Its 11:30 a.m. on Sunday morning and I’ve only been awake for about half an hour. My Matushka and son are still asleep. Ah, that wonderful post-Pascha feeling where your biorhythms are all messed up. Still, I just had some cereal with milk and later we’ll eat some bacon and eggs and biscuits with gravy.
It was a glorious celebration last night. The Church was full and everyone was smiling and shouting “Christ is Risen! Truly He is Risen!” As I went around the church censing the people, I was aware that this celebration was going on all over the world and I truly felt a part of the universal Body of Christ. I thought of my friend Timothy serving as the Ecclesiarch at Holy Trinity in Boston (I wonder if he is still asleep); and Nijmeh who is so far from her family while standing in an Orthodox Church in Germany shouting “Christ is Risen!”; and I wondered about how Father Gabriel was doing since this was his first Paschal service and he was on his own; and I wondered about my daughter Elizabeth and her husband William celebrating in a Bulgarian Church; I thought about Nadezda in Japan, Noor in Italy, and, well, I thought about so many friends who were sharing that glorious moment. Later, when we blessed the baskets and broke the fast at our 4 a.m. trapeza, I again appreciated the fullness of life that our Holy Faith offers us.
Still, there is a sense of sadness as well this morning. In these first waking moments post-Pascha, I know that the world continues as it always has and there are so many who simply have not heard or do not know that Christ is risen. I turned on the television to check the news and things haven’t improved at all. The greatest truth of all time has once again gone unnoticed by the world.
Thomas Sunday follows upon the heels of Pascha, and we are reminded that even in the presence of the Resurrected Lord, “some doubted.” What does it take to convince an unbelieving world? Let me share a story: A Pentecostal preacher once boasted to a Baptist preacher about how excited his congregation became when the Holy Ghost fell on them. “Why, some of people get so happy, they leap into the air.” The Baptist minister responded, “Well, we find it’s not how high you leap into the air that matters. It’s how straight you walk when you land.”
During the reading of the 12 Gospels, we heard the Lord say, “By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.” (John 13) With full gratitude for the wonderful feelings of Pascha, I know that it will not be how high I leap in joy, but how straight I walk when I land. The straightness of that walk will be the way in which I love both my brothers and sisters, and my enemies as well. By that love, the world will know that He truly came into the world, and reigns as Lord and Savior.
As the song goes, “I can’t dance; I can’t talk; the only thing about me is the way I walk.” In the year to come, no matter what happens in the world, may we walk in love and thereby show that truly “Christ is Risen!”
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