Sunday, 1:10 pm. Христос Воскрес, everyone! Christ is Risen! He is truly risen! My host mom’s at her dacha for the day, and Misha just came over and is searching the nooks and crannies of the apartment for his Easter gift. He’s thirty. Some things never change, I guess. :)
I was fortunate enough to be able to attend a service at the Cathedral of Our Lady of Kazan last night. I took notes throughout the whole thing – on spare prayer cards, because I’d forgotten to bring any sort of notebook, and I wanted to remember the experience in detail. Following is a verbatim transcription of my notes on the Easter service in one of the largest cathedrals in Russia.
Up, down, right, left. Bow your head. Get down on your knees and touch your forehead to the ground, if you so desire. Kiss the icon. Light a candle, murmur another prayer in your language of choice.
It’s about nine o’clock, and except for closing the church for half an hour ‘for technical reasons,’ nothing has really gotten started yet in Kazansky Sobor. So far it’s mostly a milling crowd, stopping for longer than usual in front of the icons, buying more candles than on your average Saturday. Perhaps five women in here have their heads uncovered, and they, like me, are staring more or less blankly at their surroundings. I’ve adopted camouflage, though, in the form of my platka, the shawl I bought in Moscow. If the watchful saints know I don’t fit in here, at least I can conceal that fact from some of the babushkas.
I’m not sure what we’re waiting for, really. A large crowd has gathered around a table, laden with food (both table and crowd) and candles (mostly the table). Two priests came by earlier to bless the food – I think; they mostly walked around the table singing. This whole event is being televised, presumably live, for the national religious channel, which appears to broadcast nothing but services all day long. I’ve made sure to snag one of the few chairs, far back enough that the cameras won’t catch me scribbling down my impressions on some spare prayer slips, writing on the back of my powder compact.
The lights at the bottom of the columns keep flickering, but if this is a signal, nobody pays attention. Candlelight dances over cartons of home-dyed Easter eggs, which are treated here somehow so that they shimmer. A group of identically black-clad young women in white head scarves—nuns? Does the Russian Orthodox Church have nuns?—walk past carrying some sort of gold-embroidered red drapery. I saw one of the priests for a moment earlier, wearing a large embroidered white apron and talking on his cell phone. Some things never change.
Slowly, the nuns begin to cover the icons…or are they uncovering them? As white covers are exchanged for red, it’s a little difficult to tell. A gentleman comes up to me to lecture me about something. I give up my seat to one of the roaming babushki, who didn’t seem particularly interested in sitting, and the gentleman is satisfied, at least enough to go away. Small groups form and break up again, old ladies talk to themselves and strike up conversations with strangers, blissfully unaware that the conversation is one-sided because the stranger doesn’t understand. But it’s very quiet for a church this big and this important. Cathedrals don’t encourage conversations, really. There’s the kind of places to be alone with your thoughts, to teach your children the up-down-right-left ritual, to retie your platka into a shape more flattering for a twenty-year-old and wonder how the three singing priests can maintain that harmony so well. To wonder why there is a portrait of the last Romanovs as saints on the back wall. To wonder once again what you’re doing here, and why there aren’t more confused American students on the fringes of this ritual.
Now I see they’re shaking holy water over the food and the surrounding worshippers, and there is a further bustle of confused movement. Time to move out of the way of the people trying to put food where I’m sitting and figure out what happens now.
Nothing much seems to happen, except that the line to have your moment with the icon of the Virgin Mary gets longer, and then the priest starts speaking. I can’t make out the words, or even what language they’re in; all I know is that his monotone is a slightly flat C. I trip over the electrical cables with my cracked right heel and take it as God’s sign to sit the heck down and observe quietly.
Христос воскрес.
Christ is risen.
Воистину воскрес.
Truly, He is risen.
