“We can have experience long before we have explanation. In fact, experience comes before understanding. Without the experience first, we have nothing to reflect on but abstractions and theories. All of man’s attempts to describe beauty are nothing compared to actually seeing and smelling a beautiful rose. As Orthodox Christians we believe in the Holy Trinity, i.e., that God is Father, Son and Holy Spirit. But first, man experienced God as Father. He experienced God as Son in Jesus. He experienced God as Holy Spirit on Pentecost. After the experience came the explanation that we call Holy Trinity. If we separate the experience from the explanation we are talking of empty abstractions. “One thing I know,” said the blind man who had been healed by Jesus, “that whereas I was blind, now I see.” The experience changed his life. The experience led to faith — a faith that was unshakable as it was real.”

How do we gain this personal experience of God that we have been talking about? How did the apostles gain it? It came to them on the day of Pentecost. Jesus commanded them “not to depart from Jerusalem, but to wait for the promise of the Father, which he said, you heard from me, for John baptized with water, but before many days you shall be baptized with the Holy Spirit… you shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you shall be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria and to the end of the earth” (Acts 1:4-5, 8).

When the Holy Spirit came on Pentecost, he brought a new and powerful experience of God’s presence and power in their lives. They were never the same again. The experience of God in their lives through the presence of the Holy Spirit was powerful and personal. “I know him in whom I have believed,” said Paul. I know from experience. “I am persuaded that nothing shall separate me from the love of God in Christ Jesus.” “I know that all things work together for good, to make men Christ-like, when the heart loves God.” “I know that if the earthly tent we live in is dissolved, we have a building of God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens…” – “I know.” Here is a faith that was born not of argument or discussion but in the inner experience of living by faith and prayer, obedience and love in the Holy Spirit. It is not enough that the Christian believe that Jesus Christ or the Holy Trinity lives in him, said St. Symeon. That presence must be operative in a way that is consciously experienced.

We should be aware of that divine life moving and operating in us just as a pregnant woman is aware that new life stirs within her. What people want to hear is not God’s lawyers presenting logical arguments for His existence but God’s witnesses sharing from personal experience what God has done for them. And this is what the early Christians were: witnesses, martyres. In the words of E. S. Jones: “God? They knew Him! Miracles? They themselves were miracles! Resurrection? They had gone through it! Heaven? They were living in it! Hell? They had escaped it! Reconciliation? They rejoiced in it! Eternal Life? They possessed it!”

Pentecost was the day on which the apostles experienced God’s powerful presence in their lives through the Holy Spirit. Through prayer every day can be Pentecost. For, it is through prayer that the Holy Spirit comes to us today.

Fr A Coniaris