Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,

Heartfelt congratulations with the great feast of the descent of the Holy Spirit on the Apostles!

Many times, both today as well as yesterday, we heard the following words of the troparion of the feastday:

Blessed art Thou, O Christ our God, Who hast shown forth the fisherman as supremely wise, by sending down upon them the Holy Spirit, and through them didst draw the world unto Thy net. O Lover of mankind, glory be to Thee.

This short prayer wonderfully captures the essence, or at lease one of the main ideas, of the present feastday. The idea is that through the descent of the Holy Spirit, a human life can be changed in the most drastic ways. Let’s remember that the disciples of Christ were fisherman that is the most simple of people. The Gospels paint a picture of men who were cowardly, poorly educated, unable to speak well in Hebrew, with a limited understanding of both the Holy Scriptures of the Old Testament and the words of the Saviour. We could also add that, at times, they could not even get along with each other. Despite all these flaws, through the descent of the Holy Spirit, they became fishers of human souls, that is, they brought into the Church a great multitude of men. Up until this day these simple Galilean fishermen are leading many to God, for their words, their teaching about Christ is preserved in the New Testament, which they themselves wrote.

In our time it has become acceptable to quickly judge and to act without mercy towards those people who may have sinned even in the most trivial of things. Today’s most wonderful feast reminds us that Holy Spirit continues to operate in the Holy Church, our parish, our families, and in the lives of each and every person, and that through the power of the Holy Spirit, our sins are forgiven. Therefore, let’s not judge our neighbours because, through repentance, they can also, like the apostles, become Spirit-bearing servants of the Most-Holy Trinity!

priest Alexis