Antioch Alexander

When the day of Pentecost had come, the Disciples were all together in one place.   And suddenly a sound came from heaven like the rush of a mighty wind, and it filled all the house where they were sitting.   And there appeared to them tongues as of fire, distributed and resting on each one of them.   And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues, as the Spirit gave them utterance.   Now there were dwelling in Jerusalem Jews, devout men from every nation under heaven.   And at this sound the multitude came together, and they were bewildered, because each one heard them speaking in his own language.   And they were amazed and wondered, saying, “Are not all these who are speaking Galileans?   And how is it that we hear, each of us in his own native language?   Parthians and Medes and Elamites and residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya belo

God died.  Our modern world, our society, has forgotten what this means.  We sanitise death⁠—leave it to undertakers whose skill is to make the dead look alive, prepared like a doll.  We have forgotten how to mourn: preferring a celebration of life rather than a funeral, bright colours over somber tones. God died.  We have forgotten the stench of death and the unnatural wrenching of soul from body, the disintegration of a human person. God died.  Our society has forgotten God because it has forgotten death.  It knows that death will come, but this is a theoretical knowledge rather than through experience. God died ... yet God arose.  God experiences death yet death cannot hold him, and it cannot hold us.  Death has been destroyed by death. But God does not leave us to work this out by ourselves, the Holy Spirit descended on the Apostles and descends upon us⁠—come and celebrate this event on this Sunday of Pentecost, and every Sunday, so that even though we will die, death will