Fr. Alexander Schmemann: 'Pentecost, the Feast of the Church'

Dear Parish Faithful,

An excellent article by Fr. Schmemann...

Pentecost, the Feast of the Church

by Protopresbyter Alexander Schmemann (+)
St. Vladimir’s Seminary Quarterly, Spring & Summer 1953, Nos. 3, 4, pp 38–42
Synaxis Blog, June 5, 2017:

This past Sunday, we Orthodox Christians heard sermons in our parishes about the meaning of Pentecost, which celebrates the Descent of the Holy Spirit upon the Apostles of our Lord Jesus Christ, and the abiding presence of the Spirit in the Church throughout the ages.

In this essay, Father Alexander (Dean of St. Vladimir’s 1962–1983) also begins by speaking about major themes that characterize this great feast: the presence and actions of the Spirit in the Church, the revelation of the Holy Trinity, and the purification of each person’s soul in the body of Christ.

However, one of the most interesting portions of Father Alexander’s essay, published in 1953, is his explanation of the “Kneeling Prayers,” that mark the Vespers services following the Divine Liturgy for the feast, and that section is reprinted here.

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The peculiar characteristic of the Liturgy on the day of Pentecost is that it is immediately followed by a Vesper service that is commonly called “kneeling prayers.” This Vesper service signifies the transition from the first major theme—the joy of the coming of the Spirit—to the second—the prayer for the abiding of the Spirit in us, for His help in our earthly life.

Litany supplications are added: “For the people present who are awaiting the Grace of the Holy Spirit…that the Lord may strengthen us into the attainment of a good and acceptable end… For those who are in need of help.”  

And in the sticheras for “Lord I have cried unto Thee” (which repeat the chvalitny of the Matins service) and in the great prokeimenon, “Who is a great God like our God?,” the fullness of joy comes once more.

But immediately after the prokeimenon, the people are asked to kneel down. This first bending of the knees after Easter signifies the conclusion of the Triodion—the fact that the Church now enters the “narrow path” of struggling, and of the difficult daily acquisitions of the Holy Spirit.

Therefore, in this first prayer, we bring to God our repentance and augmented prayers for forgiveness of sins—the first condition for entering into the kingdom, into the perfect joy. In the second prayer, we pray to the Holy Spirit for help, that He would teach us to pray and to follow the true path, that He would enlighten us in the dark and difficult night of our life. Finally, in the third prayer, we remember our fathers and brethren who have departed, who have finished their earthly journey, but who are united with us in the eternal love of the Church.

To every one of these prayers the usual evening prayers are added. So again begins the night of the history of the world, in which the Church has to wander.

In this “night,” the enemies’ tricks are awaiting us: temptations, the whole burden of sin and our feebleness. The joy of Easter has been completed, and we again have to wait for the dawn of the eternal day of Christ’s kingdom. Therefore we are praying on our knees for help and protection, so that we may pass this night and attain to the morning.

However, as we know our weakness, we also know the joy of the Spirit who has come: we know that we have not remained orphans. The benediction at the end of the Vespers service bears His testimony to it: 

“He emptied Himself… came down on earth to take upon Himself our human nature wholly and to deify it… He sent down His Spirit upon His Holy Apostles, who were illumined by the Spirit and through whom the whole world was illumined.”

At the Compline service of the same day a special canon to the Holy Spirit is sung, where we experience once more the feast of His coming and His abiding in the Church. It is significant that all the irmois of this canon, except the first, are taken from the canon of the Nativity! The coming of the Spirit fulfills that which began when the Word became flesh:

“Christ was born, now the Holy Spirit descends as if returning Christ to us, who ‘is and shall be’ in the Church with us forever.”

