“It is to your advantage that I go away, for if I do not go away, the Advocate will not come
to you; but if I go, I will send Him to you….I still have many things to say to you, but you
cannot bear them now. When the Spirit of truth comes, He will guide you into all the truth”
(John 16:7,12)
Something is new under the sun. A great mystery is revealed—the birth of the Church with the coming of the Holy Spirit. Nothing is accidental to those who live by the light of Christ, and it is not by accident that Pentecost is celebrated by the Church near the time of graduation from schools and universities in our secular society. Pentecost is when the disciples of the Lord come of age.
The Church year beginning in September with the Feast of The Birth of the Holy Mother of God, proceeding through her development and motherhood to the Birth of our Lord, God and Savior, Jesus Christ, continuing through His Baptism, ministry, crucifixion in Jerusalem, His rising from the dead in glory, setting free those held captive in Hades, followed by His glorious Ascension to the place where He belongs, seated at the right hand of the heavenly Father—all of that has been witnessed by or told to His disciples. They assimilated as best they were able, understanding as far as they were capable of comprehending the incomprehensible mystery of God’s love poured out upon them and the cosmos—until suddenly fifty days following the Ultimate Passover, the Feast of Feasts, the new and glorious Pascha, the Holy Spirit comes upon the gathered disciples and fills them with grace, enabling them to become no longer just disciples, which means disciplined students, but apostles. Those who were to be sent to preach the good news of salvation to all mankind. We grow and develop in the Holy Spirit, until the Spirit enters us and prays for us, as St. Paul says, with unspoken words.
The Lord Almighty created the human being in His own image, and He made us in order that we could develop and be His friends. It is His wish that we have a part in the divine life—but it took a very long time for that to come about.
Everybody knows the famous fairy tale of Pinocchio. Let me remind you that it’s about a lonely Italian woodcarver, Mr. Gepetto, who wanted to have someone to share his life, to live in his humble hut, to have somebody he could talk to who would fill up his loneliness. It’s not as far fetched as it seems. Children have teddy bears and doll babies that they often take well into adulthood. And of course if it weren’t for pets, the lives of thousands, maybe millions of people would be empty. You know the rest. Pinocchio was not a real boy; he could not possibly be a real boy, and it wasn’t only because he was made of wood. He had no conscience, no soul, and no awareness of love. So it was that he was very cruel and selfish, acting like a spoiled brat. The Disney version softens the original, because Pinocchio actually smashed the cricket, Jiminy Cricket, his conscience, against the fireplace. I’ll spare you the details, which you probably know better than I: How Gepetto dresses the wooden puppet, even sends him off to school where on the way he succumbs to the temptation set before him by the bad boys, he ends up in the stomach of Monstro the whale, and how the woodcarver sets out in search of him, finding him dead, but in the end Pinocchio is given a new life because of the love of his father Gepetto, and he becomes a real boy. Excuse me this simple story, but it is a parable of God’s great love for us, and the way our heavenly Father goes out in search of us, we being dead in our sins, but given a new life in the Son of God Jesus Christ, and by the Holy Spirit offered eternal life in Communion with the Holy Trinity.