The Spirit Blazes in the Body of the Son

a Pentecost anthology

Sadao Watanabe Pentecost 1965

“Christ's humanity is the scene of an unending Pentecost.”
—Olivier Clément

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“The Word made himself bearer of the flesh in order that human beings might become bearers of the Spirit.”
—St Athanasius

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“The Spirit is the great interruptor of our plans.”
—Sarah Coakley

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“Where the Holy Spirit is, there follows, as a shadow, persecution and struggle… From that time when Jesus was crucified, the Spirit, the Paraclete, passed the cross down through the ages to the Christians.”
—Pseudo-Macarius

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“So when the Son of God became the Son of Man, the Spirit also descended upon him, becoming accustomed in this way to dwelling with the human race, to living in men and to inhabiting God’s creation.”
—St Irenaeus

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“Christ's departure from the world in the Ascension does not signify His disincarnarion and the cessation of His connection with humanity. This connection is to be actualized and confirmed, as it were, as the life of Christ in humanity and the life of humanity in Christ. And the actualization of this connection, as if a new manifestation or a renewal of Christ's incarnation, is precisely the descent of the Holy Spirit, sent by the Father in the Name of the Son, or (which is the same thing) by the Son from the Father. Christ's Divine-humanity, raised by Him into heaven but preserving its power in the world, is accomplished once again, as if in a kind of repetition of the Annunciation, through the descent of the Holy Spirit, Who is united, without separation and without confusion, with the Son, with Christ the God-Man, and reposes upon Him. And so, the Holy Spirit, in descending from heaven in His own Person, thus brings once again, as it were, the incarnate Christ.”
—Sergius Bulgakov

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“He came as the Spirit who in Jesus has penetrated into a new intimacy with our human nature, for he came as the Spirit in whom Jesus lived through our human life from end to end, from birth to death, and beyond into the resurrection. And therefore he came not as isolated and naked Spirit, but as Spirit charged with all the experience of Jesus as he shared to the full our mortal nature and weakness, and endures its temptation and grief and suffering and death, and with the experience of Jesus as he struggled and prayed, and worshipped and obeyed, and poured out his life in compassion for mankind.”
—T.F. Torrance

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“Standing in front of all those who had heard their tongues are the twelve disciples, now becoming apostles of Jesus. This is Israel speaking to Israel, calling to their own with the good news of the intensification of their election and of the personification of the free grace that shaped their existence from its beginning. This is precisely where the scandal that was Jesus of Nazareth, Mary’s baby, with all the tensions he created and all the theological, social, and political contradictions that religious and civic leaders associated with his ministry, began to spread over many bodies.”
—Willie Jennings

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“Without the Holy Spirit, God is far away,
Christ stays in the past,
the Gospel is a dead letter,
the Church is simply an organization,
authority a matter of domination,
mission a matter of propaganda,
liturgy is only nostalgia,
and Christian living a slave morality.
But with the Holy Spirit,
God is with us,
the universe is resurrected and groans
with the birth pangs of the kingdom,
the risen Christ is here,
the Gospel is a living force,
the Church is a communion
in the life of the Trinity—
the body of the living Christ—
authority is a service that liberates people,
mission is Pentecost,
the liturgy is memory and anticipation,
and human action is God’s work in the world.”
—Patriarch Ignatius, Metropolitan of Latakia