It would be impossible to enumerate all the details of the services commemorating the Feast of Pentecost, which blend into one perfect harmony, making us truly feel the breathing of the Holy Spirit. This harmony reveals itself fully only in the Liturgy, only in the common act of worship. As we have said, the Feast of Pentecost concludes the Triodion, and we enter the “ordinary season” of the year. However, there are no ordinary days for the Church. Every week has its cycle, which is concluded with its own small Easter—“Sunday.”

The Church is always living a divine-human life. Heaven and earth, promise and fulfillment are mysteriously united in Her. On the Feast of Pentecost, we adorn our churches with flowers and green branches, for the Church is truly an evergreen tree. Therefore on the First Sunday after Pentecost, we celebrate the memory of all the saints, whose holiness is the glory of the Church and a testimony to the Holy Spirit, who is ever present in Her.

The life of the Church is an eternal Pentecost, the eternal coming of the Holy Spirit, and so, “whosoever thirsteth, let him come and drink” (John 7:37).

Immerse Yourself in the Mystery of Pentecost

Dear Parish Faithful,

We have an extensive amount of literature on Pentecost on our Pentecost resource page from the parish website. You will find articles by Frs. Schmemann and Hopko there, together with some classic patristic texts. As we journey through the Week of Pentecost, you may want to avail yourself of some of this excellent material.

Here are two characteristic excerpts from a famous homily by St. Gregory Palamas (+1359). St. Gregory, of course, as one of the great Church Fathers, was  a profound theologian, a brilliant homilist and a wonderful pastor:

"Now, through the Holy Spirit sent by Him to His disciples, we see how far Christ ascended and to what dignity He carried up the nature He assumed from us. Clearly He went up as high as the place from which the Spirit sent by Him descended.... It follows that at His ascension Christ went up to the Father on high, as far as His Fatherly bosom, from which came the Spirit.

"The Holy Spirit is not just sent, but Himself sends the Son, who is sent by the Father. He is therefore shown to be the same as the Father and the Son by nature, power, operation and honor. By the good pleasure of the Father and the cooperation of the Holy Spirit, the only-begotten Son of God, on account of the boundless ocean of divine love for mankind, bowed down the heavens and came down (Ps. 18:9). He appeared on earth after our fashion, lived among us, and did and taught great, wonderful and sublime things truly worthy of God, which led those who obeyed Him towards deification and salvation."

The Divinity of the Holy Spirit

In the excerpt above from St. Gregory, it is clear that we teach that the Holy Spirit is co-eternal, co-enthroned and co-glorified with the Father and the Son. We confess this belief every time we recite the Nicene Creed.

But did you know that the full title of the Creed is the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed? That is because our current Creed was formulated at the First and Second Ecumenical Councils - Nicea in 325 and Constantinople in 381. But to spare us from saying the full title of Nicene-Constantinopolitan every time we refer to the Creed, it has been shortened to the Nicene Creed. 

After the First Council held in Nicea, the Creed simply stated that "we believe in the Holy Spirit" with nothing further being stated about that belief. When the divinity of the Holy Spirit was challenged by false teachers following the Council, the Second Council in Constantinople was called in the year 381 in order to further formulate the Church's belief in the divinity of the  Holy Spirit. Thus, the additional declaration: 

"And [we believe] in the Spirit, the Lord, the Giver of Life, who proceeds from the Father; who with the Father and the Son together is worshipped and glorified; who spoke by the prophets."

This is the basis of our belief in the Holy Trinity. By the way, it was at this Second Council that additional and essential beliefs of the Church were formulated in creedal form:

"In One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church. I acknowledge one baptism for the remission of sins. I look for the resurrection of the dead, and the life in the world to come. Amen."

The Vespers of Pentecost was a wonderful example of how we are taught and inspired by the hymnography of the Church. Our hymns often appeal to our intellect and to our hearts simultaneously. Thus, in the second sticheron of the Vespers of Pentecost, we hear the "theological poetry" of our sacred hymnography:

The Holy Spirit was, is, and and ever shall be
Without beginning, without an end,
Forever united and numbered with the
   Father and the Son.
He is Life, and life-creating,
The Light, and the Giver of Light,
Good in Himself, the Fountain of
   goodness,
Through whom the Father is known
   and the Son glorified.
All acknowledge one Power, one Order,
One worship of the Holy Trinity.

