Christ is Risen, Orthodox Christians!
Congratulations to everyone on this great feast.
I also congratulate non-Orthodox Christians, nonbelievers, and atheists. I know there are many of them among those who read this cozy little blog of mine. This post is for them, in fact (there’s no need to persuade the Orthodox, after all).
Until I was 25, I was an atheist—and a fairly militant one at that. Now I’m a believer, but because I remember myself well before 25, I can regard anti-clerical views, a strictly scientific view of the world, and mockery of ostentatious religiosity without horror, shock, or trembling. The last of these is even полезно.
And yet Easter, it seems to me, is the best candidate for the title of a Holiday_for_Everyone. It’s better than New Year’s, my friends.
Just think about it: this is a holiday about the most important thing of all. About the inevitability of Good triumphing over evil. A holiday of hope. A holiday of faith in a better future.
What did He fight against? Lies, hypocrisy, slavery, injustice, the usurpation of power, and crooks and thieves. Everything that disgusts us so deeply. Everything that disgusted many before us. And will disgust many after us.
And it was very hard for Him. There was no support, rallies were banned, OMON riot police (Russia’s special police units) were jabbing with spears, the media had been seized by the Pharisees, and those in power were scoundrels with property abroad. And even in the organizing committee of His party, every twelfth man was a paid provocateur and traitor, working for the then “Center E” (Russia’s anti-extremism police unit).
And they don’t just lock you up for 15 days with three meals a day—they go straight to lashing your back with a seven-tailed whip fitted with hooks.
The villains destroyed everything there was. The disciples were forced to renounce Him. He Himself was tortured and killed. Everything collapsed, and there was impenetrable darkness.
What are all our “difficulties” and “problems” compared with what He endured?
But Good, Truth, Faith, Hope, and Love still won. (Yes, it looks strange even to me to write all of that with capital letters, but how else could I write it?)
And they always will. That is exactly what is said in that strange line in an incomprehensible language that is being quoted a million times over today: “Christ is risen from the dead, trampling down death by death, and upon those in the tombs bestowing life.”
Happy the great feast of Christ’s Resurrection to all of you, believers and nonbelievers alike.
Happy the great feast of the inevitable triumph of Good!