Against individual and community self-delusions with the dawn of the word.
Emerging truths of existence, factual truths, religious truths
World Christianity has approx. In 12% of the hundreds of millions of Orthodox worlds, this Sunday is the holy feast of Pentecost, the liturgical occasion of the filling of the Holy Spirit and the founding of the church. And in many places around the world, on Monday, St. John's night, in the dawning light of the longest night, believers and non-believers light fires and many ask for the warmth and light of the Spirit for their family, their church, their country, the self-blinding world falling into nights.
I also have a lot on my mind these days. For example, in the beginning of the 90s, we arrived in Finland, the center of the evangelical world radio, with our two little daughters on the night with the longest day. When it didn't even want to get dark well after midnight, our little girls suddenly jumped up and said: Daddy-Mommy, let's go play. The yard was full of tires, child-proof swings, and slides that made them very happy. And selfless laughter. All this came to me in my heart, and the Word also came to the horizon of my soul, recalling the future, all-revealing reality of divine brightness:
"He, the Spirit of truth, will guide you into all truth... and will also reveal to you the things to come" (John 16:13).
Serious words. Promising words. Living, unvarnished Words. As when coming up from a dark basement, the sharp light of the bright sun breaks into our field of vision. He, the Spirit, will lead you to the fullness of truth, to the aletheia of pasan, as the Greek text of our New Testament says. Our Lord's words are revealing, because they make it obvious: Without the Holy Spirit, no one can have an idea of the whole truth. About the rooted, deep truths of existence, factual truths and religious truths. Without the Holy Spirit, a lie can be presented as truth and the truth as a lie. With the effective tool system of verbal cosmetics, you can wall off, beautify, hide, encrypt, manipulate, refute, deny for a long time. But the Spirit is already here. The custodian of his truth is the community of those who believe in the Holy Trinity, the Spirit of truth.
Triple reveal
What does the Holy Spirit reveal? The concept of complete truth is so complete that it is almost completely incomprehensible. Our Lord therefore begins to dispense the small pieces of bread of truth with tactful pedagogy. But it is always broken from the whole, whole bread, as in the Lord's Supper. It is through His reality, the completeness of His work of redemption that the truth is brought into the light. And there we see and hear things like this: the Holy Spirit "unveils" (unveils, removes the mask)
"before the world, what is sin, what is righteousness, and what is judgment" (John 16,8).
It is not by chance that Jesus mentions these three. After all, most people cannot and do not want to acknowledge sin, which is present in everyone, as a general human consequence, as a burden of existence. As a negative heritage since the disobedience of Adam and Eve. "The sin is that they do not believe in me" (John 16:9). Just as the original sin was that the first pair of humans did not believe in God, but rather believed the serpent's hissed lie: "You will be like God." Then: "The truth is that I am going to the Father and you will not see me again" (John 16:10). After the childhood period of seeing comes the time and state of adult Christianity, when "blessed are those who do not see but believe" . And finally: "And the judgment is that the prince of this world has been judged" (John 16:11).
No matter how many tricks Satan, the Diabolos, the tearer, the light of the Spirit reveals his true face. All the way through the combinations of Artificial Intelligence (AI) with human assistance to the terrible dangers when he is already appointed as commander-in-chief in some countries in order to simulate possible future victorious wars with him. No, AI is not guilty, it has no original or inherited sin, but humans, programmers, do. And human quality decides what AI will use its 24/7 intelligence. BUT: the prince of this world has been judged - this is a fact reaching to the heavens, which has already become evident with the coming of the Holy Spirit, the Protector, the Paraclete, the Comforter, the Advocate, the Advocate and his nearness that can be called again. A series of religious truths prove that through Him the prince of the world cannot definitively deceive, trick, or lead anyone. The Shepherd is already with His Word and Spirit among us, in front of us, he knows our voice and stays with us with his spiritual protection and reality-seeing light.
There will be a reckoning - the final one
Things are not revealed in the light of St. John's fire at night, nor in the silence of the sometimes dim, sometimes sharp contours of the day-glowing nights. The lamp, the tapestry, the torch is in our hands, even in our souls: God's Word, the Declaration, which dispels all earthly darkness. What every human being needs. In this sense, Pentecost is always the dawn light of great revelations - in us through faith, around us on a festive and shining night. And in the church, in the congregation, in the world community of believers, no matter how much communal or individual sin temporarily falls on it, the light of heaven breaks through all darkness. All slander. All generalizations that are sometimes made against the church or its followers and priests without the need for complete truth.
The church is not only a human organization, organism, institution, but much more: the body of the living Jesus Christ (soma tou Christou - Ephesians 1:23). When Count NL von Zinzendorf, the founder of the great spiritual organization, the sister congregation of Herrnhut, transposed his earthly goods and wealth into a congregation and a holy community, in 1725 he put it this way:
"He is our head, we are his members, He is the light, our colors; We are servants, he is the master, He is ours, we are his... Raise us to unity, as you are one with your Father, Until all hearts under the sky will finally be one in you; While the pure light of your Holy Spirit will be our only light and sun".
Yes, this is what we are talking about on this feast of Pentecost, thirsty for light, and on the night of St. John, and in the earthly years of our human existence: May the Holy Spirit of God be our pure light and our sun... And then we realize that without Christ we cannot do anything, that until we meet Him, that our name is that you are alive, but we are dead. We may think we are rich, but we are only beggars. No matter how much people trust in stolen goods, one day everything comes crashing down on them. And then the eternal St. John's night will come, when God will hold everyone accountable for everything they have done or failed to do. Because there will be accountability. He is not a man to deceive. And in the final and shadowless light, we have only one protection left: Jesus, who appeared before Peter, James and John, and "his face shone like the sun, and his clothes shone white like the light" (Matthew 17:2).
On this St. John's night - as I have for many years - I will stop in my imagination and soul on that mountain. The shining face of Jesus and his snow-white clothes shine through the twilight. And like the liberated laughter of my children on that night in Finland, joy fills my heart: I feel the presence of my Patron, the eternal Paraclete. In his pneumatic school, he also teaches me true knowledge, knowledge of God, self-knowledge, knowledge of existence, knowledge of brotherhood. For the most sacred curriculum. On what is sin, truth, judgment. And purification, faith and grace. Blessed St. John's night, Christ-seeing days to everyone who longs for the full truth!
dr. Lajos Békefy
Featured Image: Night of Sorcery and Charm (Photo: Femcafe)
