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Editor:
I’d like to thank a Romanian friend who helped me by looking this up in the original Romanian. I do have some talents, but facility in Romanian is NOT one of them.
BMD
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We can see the Holy Spirit in a man when he does a good deed gladly. Not out of fear, but because he is a son of God by grace… he does a good deed, he builds a church, founds a family, works for the spreading of belief… as a son of God, by grace, with the joy of a son, not a servant. The Jews who spoke unknown tongues represented the peoples who’d come to Christ throughout history. He commanded His Apostles saying, “Go forth, teaching all peoples, baptising them in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to guard all that I’ve commanded you!” That meant that Christ Pantocrator didn’t only envision only the salvation of the Jewish people, but that this salvation extended from the Jewish people to all nations, ethnicities, to all peoples.
This celebration shows us the connection between Christ who has ascended to Heaven and the Holy Spirit, whom the Father sent to the world at the request of the Son. Christ ascends in glory, so that the Holy Spirit may descend in humility, with the purpose of extolling those faithful and humble in the Church of Christ. The Orthodox faithful celebrate, this Sunday, 50 days after the Resurrection of Jesus, Pentecost, marking the day the Holy Spirit descended upon the assembly of apostles, in the form of tongues of fire, and they started preaching. Although the Holy Spirit was present since creation, He descended upon the world fully to consecrate it only after the defeat of death and the return of Christ to the Father. Only then was the Holy Spirit able to descend upon the human nature, rid of sin and redeemed, and it dwelt in those who’ve received Christ. On the day of Pentecost, through the descent of the Holy Spirit, a new organism appeared… a divine-human foundation, the Church.
In other words, the descent upon the Apostles of the Spirit, the gifts and charismata received by them, and the preaching and baptising of the first 3,000 people constitutes the foundation of the Christian Church, both as a community of believers and as an institution. The Church is not, thus, only a human group associated in the same faith, nor is it only an institution bordered by dogma and laws. It is a communion of mankind with God, and God bears within Him the Holy Spirit. Some Church Fathers named the Church of Christ “the Holy Spirit living within mankind”.
31 May 2015
His Beatitude Patriarch Daniel Ciobotea
Archbishop of Bucharest and Patriarch of all Romania
Nine O’ Clock
http://www.nineoclock.ro/patriarch-daniel-the-holy-spirit-can-be-seen-in-man-when-he-does-good-deeds-gladly/
Voices from Russia 
31 May 2015. The CHRISTIAN Response to a Death in the Family of a Politically-Reprehensible Man
Tags: Beau Biden, Christian, Christianity, death, grief, grieving, Joe Biden, political commentary, politics, Religion, Religion and Spirituality, United States, USA
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I despise Joe Biden’s politics. The details aren’t important. What IS important is that as a father, as a human being, he has to close the eyes of his son in death. All decent people know that all criticism ceases until three days after the burial. That’s what my parents taught me… I believe that our parents taught most of us, of whatever faith (or no religion at all), the very same. You bow before the mystery of death… you honour another’s grief, no matter who they are or what you think of them.
Mr Biden, I bow before you and offer you my sincere condolences. Eternal be his memory…
BMD