Pouting at Easter

~ Clarissa

There was a Russian couple at the Easter service today. When they heard me read the Gospel in Ukrainian (there’s a part of the service where people read in different languages), they left. These people, I’m telling you. Not only are they incapable of approaching a person and saying something human like “I’m so sorry, I hope your relatives are safe”, but they act like it’s our jets bombing their churches today when Orthodox Christians are at Easter service.

The number of times this happened, I can’t tell you. You’d think we are doing something to them, they act so insulted. But it’s one thing to walk out on a campus event and it’s a very different one to walk out on the most important Orthodox holy day.

Ultimately, this Russian couple spoiled their own Easter. I stayed and had a great time. And it’s a great metaphor for the entire history of Russia. They don’t want to participate because reality wounds them and then they blame everybody else for being excluded.

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Published by Clarissa

5 thoughts on “Pouting at Easter”

  2. what is customary language of the church? SLAVONIC, Greek, because eastern orthodox, Serbian, because Illinois, or ruddian because they were comfortable attending thar church?

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    1. We worship in English with tiny smatterings of Old Slavonic and Greek every now and then. My parish is Macedonian in origin. I wouldn’t go to the larger Russian church in St Louis for obvious reasons. They worship some very questionable saints there.

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  3. Dear Clarissa, I am in the same bind here. I have stopped attending my Moscow Patriarchate parish and have started worshipping at a Romanian parish where the liturgical languages are Romanian, Italian and Ukrainian (Yes!).

    I grieve enormously as a result, especially because I do not speak Romanian, but the situation was becoming unbearable, and I can only thank God that there are so many Orthodox parishes in my city which can sustain Orthodox worship. The three Russian parishes are all under the Moscow Patriarchate: one used to be ROSCOR-affiliated but it was taken over a few years back.

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