The Trisagion Prayers

In our liturgical and personal prayers, we almost invariably begin with the so-called Trisagion Prayers, meaning, more-or-less literally: "The Thrice-holy Prayers." (The word hagios in Gk. means "holy"). This is because we repeat three times:  "Holy God,  Holy Mighty, Holy Immortal, have mercy on us!"

The basis of praising God three times in this manner is found in the Book of Isaiah, in that heavenly vision granted the prophet, when he beheld God enthroned on high being glorified by the angels as:  Holy! Holy! Holy!  And, of course, we glorify God in the Liturgy with that identical Holy! Holy! Holy!  during the Anaphora. In the Latin tradition, this is called the Sanctus. 

Based on our belief in the Holy Trinity, we believe that with this hymn we are praising the The Three Persons of the Holy Trinity. Which means that in our personal prayer, whenever we use the Trisagion on a daily basis(!), we are glorifying the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit. 

In the Vespers of Pentecost, this is beautifully "spelled out" for us, in one of the Apostikha hymns. In the half of the hymn that begins: "Let us worship the Tri-Personal Godhead..." we further sing:

In worshipping Him, let us all say:
Holy God, who made all things
   through the Son,
With the cooperation of the Spirit.
Holy Mighty: through whom we know
   the Father,
Through whom the Holy Spirit came
   into the world!
Holy Immortal: the comforting Spirit,
Proceeding from the Father and resting
   in the Son.
O Holy Trinity: glory to Thee!

As we continue in our use of the Trisagion Prayers this is further reinforced when we pray: 

O most Holy Trinity: have mercy on us!
O Lord (the Father): cleanse us from our sins.
O Master (the Son): pardon our transgressions.
O Holy One (the Holy Spirit): visit and heal our infirmities, for Thy name's sake.

To make all of this abundantly clear to us, we then pray:  "Glory to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit," before saying the Lord's Prayer. We thus reinforce our commitment to believing in the Holy Trinity in our daily prayer life, both liturgical and personal. 

We are "monotheists" of a particular kind, meaning that we are "trinitarian monotheists." Pentecost is also called the Feast of the Holy Trinity, for in a definitive manner, God has revealed His trinitarian nature to us in the descent of the Holy Spirit, "on the last day of the Feast, the great day ..." (JN. 7:37)

O most Holy Trinity, glory to Thee!

'Hastening to be at Pentecost!'

Dear Parish Faithful & Friends in Christ,

Let Us Recover the Greatness of the Feast of Pentecost

At last Sunday's liturgy, we heard from the ACTS OF THE APOSTLES the following passage concerning the Apostle Paul: "For Paul had decided to sail past Ephesus, so that he might not have to spend time in Asia; for he was hastening to be at Jerusalem, if possible, on the day of Pentecost" (20:16).

For the Apostle Paul, that would mean a very challenging journey by sea, which always included the threat of storms, shipwreck and/or attack by pirates. But St. Paul was determined to celebrate the great feast of Pentecost with his brothers and sisters "in Christ" in Jerusalem - the home and center of the newly-established Christian Church, now making its impact felt in the Graeco-Roman world of the Mediterranean Sea. 

Pascha and Pentecost were the two major feasts of the apostolic Church. They were powerful communal commemorations and celebrations of the decisive acts that established the Church in the world once and for all: the Resurrection of Christ from the dead, and the descent of the Holy Spirit into the world.

It would be wonderful and deeply encouraging if we could match the zeal of the Apostle Paul for eagerly anticipating this commemoration and making it as certain as possible that we will also gather together with our brothers and sisters "in Christ" for the Feast of Pentecost. Liturgically, that would mean Great Vespers on Saturday evening and the Divine Liturgy on Sunday morning. 

