Magyar Egyház, 1959 (38. évfolyam, 1-12. szám)
1959-04-01 / 4. szám
8 MAGYAR EGYHÁZ MAGYAR CHURCH JJntimnd, 1959 “Pentecost: Forgotten Festival? A Message from the Presidents of the World Council of Churches Whitsunday — or Pentecost — is the festival of the Holy Spirit and the festival of the Church. For these two belong together. St. Paul states that relationship in these words: “For by one Spirit we were all baptized into one body, Jews or Greeks, slaves and free...” (I Cor. 12:13 RSV) The Holy Spirit has created the Church. The Holy Spirit is the life of the Church today. As we pray that the Holy Spirit may come into our own lives, we pray at the same time that we may become living members of the one Body of Christ. The Holy Spirit is the Spirit of unity, which is constantly at work to heal the divisions which obscure the wonderful truth of the oneness of Christ’s Body and which gathers all the baptized together into the one family of God. The Holy Spirit is the Spirit of renewal, which overcomes the dimness of our vision, the routine of our piety, our easy acceptance of the ways of the world, and gives new life to the congregations and their members who open their hearts and minds for the gifts of the Spirit. The Holy Spirit is the Spirit of witness and mission which urges us to cease being preoccupied with ourselves and sends us out into the world with its crying spiritual and material needs in order to proclaim by word and deed that humanity is surrounded by the love of God in Christ. The Holy Spirit is the Spirit of reconciliation which overcomes misunderstanding and estrangement among the Churches and enables them to become a force for peace between nations and races. Let us, therefore, rejoice in the presence of God’s Holy Spirit. Let us witness anew to His all-transforming power. Let us glorify God and enjoy the fruits of His Spirit Who has come to lead us to greater fullness of life, this day and evermore. THE PRESIDENTS OF THE WORLD COUNCIL OF CHURCHES Dr. John Baillie — Edinburgh Bishop S.U. Barbieri — Buenos Aires Bishop Otto Dibelius — Berlin Metropolitan Juhanon Mar Thoma — Tiruvella Bishop Henry Knox Sherrill — Boxford, Mass. * The World Council of Churches, of which the Hungarian Reformed Church in America is a member, comprises 171 Protestant, Anglican, and Orthodox Churches in 53 nations. (This article was written by an Australian minister, the Rev. John Garrett, director of the World Council of Churches’ information department. The article was released by the World Council of Churches.) What happened at Pentecost? Fifty days after the Easter appearance of Christ an international group of followers of Jesus met in Jerusalem. They were in low spirits; they had been waiting round for something to turn up. It did. As they sat together and prayed God came among them. Describing it afterwards they spoke of wind and fire and the power of speech. They were like Elijah, who had run away from his responsibilities into the desert. God had come to him like a gale that broke up the boulders, like a fire that burned out what was useless, like a “still small voice” that gave him power to speak to his contemporaries and yet remain calm within. All this happened again in the Jerusalem episode. God the Spirit, Who visits man and gives him uncanny strength through all the Old Testament story, came in Jerusalem to the first followers of Jesus Christ. They had been either good, solid, churchgoing Jews or polite inquiring foreigners who wanted to know more about the Jewish religion and the Law of Moses. The whole group, those who took the God of Abraham as a naturally available and favorable aid to living, and the others, who tought of this God of the Jews as inviting them to become Jews themselves, suddenly met God direct. God came to them and gave them the possibility of understanding other men, speaking other languages and becoming articulate prophets like Elijah. The whole crowd, suddenly recognized that the Spirit of God was alive and that things were going to happen as they had never happened before. We are the same. Just think for a moment of our conventional, steady ways. We all troop into church on Sunday hoping for something to happen. God has provided the minister and the building. We treat them as permanently available public installations, to which we contribute and from which we receive stated services. The Spirit? Do we think of the Spirit as Him, as God, the judging, purifying maker of our lives, who destroys evil, and therefore cannot tolerate us as we are—self-important, self-satisfied, self-absorbed? Or are we like many twentieth century Christians for whom the Spirit means trying to be good, sweet, true and reliable—“spreading the Spirit of Jesus?”
