His Beatitude Metropolitan Tikhon Celebrates Pentecost Services
On June 7-8, 2025, His Beatitude Metropolitan Tikhon celebrated services for the feast of Pentecost at St. Nicholas Cathedral in Washington, DC.
On Saturday, June 7, His Beatitude presided at the Festal Vigil. The next morning, June 8, His Beatitude presided at the celebration of the hierarchical Divine Liturgy which was followed immediately by the Vespers of Pentecost with Kneeling Prayers. Concelebrating with His Beatitude was cathedral associate Archpriest George Kokhno. The responses were sung by the cathedral choir under the direction of Mr. Ivan Pils.
During the Divine Liturgy, His Beatitude delivered the homily where he spoke on how the faithful receive the Holy Spirit in the sacraments of the Church.
“We know,” His Beatitude said, “that the Spirit is given to believers once and definitively through the sacraments of baptism and chrismation. However, there is another sense in which we may receive the gift of the Holy Spirit throughout our lives: we receive the Spirit again and again through the second baptism of confession and repentance… Pentecost calls us precisely to this renewal, to this washing clean. For forty-nine days we have celebrated the gift that we receive through Christ’s Pascha; today, we are called to renew our lives so that we actually experience that gift and make it real.”
Read the full text of His Beatitude’s homily
Following the Vespers of Pentecost, His Beatitude recognized the 2025 graduates at the cathedral and presented a certificate to Paul and Andrea Lutov, long-time cathedral parishioners, in honor of their 50th wedding anniversary.