In our consciousness, we have lost the profound connection between Pascha and Pentecost. 

Pascha, of course, is huge and greatly anticipated; but Pentecost is not. It is treated as a "normal" Sunday, which means most parishioners will be in church (thank God Pentecost is on a Sunday), unless some other "pressing concern(?)" keeps them away without, perhaps, any sense of loss. But the role of Pentecost in the economy of our salvation very much needs to be recovered. Pascha does not simply dissolve into the cares and concerns of our daily lives. It does not just disappear once we no longer sing "Christ is Risen!" Rather, Pascha is completed and fulfilled in the twin Feasts of Ascension and Pentecost.

The descent of the Holy Spirit upon the apostles is the goal of the paschal mystery of the death, resurrection, ascent and glorification of Christ. We actualize the coming of the Holy Spirit through our liturgical commemoration on an annual basis. 

The Holy Spirit is the energy of the Church. It is the presence of the Holy Spirit in the Church that makes the Church so unique and unlike any other worldly institution. (The Orthodox Church is the "Pentecostal Church"). This is the Holy Spirit with which we were chrismated after our baptism into the Death and Resurrection of Christ. We seek the renewal of the Holy Spirit in our lives on the Day of Pentecost. Here is also the basis of "parish renewal." We pray to God for that personal and communal renewal each year in the special Kneeling Prayers of the Vespers of Pentecost that we serve immediately following the Liturgy. This is all a great blessing.

I encourage everyone to recover the greatness of the Feast of Pentecost. We have the luxury of making a relatively short trip in the comfort of our cars and therefore do not have to face the "inconveniences" that St. Paul did. Try and include the full celebration by coming to Great Vespers on Saturday evening. 

Since Great Lent is over and parishioners are no longer coming to Confession, Great Vespers is now less-well attended. This is an unfortunate annual pattern (lasting throughout the summer) that has no real justification. This worn-out cycle can be broken but it will take some effort and commitment to the Church's liturgical cycle on the part of everyone. Pentecost is the time and place to begin.

Parents, do not relax your efforts of bringing your children to church because Church School is now over. Pentecost is not the time for an "off Sunday." It is the time to be in church together with the entire "parish family." Speak to your children about Pentecost and prepare them for the Vespers and Kneeling Prayers that will follow the Liturgy.

The liturgical schedule for the Great Feast of Pentecost:

• Great Vespers with the Blessing of the Loaves and Anointment with Oil - Saturday at 6:00 p.m.
• Hours of Pentecost - Sunday at 9:10 a.m.
• Divine Liturgy - Sunday at 9:30 a.m.
• Vespers with Kneeling Prayers - Sunday, immediately following the Liturgy

Let us prepare for Feast as did the holy Apostle Paul - with zeal and the love of God!

The Fathers of the First Council and the 'Robe of Truth'

Dear Parish Faithful,

"Let us look at the very tradition, teaching, and faith of the Catholic Church from the very beginning, which the Lord gave, the Apostles preached, and the Fathers preserved. Upon this the Church is founded."  ~ St. Athanasius the Great (+373)

Last Sunday, we found ourselves in between the two great Feasts of Ascension and Pentecost.  However, on that Seventh Sunday of Pascha, we also commemorated the Fathers of the First Ecumenical Council, held in Nicea in 325 A.D.  It is virtually impossible to over-exaggerate the importance of this Council in the life of the Church.

The Council had not only to reject the Arian heresy that claimed that the Son of God is a "creature" and thus subordinate  in essence to God the Father; but the Council had to find the right terminology to demonstrate that the Faith of the Church from the beginning believed and claimed that Jesus Christ is the eternal Son of God equal in essence to God the Father (as is the Holy Spirit). Arianism and Orthodox Christianity are essentially two different faiths which is why the Church was at a crossroads in the fourth century: either become just one more "synthetic/syncretistic religion" of the ancient world, or proclaim the uniqueness of Christ as the eternal Son of God and the Savior of the world. 

