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| 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....
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| 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!
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| The Easter Vigil ceremony is very solemn and begins with a blessing of fire. |
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| 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.
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| Preparing for the fight. |
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| Eating the eggs! |
