The whole Orthodox world celebrates the birthday of the Holy Church today and the receiving of the grace of the Holy Spirit by us all. It is a particularly festive day for the Seraphim-Diveyevo monastery; on the day of Holy Pentecost, our monastery celebrates its major patronal feast.

Before this feast, all churches of the Diveyevo monastery were decorated with birches and flowers. A symbol of eternal renewal of nature, the plants indicate the mysterious regeneration of the souls of Christians by the power of the Holy Spirit and serve us as a reminder about the miraculous event that took place on the fiftieth day after Pascha when the Holy Spirit descended upon the apostles.

As they gathered at the Upper Room on Mount Zion, the apostles heard a sound of a rushing wind, and saw the tongues of fire coming down upon each one of Apostles. They were filled with the grace of God and the Holy Spirit acted in these spiritually frail and weak people. Those who were fearful and fainthearted at a time of sufferings of the Savior on Golgotha, were now clothed with the invincible armor of faith in the power of grace, have risen in glory of prophecies and miracle making. They whose lot was a fisher’s net and simple trade before, have acquired the power of a word that reduced to ashes the selfish lore of the wise ones and pride of the rulers. Throughout the world, the apostles carried the Good News having no fear of persecutions, torments, or even death. This is how the grace of the Holy Spirit works to transform man so that a weak one becomes strong, the unlearned – the wisest, the down-to-earth one – the one of heaven, thus making man the temple of God.

The divinization turned the congregation of the like-minded fishermen to a special kind of gathering, the Church of God. By God’s promise, That same Spirit that rested on the apostles rests upon each and everyone of those of us who accepts the Holy Baptism.

Metropolitan Georgiy of Nizhny Novgorod and Arzamas presided at the festive services at the Trinity Cathedral of the Seraphim-Diveyevo monastery, the Lesser Vespers with the akathist and the Vigil. Concelebrating His Eminence were the clergymen from Nizhny Novgorod and Diveyevo.