The dramatic story of the Council of Nicea has been told and retold throughout the centuries.  Not wanting to repeat that story here, I will simply include a link to a good summary found on the OCA website.

Yet, I would like to add a few words about the manner in which we honor the great Fathers of the Church in our liturgical tradition.  To do so, I would like to bring to mind the Kontakion of the Fathers that we sang on Sunday:

The apostles' preaching and the fathers' doctrines
have established the one faith for the Church. Adorned
with the robe of truth, woven from heavenly theology;
great is the mystery of piety which it defines and glorifies.

This kontakion is very close in meaning to what we read from St. Athanasius the Great (+373) - one of the leading lights of Nicene Orthodoxy - as quoted above.  There is a direct continuity between what the Apostles "preached" and what the Fathers later formulated as doctrines.

This continuity is not simply chronological - it is theological. It was the same Gospel - the same "robe of truth" - without illegitimate subtractions or additions. The Fathers did not change the content of the Faith that they were expressing through their doctrine. They were developing and expanding upon the apostolic preaching for their own times. But the content of the "one faith for the Church" remained identical with itself in this ongoing transmission of the Tradition. (Tradition means that which is "handed down" or "handed over").

The Nicene Creed does not add anything new to what the apostles preached. It rather witnesses to what they preached so as to preserve the Truth in the face of its possible distortion. To do so they had to come up with new formulations of that unchanging Truth. Thus, their bold introduction of the term homoousios to describe how the Son is "consubstantial" with the Father was not something innovative or "creative." It was a necessary development to again preserve that which was proclaimed from the beginning: God became incarnate in order to save us for only God can save.

In one of his classic articles "The Authority of the Ancient Councils," Fr. George Florovsky brilliantly described the relationship between the apostles and fathers and their respective roles in transmitting the Tradition:

Apostles and Fathers - these  two terms were generally and commonly coupled together in the argument from Tradition, as it was used in the Third and Fourth centuries. It was this double reference, both to the origin and to the unfailing and continuous preservation, that warranted the authenticity of belief. 

On the other hand, Scripture was formally acknowledged and recognized as the ground and foundation of faith, as the Word of God and the Writ of the Spirit. Yet, there was still the problem of right and adequate interpretation. Scripture and the Fathers were usually quoted together, that is, kerygma (proclamation) and exegesis (interpretation). 

This is a "heavenly theology" because its ultimate Source is Christ Himself, Who reveals the will of the Father for the world and its salvation. And this is that "mystery of piety which it defines and glorifies," precisely as the apostles preached:

Great indeed is the mystery of our religion:
  He was manifested in the flesh,
vindicated in the Spirit, seen by angels,
  preached among the nations,
believed on in the world, taken up in glory.  (I TIM. 3:16)

We venerate and honor the Fathers within the ongoing life of the Church.  To again turn to the same article of Fr. George Florovsky, he further writes:

"Fathers" were those who transmitted and propagated the right doctrine, the teaching of the Apostles, who were guides and masters of Christian instruction and catechesis... They were spokesmen for the Church, expositors of her faith, keepers of her Tradition, witnesses of truth and faith.  And in that was their "authority" grounded.

Most glorious art Thou, O Christ our God!
Thou hast established the Holy Fathers as
lights on the earth! Through them Thou hast
guided us to the true faith! O greatly
Compassionate One, glory to Thee!
(Troparion of the Holy Fathers)

"I ascend unto My father, and your Father...."

Dear Parish Faithful & Friends in Christ,

According to the mind of the Church, the Risen Lord is also the Ascended Lord.  In the words of Father Georges Florovsky, “In the Ascension resides the meaning and the fullness of Christ’s Resurrection.”  Though the visible presence of the Risen Lord ended 40 days after His Resurrection, that did not mean that His actual presence was withdrawn.  Christ solemnly taught His disciples – and us through them – “Behold, I am with you always, to the close of the age” [Matthew 28:20].

