Pentecost is at the heart of our Faith, and our life as Orthodox Christians begins with experiencing the power of the Pentecostal Spirit.

"Pentecost is at the heart of our Faith, and our life as Orthodox Christians begins with experiencing the power of the Pentecostal Spirit. That is, it begins with Baptism, and as our Lord said, that Baptism is not simply a Baptism with water (as was the Baptism of Saint John the Forerunner), but also a Baptism in the Holy Spirit. Shortly before 



His Ascension, our Lord told His disciples to wait in Jerusalem for the promise of the Father, “for John baptized with water, but you shall be baptized in the Holy Spirit not many days from now” (Acts 1:5). These words were fulfilled on the day of Pentecost, when the disciples were gathered together in one place. “Suddenly,” Saint Luke reports in Acts 2, “there came from heaven a noise like a violent, rushing wind, and it filled the whole house where they were sitting, and there appeared to them tongues as of fire, distributing themselves and resting on each one of them, and they were all filled with the Holy Spirit.” It was this experience that the Forerunner predicted when he said that the Messiah would baptize “with the Holy Spirit and fire” (Luke 3:16). This fiery Baptism was not just for the disciples who sat in that upper room. It is for us as well. As Metropolitan Kallistos Ware wrote in his classic, The Orthodox Church, the Church is “a continual Pentecost.”

  The Pentecostal experience which the disciples received is the same experience offered us today through Holy Baptism and Chrismation."