I swear the priest is reading the entirety of Genesis in Church Slavonic. Gentlemen in suits have appeared near the altar in front of the iconostasis and are directing that part of the traffic, and now cutting it off altogether. Senior priestly people move stands of flowers while red-cassocked young men place rugs strategically. I become more conscious of the crowd as I move forward into Mary’s rapidly degenerating line, and the priest is replaced by a colleague who continues the reading, but not in a monotone this time.
The variety of head coverings among the women of the crowd cannot escape notice. Some are classic white, some tasteful dark colors like mine, some merely hoods or berets. Some make you pause, like the sequined pink scarf paired with the bright blue coat and rather fascinating purple boots, or the billowy chapel veil pinned over the shellacked hair of the older woman three forward in line.
Nobody seems to be paying the young priest more than offhand attention. I reach the iconostasis, perform my contribution to the night’s ritual, and whisper thanks to the gilded, bejeweled and pearl-decked icon of the Mother and Child. Thanks for taking a foreigner who doesn’t understand the sermon under her wing for the night, and thanks for helping me to understand Russian just that little bit better.
I guess ‘Gospode’ is the Biblical word for God, as opposed to the vernacular ‘Bozhe.’ I have yet to hear a single reference to Jesus, but I have distinctly heard the words ‘apple’ and ‘thousand years,’ which made me think of Genesis. My knowledge of scripture isn’t that much better than my knowledge of Russian, though, so I have no real idea. For all I know, yet another priest who looks barely twenty-five is revealing why Jesus lost his temper with the fig tree, once and for all.
The rule against photography in the cathedral seems to have been suspended for this evening, but I’m still hesitant. At least three burly men have walked past carrying large rolled-up carpets, and I have no idea why. Something drops to the floor with a clang, side conversations continue, and the priest seems to have suddenly leaped to the Last Supper. I congratulate myself quietly on understanding enough Russian to figure that out.
I’m beginning to think the priest is meant to be a distraction from everything else that’s going on. Candle stands move, icons shift and appear and disappear beneath shrouds. A priest to the right of the altar is giving a line of women some sort of spiritual treatment involving draping a white cloth over their heads. I’m not sure if this is confession, absolution, or a new beauty treatment. And where the hell is everyone going with those carpets?
Apparently the platka bestows upon me an air of knowing more than others do. I move before I betray my ignorance too badly with another ‘ya ne znaiu’.
Finally, I see the purpose of the carpets, as a large number of white-and-red-robed men come striding down the center of the church, one bearing a tall, lit red candle, the rest congregating anxiously at the end of the carpet path. The St. Isaac’s Cathedral gift bag one of them carries only slightly spoils the magic of the moment. Men in suits urge the surrounding crowd back to either side and we wait. 10:55 pm.
Several senior patriarchal people come out robed in black or, for the head guy, white. The Metropolitan (I think that’s the title of the guy in white) carries a large golden cross on a white cloth-covered platter. One gentleman starts swinging his censer and chanting, cueing a chorus none of us had noticed previously to burst into song above us. A host of Important People walk to the altar, and we all press in behind them as the carpets are rolled up. I can’t see a thing except the rotating TV camera arm, but it’s a lucky individual who can. We can hear the Important People chant, just barely, over the chorus. We all start to cross ourselves as the camera passes overhead. I don’t know why, but it’s like The Wave, inescapable.
And then silence between songs, or as close as this many people ever get to being silent.
I truly have no idea what’s going on now. An alarm bell rings twice. A child starts talking animatedly. I finger the ten-ruble candles in my pocket and, suddenly, everyone seems to be fingering theirs just as the priests start to read again in seamlessly transitioning monotones.
People start to filter out of the crowd somewhere in between the priest-chorus interludes. At first I thought it was for a better view, but they’re mostly sweaty-looking older people, so I have to wonder if they’re overheating. Not hard to do in this packed crowd. I merely unfasten my sweater, shift from foot to foot, and begin to wish I hadn’t worn heels this evening. Two of the junior priests appear to be pacing around the altar with candles on sticks. Very disorienting when all you can see are the tops of the candles.
