The Descent of the Holy Spirit

perennial ecclesial place to restore the true, pure and loving communion

with God and with people

Communion for us humans is a fundamental thing. Man cannot live without being in communion. Although seated in Heaven by God and contemplating and naming God's creatures, Adam does not find anyone to match him. That is why the Book of Genesis tells us that God brings heavy sleep over Adam and makes from his side a woman. Adam finally finds someone - Eve - whom he can enjoy and with whom he wants to be in communion. But what does it mean to be in communion? Does any type of relationship mean communion?

Father Stăniloae gives us an answer: “Only the Holy Spirit - he says - makes man capable of communion, either with God or with his fellows, if by communion we mean a connection between person and person devoid of any selfishness and interest, consisting only of love, out of self-forgetfulness. All-natural relationships between people, no matter how necessary for human being and existence, are dominated by selfishness.”[1]

In Father Stăniloae's understanding, not every relationship, connection, with someone is also an act of communion. Communion has some requirements. Communion is a freely consenting bond born of love. We cannot be in communion with God and with our fellow men if we are dominated by selfishness and self-interest. To be in communion involves putting something together willingly or to find some common or complementary values ​​that create and substantiate this unity and communion.

“The very idea of ​​communion, which is specifically Christian - continues Father Stăniloae - was discovered today to all people, that it is the only possible solution for all social suffering. Neither selfish liberalism nor person-canceling collectivism is a happy solution.”[2]

For the great Romanian theologian, communion can only be Christian. A true, pure and loving communion can be authentically present only in Christianity. And this is because the cleansing work of the Holy Spirit fundamentally rebuilds our human ethos in the image and likeness of God which presupposes man's theandric acting with God. Communion is the true middle way that crosses two extremes: the liberal spirit that seeks only its own interest, generating the struggle between people and the collectivist attitude which suffocates the person through the weight of artificial uniformity of the community that does not tolerate any difference. Christianity is the human and societal form of living that combines the existence and individual creativity specific to each person received as a specific, unique and unmistakable gift from God with the need for harmony and symphonic integration with other people in a unity in the image of the divine. This balance brings the joy of fulfillment and a healthy functioning of a society.

“But communion is not a state that can be created with laws, weapons and proud speculation, - says the Romanian theologian. It can be accomplished only by the gift of the Holy Spirit, for the reception of which man can prepare himself only by faith and humility.”[3]

Communion is a freely consented state. Freedom is a main feature of communion. To be realized two conditions are needed: faith and humility. You cannot receive the Holy Spirit if you do not have faith in God because He Himself is a gift of God. By humility one's self-interest and selfishness are diminished or eliminated. I humbly ‘fade away’ in favor of the person or people in front of me.

The Church teaches us that we need both dimensions of man that must not be eliminated: the personal, individual, characteristic of each person, which brings richness, dynamics and newness in the community; the communitarian one that unifies everything in a harmonious, ample ensemble, which transcends the individual self of each one, reflecting the immeasurable richness of the charisms and the fullness of the Holy Spirit.

“Thus, - says Father Stăniloae - the Holy Spirit descended upon the apostles ten days after the Lord ascended to heaven, is His Spirit, the divine Spirit, in all the actuality of His powers, through Him being much nearer, truly nearer Jesus Christ Himself, as during His earthly life. The power of the Holy Spirit, which is inseparable from the presence of Jesus Christ, has kindled and continues to inflame the courage of the Lord's servant to preach Him at all times.”[4]

By the descent of the Holy Spirit upon the Holy Apostles and upon the whole Church, He who is the Spirit of Christ shares with us His saving work for men, making Christ more intimate to us than He was to His disciples during the earthly life. There is a reciprocity and an inseparable connection between Christ and the Holy Spirit. The Son of God incarnate fulfills the redemption of our human nature in His divine Person, and from the grace He has acquired for us, in the Holy Spirit, He shares with us this life-giving and saving work in the Church. Through the work of the Holy Spirit, we gain greater intimacy with God, with the Savior Jesus Christ. The work of Christ is shared with us in the Holy Spirit as the foundation of a renewed life of us in God. The presence of the Holy Spirit presupposes the saving work of Christ, and the presence of Christ presupposes the sanctifying, transfiguring and deifying work of the Holy Spirit.

“The feast of Pentecost - says Father Stăniloae - relates to the remembrance of the Descent of the Holy Spirit upon the earthly world. It is the consummation of Christmas and Easter, of the Nativity and the Resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ. But more than Easter, Pentecost is the celebration of a continuous event: of the permanent presence of the Holy Spirit in the world and of the outpouring of His gifts to all who wish to receive them. Pentecost is the time when our conscience must fully realize the continuing reality of this fact, to be filled of it.”[5]

There is a deep intrinsic connection between the great feasts or events of the Church. The Nativity of the Lord and His Resurrection rejoin in the feast of the Descent of the Holy Spirit. Each of them is the preparatory stages for the next and the last recapitulates them all. They are all directed in the same direction, that of the salvation and deification of man.

If these events are punctual by the time they are marked, they are in themselves a permanent work. The church is experiencing a permanent descent of the Holy Spirit. She lives a permanent outpouring of the Holy Spirit who shares with us the saving grace of Christ. The Church and the believer live fully only when they understand that the work of the Holy Spirit is a permanent presence, working in a theandric way, for the perfection of man by fulfilling the image of God in him.

The Church is a permanent Pentecost, that is, a continuous work of receiving the Holy Spirit, a continuous epiclesis or invocation of the Holy Spirit to work in us and among us a deeper communion.

+ Ioan Casian

Pentecost, 2021

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[1] Dumitru Stăniloae. Culture and spirituality. Complete Works (vol. 2). Ed. Basilica: Bucharest 2012, p 780

[2] Ibidem

[3] Ibidem

[4] Ibidem vol. 3, p 397

[5] Ibidem vol. 1, p 248