that you are radically transformed and turned into something horrifically ugly all in a moment, but in that stepping away from the light, we start to step away from our life.
We start to step away from genuine communion with God, and we start to lose it, to become something like a shadow, to become something insubstantial, to become someone who starts to lose his relationship with others. It starts to see those things dissolve and break apart.
And so the Lord calls us not to step away, but to have our being seeking to step more fully into the light.
And so I'll conclude with a quote from Fr. Stamatis, because I'm running out of steam. And also we have a lot to do today. He says, Fr. Stamatis writes, "If a creature personally, voluntarily, freely, of its own accord, chooses to partake in light and does not refuse it as demons have done, then light gives the creature its substance, its identity, that as we have seen, distinguishes it from the other creatures and grants it a space of its own, grants it a place to be, and a place to be eternally, not something that's going to pass away.”
And so remember, the church is illumined in order to illumine and to call everyone into personal relationship with the light, because outside of this relationship there is no being, there is only the descent into nothing. And so may we always participate in the light. Amen."