In Greek patristic and Byzantine thought, human salvation is understood essentially in terms of participation in and communion with the deified humanity of the incarnate Word, the New Adam. When the Fathers call the Spirit the “image of the Son,” they imply that He is the main agent which makes this communion a reality. The Son has given us “the first fruits of the Spirit,” writes Athanasius, “so that we may be transformed into sons of God, according to the image of the Son of God.” Thus, if it is through the Spirit that the Word became man, it is also only through the Spirit that true life reaches all men. “What is the effect and the result of the sufferings and works and teaching of Christ?” asks Nicholas Cabasilas. “Considered in relation to ourselves, it is nothing other than the descent of the Holy Spirit upon the Church.”

The Spirit transforms the Christian community into the “Body of Christ.” In Byzantine hymns for the feast of Pentecost, the Spirit is sometimes called the “glory of Christ” granted to the disciples after the Ascension, and at each Eucharist, the congregation after communion chants: “We have seen the true light! We have received the heavenly Spirit! We have found the true faith and we worship the undivided Trinity, for the Trinity has saved us!”

Pentecost, the birthday of the Church, is the moment when the true meaning of Christ’s cross and glorious Resurrection becomes manifest, when a new mankind enters back into divine fellowship, when a new knowledge is granted to “fishermen.” This is the main theme of the feast of Pentecost in our tradition, and, curiously, it matches the awareness of many modern students of Christian origins that full understanding of Christ’s teaching is indeed a “post-Resurrection” experience of the early Church: “The Spirit, through His appearance in tongues of fire, firmly plants the memory of those man-saving words which Christ told the Apostles, having received them from the Father.” But the “knowledge” or “memory” granted by the Spirit is not an intellectual function; it implies an “illumination” of human life as a whole. The theme of “light,” which, through Origen and Gregory of Nyssa, permitted the association of the Biblical theophanies with Greek Neoplatonic mysticism, also permeates the liturgical hymnography and prayers of Pentecost.

Hopefully this is all beginning to make more sense