The iconostasis doors were opened for just a moment! Exciting! And now a LOT of talking about light, and a lot of people continuing to genuflect around me. Luckily, there doesn’t seem to be a strict sense of timing about anything here – good, because I keep catching the crossing at the tail end.
Looks like a Procession of Icons on Poles is beginning, and the electric lights are slowly going out. Not sure what the processors are waiting for, or who started singing, but most of the church is mumbling along with what I gather is a very well-known hymn.
We’ve all pushed our way to the doors after the Procession of Important People With Icons, but the doors are shut. As we wait, we begin to pass the flame, reminiscent of the Easter I know and love…except that very few people seem to be lighting their candles from their neighbors. Now I’m confused. I’d light my own, but I have a lousy track record with matches, and I’d rather not set my platka or my hair on fire.
I meet an English-speaking Portuguese family who explain a little of what’s going on to me and their young daughter. Apparently, the normal procedure at this point would be a procession around the church with our lit candles. However, there are some very important people at this service (hence the multitude of guys in suits), and apparently their security is somewhat fouling up the order. Someone’s still singing, though, so at least it’s not over.
Finally, all the important folk have processed back in, the chorus is back to singing, and with what seems to be a complete disregard for the chorus, the rest of us are shouting the only part of the ritual I know by heart.
Христос воскрес.
Christ is risen.
Воистину воскрес.
Truly, He is risen.
I send Happy Easter text messages (with this Paschal greeting) to Dima and Ilya, and correct the spelling of my notes based on their identical response.
By twelve-thirty, the service has become an endurance test. Pack a few thousand people into a poorly ventilated room, give most of them lit candles, sing at them for a couple of hours broken by the occasional call-and-response, and understandably, people will begin to get a little irritable. I mean no disrespect, but Christ rose forty-five minutes ago. Can we go home now?
Finally, there’s some actual sermonizing, which I’m hoping is the end of the service. It sounds like instructions for the hours of the day today, but I apologize to the Metropolitan, for I intend to be sleeping at 8 am. Plus, all these candles so close to my hair and my fringe are really starting to freak me out.
…nope, not the end; more singing.
…don’t tell me the real service is just getting started; it’s 1 am!
Okay, I’m sorry, I’d love to stay for the whole thing, but I am rapidly running out of steam. I’m considering going home if he talks past 1:30.
…and just as I wrote that, he finished talking and appears to be removing his ceremonial garb. Dare I hope?
Once again, we have cleared the path for Someone Important, and I think I hear the censers, even if I don’t smell the incense yet. The whole church smells of beeswax smoke and sweat.
Hm. The Important People processed to the door, then turned around and processed right back in. What is going on here?
At this point, I stopped writing. An enthusiastic worshipper who spoke a little English explained to me that there was at least an hour and a half to go in the service, most of it taken up with speeches and processing back and forth. By now, I could barely continue to stand up straight, so I whispered an apology to the bishops and left, catching a late bus home and stumbling in at about 2 am. Lyudmila Afanasyevna, who’d gone to her local church, was already asleep, and I only paused long enough to change out of dress clothes and crawl under the covers.
When I woke up today, it was nearly noon, and my host mom had gone to her dacha for the day and left several pots on the stove. A handful of colored Easter eggs in the fruit bowl decorated the table. Misha explained to me that one does not eat the Easter eggs; one either gives them as gifts, with good wishes, or cracks one against a friend’s egg in a test of strength. I left the eggs alone, breakfasted on Easter bread (mmm), and settled in for a quiet day. As it turns out, I spent it baking chocolate meringues; I’ll have to wait until they’re dry tomorrow to tell you if they’re any good. :)
And now, the dishes are done, the email is checked, a few text messages are exchanged with friends just returning to Petersburg, and spring break is over. Time to crawl into bed with War and Peace and prepare to re-register my presence in Russia tomorrow at the university. Happy Easter, everyone!
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