In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, one God, Amen.
How much do I work, tirelessly at times, to resist Christ. I come up with excuses: “tomorrow will be the day when I start to be a Christian” I deceive myself. Yet if this is the Son of God, the Saviour of the World, I must be changed: but I remain content in my sin, content in my failing life, content in my dying. The Almighty God who made Heaven and Earth, who has given me a path to union with him, is before me and I prevaricate and dither, I find justification for my lack of action and I call out as did the Pharisees, “Is the Christ to come from Galilee? … Search and you will see that no prophet is to rise from Galilee.” Any excuse, any reason, any justification why I should resist is taken by me.
And yet the evidence stacks up. The voice of the Apostles “has gone out through all the Earth, and their words to the end of the world.” (Psalm 18:5 ʟxx) They have stood for Truth where I would not, they have proclaimed the death of Death and the Resurrection of our Lord where I stayed silent, they have remained faithful where I have been faithless. And I stand—today, here and now—at a cross-roads: will I be a Christian or not? Will I receive all that has been handed to me, make it my own and pass it on with neither addition nor subtraction (see Deuteronomy 4:2, Revelation 22:18–19) or will I pick and choose what I like and leave the rest behind? Will I accept this prophet from Galilee or not?
My dear brothers and sisters in Christ, the Lord says to you and he says to me, “I am the light of the world; he who follows me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.” He offers to us no mere sun, flame nor bulb: he offers us true Light, . “The people who walked in darkness,” the Prophet tells us,
Have seen a great light;
Isaiah 9:2
Those who dwelt in the land of the shadow of death,
Upon them a light has shined.
Will we see this Light as something to be feared because we cannot control it? Will we attempt to pervert its use for our purposes? Or will we ourselves receive the Light and ourselves become beacons for others? Will we take the Light and ourselves become light?
Let us today, my brothers and sisters, take the Light, receive the Holy Spirit, and stand for the fullness of the Truth whatever the cost. Let us accept the whole Gospel, not merely a small part, and be transformed and transfigured as the saints who are so needed by our world. Let us no longer resist Christ but recover our likeness to him.
Let us, then, glorify our risen Saviour Jesus Christ and so come to knowledge of the one God and Father by the power and operation of the All-holy Spirit. Amen.
When the day of Pentecost had come, they 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, Pontos and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya belonging to Cyrene, and visitors from Rome, both Jews and proselytes, Cretans and Arabians, we hear them telling in our own tongues the mighty works of God.”
— Acts 2:1–11
On the last day of the feast, the great day, Jesus stood up and proclaimed, “If any one thirst, let him come to me and drink. He who believes in me, as the scripture has said, ‘Out of his heart shall flow rivers of living water.'” Now this he said about the Spirit, which those who believed in him were to receive; for as yet the Spirit had not been given, because Jesus was not yet glorified. When they heard these words, some of the people said, “This is really the prophet.” Others said, “This is the Christ.” But some said, “Is the Christ to come from Galilee? Has not the scripture said that the Christ is descended from David, and comes from Bethlehem, the village where David was?” So there was a division among the people over him. Some of them wanted to arrest him, but no one laid hands on him. The officers then went back to the chief priests and Pharisees, who said to them, “Why did you not bring him?” The officers answered, “No man ever spoke like this man!” The Pharisees answered them, “Are you led astray, you also? Have any of the authorities or of the Pharisees believed in him? But this crowd, who do not know the law, are accursed.” Nikodemos, who had gone to him before, and who was one of them, said to them, “Does our law judge a man without first giving him a hearing and learning what he does?” They replied, “Are you from Galilee too? Search and you will see that no prophet is to rise from Galilee.” Again Jesus spoke to them, saying, “I am the light of the world; he who follows me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.”
— John 7:37–52, 8:12