The Day of the Holy Spirit

Fr. Alexander Men (This year we celebrate the feast of Ascension on Thursday, June 2, and the feast Pentecost, the giving of the Holy Spirit and Birthday of the Church, on Sunday June 12.  In anticipation of the latter we offer the following sermon by Fr. Alexander Men.)

When the temple guard, the soldiers who used to keep order in the House of God, were sent by the temple authorities to seize the Lord, they returned without success, as they had not been able to lay hands on Him. When sternly asked: "Why did you not bring him back with you?" -- they replied, "No one ever spoke like this man." There was power in the words of Christ the Savior.  But that power was not there in the words of His disciples, because the force that spoke through Him was divine, while human weakness alone spoke through them. Even when the disciples had seen the Resurrected One with their own eyes, they hid in fear, locking their doors.  Despite everything, they did not believe. They doubted, even when they saw Him on the mountain in Galilee, as the Evangelist Matthew tells us. Some worshipped Him, but others doubted, believing it to be a ghost.

A few weeks later, on the feast of Pentecost, everything changed.  (Just over a month) had passed since the Lord had died at the place of the skull, in full view of everyone, and then risen again, showing Himself to be faithful and true. Suddenly there was a great noise of troubled voices --and Christ's disciples came out of the house and bore witness to the Risen Christ in front of a whole crowd of people. Everything in them changed:  their fear, timidity and confused speech had gone, as if they had never existed.  They spoke so that everyone could understand, even visitors from distant lands who did not know the language well. Their words were now reaching everyone. Why? What was happening?  They were able to bear witness because the divine power of the Lord had descended on them -- not in a human way, not through flesh and blood, but directly through the Holy Spirit; so they could openly say, "This Jesus, God has raised from the dead, whereof we are all witnesses."

This is an important saying, which we should take to our hearts, like those witnesses. Every Christian is a witness for God.  Think for a moment what a witness is in our ordinary life.  In court, a witness must describe truthfully what he has seen and heard and tell what he really knows honestly and truly. There are false witnesses and slanderers, but a true witness speaks only the truth -- and not just the truth, but a truth that he knows well personally. So the power of Christian witness lies in what we say about the Lord whom we know, about the grace we have experienced, the blessing that is ours and the faith which is in our hearts. If we do not have that Spirit, that power, then we are bad disciples.

The Apostles said:  "He has been raised by God and we are the witnesses thereof" -- because they knew it, they had seen it with their own eyes and had experienced it.  But what about us?  When we pray to the Lord after taking Holy Communion, do we not touch Him?  All true faith is contact with the Lord, but once there has been living contact with God, with the Risen Christ who has saved us, it means we can honestly and courageously witness to the world about our hope, our consolation and our joy.

Our joy is the Lord, who loves the world, trying to save each man and seeking every soul that has erred.  We do not say this just because of reports by others. We ourselves must be witnesses of His Spirit and His power. Let us pray today for the most important thing of all -- that the Spirit of the Lord, which is promised to us, to each one of us, should come to us and touch our hearts.  Then we shall say, not in vain, but out of the experience of our hearts, that we know our Lord and have known the touch of the Spirit of Christ and of God.  Then we shall have the right to say, "Yes, we know Him, whom we have loved, who has loved us, saved us and given us the gift of eternal life."  To Him we all cry, "King of Heaven, Comforter, Spirit of Truth, come and make your home in us."

Good Friday

Good Friday

(Silence in the Face of Injustice)

Fr. Alexander Men

(This year Good Friday, Holy Saturday and Pascha will be celebrated respectively on April 22, 23, and 24.  In anticipation we offer the following sermon by Fr. Alexander Men.  According to one source:  "Father Alexander Men (1935-1990) was a great leader, and one may say architect, of religious renewal in Russia at the end of the Soviet period. He was a pastor, who found the time to write a great number of books including a seven volume study of world religions, ranging in style from the academic to the popular. He lectured widely, at the end gaining access to radio and television and becoming a nationally known figure...He was assassinated in 1990 but through his writings and through his memory and his spiritual heritage he still speaks and it may be is an increasing presence in the world as his work becomes better known.")

The last Gospel of Christ -- St. John's Gospel -- describes the Lord's trial, His sufferings, death and burial.  Throughout three short years the Lord had preached every day.  As St. Mark tells us, sometimes He and His disciples didn't even have bread to eat.  He spoke and did a great deal.  John the Evangelist says that if all the things He said and did were to be written down, the world itself could not contain the books that would be written.

However, when He stood before unjust judges, Christ was silent.  This is mentioned by all the evangelists.  He answered the high priest only once and then was silent.  When He was ridiculed, beaten and mocked, He was silent.  When He was brought before Pilate, He also answered him briefly and then fell silent.  What did this mean?  Why was He, who formerly inspired people with faith and hope now keeping silent?

It was because He had already said all He had to say and also because His unjust judges would have remained deaf to His words and His defense. That was the reason for His silence.  Only once during the trial, in answer to the question, "Art thou the Christ, the Son of the Blessed?" did He reply, "I am," adding "and you shall see the Son of Man coming in glory, in the clouds of heaven."  He said this and once more fell silent.  Then, when He was dying, those standing around the Cross heard only a few words from Him.  He suffered and died in silence.  How many bitter words He could have found for the ungrateful human race.  But He was silent, for He was the God-Man, through whom the Lord revealed Himself to us.  He had said everything, taught everything;  He had opened the doors, and thereafter He was silent.  He submitted to insults, ingratitude, flogging and death.

Is it not the same in our lives?  We sometimes feel that the Lord is silent, that He does not respond to our sufferings and sadness, to our sorrowful prayers.  In fact, however, He is listening.  He knows and feels for us, just as He did then, at the time when He Himself was suffering.  He suffered when He stood before me blinded by envy, hatred and malice, yet was silent because His heart was moved even for them:  for their degradation, their sins and blindness.  In the same way our Lord suffers for us, seemingly without speaking.  We appeal to Him, but we must not think that His divine silence signifies indifference, that He "doesn't hear," as we say.  He cannot fail to hear.  It is simply that, as before, He has told us everything.  He has said more to us than the world or our hearts could contain.  He has shown us the read to life and now He is silently awaiting a movement of the heart or will in each one of us.

In the same way that He broke His silence then, and spoke of the Son of Man coming to judge the living and the dead, so now the Lord tells us that He is longsuffering.  He silently endures our sinfulness, our meanness, our lack of faith -- all our unworthiness -- but not for ever.  A time will come when all will be weighed by the justice of God.  For us, the silence of the Cross is both a reproach and a call to a real Christian life  Most important of all for us is the fact that He acknowledges us, for we know that the One who was silent on the Cross, who is silent in heaven, is also the One who is our Savior, who has not forgotten or left us.  He is our only hope.  Amen.