A Catholic Easter in Orthodox Russia

A view from the Catholic Church of the sun setting on the Golden Horn Bay .

Lent is over!

But for the Russian Orthodox, Easter will be on May 5th. That means two holidays for me....

The blessing of the "palms."

On Passion Sunday, we used pussy willows instead of palms for the procession. (They also use pussy willows in other Eastern European countries, I hear, or in other countries where palms are hard to find!)

Our Way of the Cross on Good Friday was greeted by a chilling wind and a sudden snowfall. The new seminarians from Thailand were not impressed!

Just before Easter Vigil late Saturday night, I stopped by the Church library to pick up my Easter cake! Its taste is simple but delicious: consider sweet bread with raisins.

According to tradition, all food that one has given up during Lent may be placed symbolically on a table in the Church for the priest to bless.

Contents of table: Easter bread, boiled eggs died various colours, boiled eggs covered with special Easter stickers, candy, wine, butter, chocolate, more cakes...


mmm!

The Easter Vigil ceremony is very solemn and begins with a blessing of fire.

Then the Easter flame is passed along to each person.

The ceremony was three hours long and ended past midnight. The blessing of fire was followed by the blessing of water, and then a few baptisms, lots of singing (I sang in the choir), and of course the ordinary Eucharistic celebration. Since buses only run hear until 10:00, a carpooling system was set-up to help people get back home.

On Sunday, we had an Easter morning Mass. Afterwards, I organized an egg hunt--can you imagine, they don't know about this game here, but the kids were literally squealing with delight at every little discovered treasure.

                                      

I was then introduced to a Russian Easter game. In this game you take a boiled egg egg and just smash it against someone else's boiled egg; whoevever's egg doesn't get smashed, wins! As you can see by my expression, I was rather worried about my delicate competitor! Gleefully, the Russians were annoyed that I won every match.

Preparing for the fight.

Eating the eggs!