In the Gospel reading this morning, Christ very succinctly gives us the Christian perspective on life: “Seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things (everything we need) shall be added unto you” (Matthew 6:33). I hear the question very often: how do we do this?

We’ve been very fortunate this year to have several feastdays and important commemorations on Sunday, and this continues today with the Feast of the Leaders of the Apostles Peter and Paul.

Every year, on the Sunday after Pentecost, we celebrate the Sunday of All Saints. After we remember the descent of the Holy Spirit on the Apostles, we remember those men and women who have shone forth over the history of the Orthodox Christian Church as bearers of the Holy Spirit. Pentecost is where the Incarnation is headed, the movement is always toward the descent of the Holy Spirit—after Christ redeems our fallen nature on the Cross, the Holy Spirit is send to guide us into all truth.

Today we celebrate the Feast of Holy Pentecost, the Feast of the Holy Spirit. I’d like us to think for a few minutes about the Holy Spirit, and not in the form of a theological treatise on the person of the Holy Spirit, or anything like that. But what is the work of the Holy Spirit in the Church, and in our lives as Orthodox Christians, today?

In the Orthodox Christian Church we’re in a period now between the Feast of the Ascension and the Feast of Holy Pentecost. So many of our hymns and readings in this period are looking back on the life and the work of Christ (crowned with His Ascension) and looking forward to the descent of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost.

This past Thursday we celebrated one of the 12 major feasts of our Church—the Ascension of Christ into heaven. Christ’s Ascension to heaven is the final work of His earthly ministry. All that is to be revealed by Christ has now been deposited—His earthly ministry is complete. We say that the revelation has been deposited because everything about Christ wasn’t always completely understood by those around Him. Christ even says that His ministry would only be fully understood after the coming of the Holy Spirit, all of the meanings and realities were to be clarified by the indwelling of the Spirit. But with His Ascension in glory to the right hand of God the Father in Heaven, Christ’s earthly ministry is complete.

In today’s Gospel reading, we have the healing of a man who was blind from birth. This is the only time in the Scriptures where a man is healed who was blind from the time of his birth, and in fact, this type of healing (of infirmities that were not cause by something that happened to a person, but were there from the beginning of that person’s life) was thought to be the most difficult, and it was a sign of the Messiah to be able to heal in this way.