The risen, ascended and glorified Lord is the Head of His body, the Church.  The Lord remains present in the Mysteries/Sacraments of the Church.  This reinforces our need to participate in the sacramental life of the Church, especially the Eucharist, through which we receive the deified flesh and blood of the Son of God “unto life everlasting.”

Christ ascended to be seated at “the right hand of the Father” in glory, thus lifting up the human nature He assumed in the Incarnation into the very inner life of God.  Once the Son of God became the Son of Man, taking our human nature through suffering and death - "the passover" - and then rising from the dead and ascending to heaven, at no point in this paschal mystery did He discard or leave His human nature behind. For all eternity, Christ is Theanthropos - God and man.  The deified humanity of the Lord is the sign of our future destiny “in Christ.”  For this reason, the Apostle Paul could write, “your life is hidden with Christ in God” [Colossians 3:3].

The words of the “two men … in white robes” (clearly angels) who stood by the disciples as they gazed at Christ being “lifted up” as recorded by Saint Luke in Acts 1:11, point toward something very clear and essential for us to grasp as members of the Church who continue to exist within the historical time of the world:

“Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking into heaven?  This Jesus, Who was taken up from you into heaven, will come in the same way as you saw Him go into heaven.”  

The disciples will remain in the world, and must fulfill their vocation as the chosen apostles who will proclaim the Word of God to the world of the crucified and risen Messiah, Jesus of Nazareth.  They cannot spend their time gazing into heaven awaiting the return of the Lord.  That hour has not been revealed: “It is not for you to know times or seasons that the Father has fixed by His own authority” [1:7]. 

The “work” of the Church is the task set before them, and they must do this until their very last breath.  They will carry out this work once they receive the power of the Holy Spirit -- the “promise of my Father” -- as Christ said to them in Luke 24:49.

Whatever our vocation may be, we too witness to Christ and the work of the Church as we await the fullness of God’s Kingdom according to the times or seasons of the Father. If we believe in the resurrected and ascended Lord, then we are "witnesses" of Him and to Him to the world. That witness may express itself in words or deeds - or both.

Of course, we need to follow the teaching of the Apostle Paul who wrote: "Set your minds on things above, not on things that are on earth" [Colossians 3:2). Yet, keeping our "minds on things above" has nothing to do with escaping into a dream-like fantasy world or the abandonment of earthly responsibilities under the pretext of a vague mystical inclination or "pseudo-piety." It is about an awareness that the Kingdom of God is "in our midst" and that our earthly life is a preparation for the life to come, a life we are yearning for with our whole heart.

It is that awareness that makes all of our earthly struggles and accomplishments meaningful. And when the Apostle Paul teaches us not to set our minds "on things that are on earth," he does not mean that there is nothing of value that is on earth. He is referring to the "worldiness" of questionable - or clearly sinful - pursuits that draw our minds away inexorably from "things above." We are prone to forget about heaven when we concentrate solely on the earth.

For this reason alone it is so important to develop a life of prayer, a time when we can "set our minds on things above," strengthening us for the struggles of our daily life, and keeping the Person of Christ ever before our inward gaze.

In our daily Prayer Rule we continue to refrain from using “O Heavenly King” until the Day of Pentecost.  We no longer sing the Paschal troparion, “Christ is risen from the dead,” but replace it from Ascension to Pentecost with the troparion of the Ascension: 

Thou hast ascended in glory, O Christ our God,

granting joy to Thy disciples by the promise of the Holy Spirit.

Through the Blessing they were assured

that Thou art the Son of God, the Redeemer of the world!

"When Christ who is our life appears, then you also will appear with him in glory" [Colossians 3:4]