On the Sunday of Pentecost, the year of the Lord 2022, the Holy Trinity Parish in Troy celebrated its patronal feast. As in every year, on this occasion, His Eminence Metropolitan Nicolae was present among the faithful of our community. The feast began with Vespers being celebrated by HE Nicolae. At the end of the service, the Metropolitan spoke about the light brought by the Holy Spirit into the world, about the change of the world through the presence of the Holy Spirit, but also about the need for Christians to walk in this light as to come to know Christ.
On Sunday, at the Feast of the Descent of the Holy Spirit, His Eminence Metropolitan Nicolae celebrated the Hierarchical Divine Liturgy assisted by V. Rev. Fr. Călin Barbolovici, Parish Priest. The Divine Liturgy was also attended by His Eminence Metropolitan Nicholas of the Greek Orthodox Metropolis of Detroit. In the sermon, His Eminence Nicolae explained the event and the fruits of the Holy Spirit’s descent upon the apostles and disciples of the Lord, the preaching of St. Peter and its fruits, as well as the ways in which the work of the Holy Spirit is accomplished in the Church through the Holy Mysteries, with the participation and the presence of the faithful:
„This is the miracle that happened at Pentecost: these ignorant, uneducated, fearful men who left Christ during the most terrible moments of life are now being strengthened by the Holy Spirit to become Apostles. Now they have been enlightened and given power from above to confess Christ as Lord and Messiah, now they become the Apostles of Christ who will go out into all the world to preach the Gospel of the Resurrection to each one in his own language, as happened at Pentecost. Now the Church is being established by the descent of the Spirit, by our call to enter this mystery which is revealed to us in several stages.
St. Peter tells them: Repent, be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. Repentance means turning to God, showing that you want salvation. God does not save us by force, we must show that we desire it, we must turn toward Him, be baptized, and we will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.
Through these steps, we are joined the Church, each of us. We each confess that we want to draw closer to God, to repent, and to confess our faith. After Baptism follows the Sacrament of Chrismation when we receive the gift of the Holy Spirit, we are sealed as Christ was anointed, we all become Christians, we all receive the chance to be in the Church with Christ and to journey toward salvation.
What happened at Pentecost happens at every baptism and at every Divine Liturgy, seeing that we ask for the Holy Spirit to be sent and say, ‘Over us and over these gifts.’ The bread and wine represent us and this creation that we bring to Christ; we ask for the sending of the Spirit so that they become the Body and Blood of Christ of which we later partake, and, by communing, we become members of the Body of Christ, members of the Church. After we have partaken, as we carry Christ in our body, we understand what it means to be a member of the Body of Christ. Through this witness of the Church’s being, we know that we are on the path to our salvation, on the path to eternity.”
The celebration ended with the customary fraternal agape, attended by all that were in attendance.
V. Rev. Fr. Călin Barbolovici
