...is To Experience the Apostolic Faith

     They knew that there was something was
different about him, this carpenter from
Nazareth. He spoke with authority. He
cleansed lepers. He raised the dead. And
although he suffered crucifixion and death,
he rose from the dead and appeared to his
followers .... And now nothing seemed to be
the same! Death had been trampled down by
death; the reign of sin and corruption had been
shattered. They knew this, those first followers
of Jesus of Nazareth, because they experienced 
it. Their faith was not the by-product of
systematic logic or disinterested analysis.
These people were not fooled; they were not the
gullible bumpkins that we arrogant moderns, so
complacent with our self-proclaimed
sophistication, often assume they were.
These people would not have dropped
everything, risked what little security they had
managed to attain, or put their lives on
the line had it not been for a convincing
experience of the Risen One.

     But once Jesus returned to the Father, how could such an experience be conveyed to the next generation? Jesus recognized this problem, so he promised his disciples that He would not leave them orphans. He would send an Advocate, who would bear witness to him, conveying His
presence among those who believed. And this
Advocate, of course, is the Holy Spirit, whom
the exalted Christ, having ascended in glory,
asked the Father to send to the nascent
community of believers that had gathered around
the Apostles.

     And so the Spirit was sent to these Apostles and to the Mother of God in the city of Jerusalem, the mother of all Churches. Because of this indwelling of the Spirit, the Church, from the moment of its inception, was "catholic," whole, lacking nothing. The experience that forged the faith of the first believers could now be had by anyone who confessed Christ and, through incorporation into His Body by baptism, entered into the life of the Spirit.

     The experience of the Apostolic Faith ... this is what makes a Christian. And that is why the
Church is important. Holy Orthodoxy does not
claim to be a politically powerful Church or a
wealthy Church or a particularly erudite Church.
But it does claim to possess the indwelling of
the Spirit who bears witness to Christ, the Spirit
who fosters the experience of the Risen Lord
that enabled the Apostles to believe. To be an
Orthodox Christian is to have access to that
experience in unmitigated form, for Orthodox
Christians, without impugning the goodness and
sincerity of other Christians, affirm that it is in
the Orthodox Church that the fullness of
Christian truth - and the fullness of the Spirit
who bears witness to this truth - are to be found.