Glory to Jesus Christ!
We are now in the season of “Sundays after Pentecost.” This means we have concluded a long liturgical cycle: beginning with Lent which prepares us for Pascha, which we then celebrate for 40 days, after which we have the Ascension of our Lord, then Pentecost, and All Saints. If one looks closely at this series of commemorations and feasts, there can be seen an internal unity, a purposeful progression given by the Church to drive home the meaning of our lives and the relevance of God’s self-revelation to us today.
On Monday of the first week of Lent we begin hearing daily readings from the book of Genesis. On this very first day of the Fast we
hear the very first passage of the Bible, Genesis 1:1: “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.” This is where the whole story of our salvation begins. And, of course, when you use the word “salvation,” the question naturally arises, “salvation from what?” Well, that is exactly the point of these daily readings. The first four days of Lent we hear of God’s wondrous creation of the world. He creates the earth, sun, moon, and stars, and every living creature to walk upon the land and to fill the skies and the watery depths. He plants a garden, a paradise of delights full of “every tree, beautiful to the eye and good for food.” Everything that He creates, God declares to be “good.” As the climax of His wondrous creation, God creates man in His image and likeness, endowed with speech and reason, breathes His divine life into him, giving him a living soul, and places him in the garden of paradise. God pronounces this culmination of His creation to be “very good.” In this garden Adam was to walk with God in the cool of the day, sharing God’s life and the graces poured out upon him. Adam is clothed with the light of God’s grace and life. This was the divine plan for each of us. This is what we were created for.
Yet, on Friday of the first week we hear of a tragedy: Adam betrays God, disobeys His command, and so doing cuts himself off from the God-created paradise, from God’s gifts of grace, and, indeed, from God Himself. Adam and Eve are expelled from the Garden, and are no longer to be partakers of the Tree of Life. As a sign of the death they have brought upon themselves they are stripped of their garments of God’s light with which they were clothed in Paradise, and instead are clothed in the skins of dead animals: instead of being clothed with Life, they are clothed with death.
The Sunday before Lent (the day before we begin hearing these readings from Genesis) is the Commemoration of Adam and Eve’s Expulsion from Paradise, because Adam and Eve’s disobedience and consequent fall are the essential starting point for the story of salvation, the why behind it all. This is the answer to that question: “salvation from what?“. God has granted us salvation from the fall of Adam: from the cutting one’s self off from God and the life and grace that He freely offers us; from losing the heavenly paradise for which we were created. Salvation is the renewal of being partakers in God’s divine life. From here on, the story is about God’s work of salvation.
So as Lent goes on we hear more from the book of Genesis as God begins to enact His plan of salvation to bring us back to Paradise. During Holy Week we hear the story of the Exodus from Egypt: the people of Israel had sold themselves not only into physical slavery, but into spiritual slavery, forsaking the God who created them and worshiping the pagan idols of Egypt. Yet God did not forsake them, and brought them out of Egypt, striking their Egyptian captors, but by way of the blood of the lamb, passing over the Israelites and allowing them to flee.
The Lord’s Passover in the Book of Exodus is fulfilled in the New Testament, when Jesus Christ, the Lamb of God, is slain and Death, the captor of old, is struck dead, allowing mankind to escape his grasp. This is the Lord’s true Passover (hence why we call it “Pascha!”). During Paschal time we sing over and over: “Christ is risen from the dead, trampling down death by death, and upon those in the tombs bestowing life!” We are once again made partakers of God’s life! The old enemy has been destroyed, and we have been restored to paradise!
After His resurrection, our Lord Jesus remained with His disciples for forty days, walking and talking and eating with them. Though in His resurrected body and able to go through closed doors, these appearance were all quite normal, unlike the appearance at the Transfiguration. Yet on the 40th day, Christ is once again seen glorified, and He ascended to the Father. He ascended so that He could send the Spirit, the “Paraclete.” And yet, in ascending, the Lord Jesus did not depart from us, but rather remains present in His Church in an even more intense way. Pope St. Leo the Great says that Christ ascended into the Sacraments, and in them we are made partakers of Christ Himself in a way not possible before: through Holy Baptism we are made members of His body and partakers of His death and resurrection; through Holy Chrismation He breathes into us His divine life; in Holy Communion we are fed with His Body and Blood; in Holy Confession and Anointing we are given His divine reconciliation and healing; in Holy Matrimony and through the Laying-on-of-Hands we reign with Him and work for the sanctification of the world.
All this is made possible through the work of the Holy Spirit. At the descent of the Holy Spirit on Pentecost (the 50th day) the Lord’s disciples and apostles were heard in many languages by those assembled for the feast. They then went forth to “make disciples of all 
nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything that [Christ] commanded” (Matt 28:19-20). The restoration of Adam achieved through Christ’s death and resurrection was not just for the disciples and the people of Jerusalem, but for the whole world. The gift of languages was given to the disciples for the sake of their preaching in the far corners of the world, to unite the peoples of the world and give them the Good News of our reconciliation and salvation. Everyone is once again to be made partakers in God’s divine life.
Throughout the Byzantine liturgical year, there are many instances in which, after a great feast there is a lesser commemoration of a secondary figure or group of figures connected with that greater feast. This is called a “synaxis” (a “gathering together”). For example, on February 2nd we celebrate the Lord’s encounter with the Righteous Simeon and the Prophetess Anna in the temple, and on February 3rd the Synaxis of Righetous Simeon and Anna. Likewise, the Sunday after Christmas is the commemoration of His foster-father Joseph, David, His ancestor, and James, His brother.
With this perspective, you can see how the Sunday after Pentecost, the feast of All Saints, is a synaxis-type feast, for through the work of the Spirit and the preaching of the apostles, countless numbers of people have come to know the Word of God and have entered His Kingdom in Heaven. As we cannot commemorate every saint individually, and indeed there are many who are unknown to us, we have this general commemoration of All Saints, the fruit of the coming of the Holy Spirit.
Similarly, the Second Sunday after Pentecost is held as a commemoration of all local saints. In our Ukrainian Catholic Church this is the Sunday of All Saints of the land of Rus’-Ukraine, and in other places it is a commemoration of all the saints of that place (Greece, Athos, North America, etc). This is extremely important to understand: this is not a cultural or ethnic celebration of “our saints.” Rather, this commemoration of local saints is a second synactic extension of Pentecost, tying the descent of the Holy Spirit with the here-and-now of our lives. In commemorating all local saints, the Church is emphasizing that the Faith was given by Christ to His disciples, and through the Holy Spirit it has been passed down through the centuries to us, to each of us in that far corner of the world in which we live (This is what it means to be an Apostolic Church!). The commemoration of local saints is a reminder that the ground we walk on is holy ground, for there have been saints here in this very place! We have no excuse: the Faith is not just something for other people in other places to live out. Becoming holy, being filled with the Spirit, and coming into evermore perfect communion with God is imminently possible, even for us here, in this place. We are called to be saints here and now. And, God-willing (and He does will it!), we will be numbered among those local saints some day!
With these final commemorations of All Saints, we see the conclusion of the cycle, which really is the entire story of salvation: from the fall of Adam through the Old Testament to our Lord’s incarnation, crucifixion, resurrection, ascension, and sending of the Holy Spirit, resulting in the sanctification of people in every age and in every place in the world. We also see that this post-Pentecost period is not just a portion of the liturgical year, but the grace-filled age which stretches from the original Pentecost 2000 years ago until the glorious Second Coming of Christ.
So, as we live out our 21st-century lives here in Wyoming or wherever you are reading this, don’t forget that “the kingdom of God is at hand” (Matt 3:2), and we are invited to be members of it. We are living in the age of the Holy Spirit, Whom we have received. We have heard the words of the Divine Gospel: “Death is overthrown! Christ God is risen, granting the world great mercy!” (Resurrectional troparion, Tone 4) Filled with the Spirit, let us sing with the apostles and all the saints of the whole world: “O Christ our God, You have demolished the brazen gates of Hades. You have broken asunder the bonds of death, and lifted up the fallen human race. Therefore, we cry out with one accord: O Lord, who arose from the dead, glory to You!” (Resurrectional sticheron, Tone 4)
