Passover, a Blood Moon, and a Debt

Mack Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

Passover, a Blood Moon, and a Debt

On Passover, we will see a (gasp) Blood Moon in the sky, and so the world is coming to an end again. On the ‘net there’s a picture of a real big Blood Moon behind the Moscow Kremlin, so it must be so.

Yes, the End Times are back, according to Reverend 1-800-501C3 on the Orwellian telescreen, so send him money. The End Times are always hanging around, leeching onto you like that fellow who approaches you in the parking lot and tells you he ran out of gas on his way to his mother’s funeral in Waco. The next time you see him he’s taking his child (cue the sad child who knows darned well to keep his mouth shut or else) to the hospital in Houston and the car’s transmission went out, and brother, can you spare a twenty God bless you sir?

The year 1999 was an especially profitable season for End Times, what with mysterious glowing chupacabras in the sky spelling out 999 (which is even worse than 666) in Babylonian hieroglyphics, coded signals from Fred Phelps’ basement, and crudely-illustrated Jack Chick pamphlets telling you that you’re going to (Newark) anyway, so don’t even bother trying.

Hey, why read the Bible when you’ve got Jack Chick, eh?

When the sun rose on 1 January 2000, some folks climbed down from their roofs, consulted The Voices, whapped themselves on the forehead (“Wow, I could have had a Julian calendar!”), and said, “Oh, wait – we miscalculated. 2000 is the end of the millennium, so, like, the end of the world is coming next year. Really!”

Anyway, on the ‘net this week somebody said that somebody said that somebody else said that we’ve got a tetrad coming. Whatever a tetrad is. And so with the tetrad comes the End Times, and this time – or end time - they really mean it, okay?

And yet – and yet Easter will come again this year. The Altar will be set right after the grim Triduum, and on Sunday morning spring flowers and morning sunlight will supplant the darkness of Good Friday. Local ministers and priests (Chaucer’s “parsouns”) will tell again a 2,000-year-old story because they look to God, not to Hi-Def images of Reverend 1-800-501C3, for the truth.

After the liturgy there will be merriment, dinner on the grounds (which really isn’t on the grounds, but in the hall), and an easter-egg hunt (which really is on the grounds, unless there is rain, in which case it will be in the hall).


The nice man who mows the church lawns will mutter for months (for this now is effectively a part of the liturgical calendar) about the lawnmower blades finding undiscovered plastic eggs and, worse, real eggs in an advanced state of malodorous decay.

But it’s all told much better in Rimsky-Korsakov’s Russian Easter Overture (except for the undiscovered eggs ripening through Ordinary Time), the sequence from Good Friday through Holy Saturday to Easter morning, followed by a happy feast.

In the evening we can again watch Charlton Heston lead the children of Israel out of the brickpits and into the desert, still fascinated even though we know how it ends. Great stories are like that.

Easter – or Pascha, if you prefer - beats superstition, including the laughable blood moon, all hollow. And you don’t have to send money to anyone – in every way, the debt has been paid.

-30-

Christos Voskrese!

Lawrence Mack Hall, HSG
mhall46184@aol.com
May, 2013

Christos Voskrese!

For Tod

 

The world is unusually quiet this dawn
With fading stars withdrawing in good grace
And drowsy, dreaming sunflowers, dewy-drooped,
Their golden crowns all motionless and still,
Stand patiently in their ordered garden rows,
Almost as if they wait for lazy bees
To wake and work, and so begin the day.
A solitary swallow sweeps the sky;
An early finch proclaims his leafy seat
While Old Kashtanka limps around the yard
Snuffling the boundaries on her morning patrol.

Then wide-yawning Mikhail, happily barefoot,

A lump of bread for nibbling in one hand,
A birch switch swishing menace in the other
Appears, and whistles up his father’s cows:
“Hey!  Alina, and Antonina! Up!
Up, up, Diana and Dominika!
You, too, Varvara and Valentina!
Pashka is here, and dawn, and spring, and life!”
And they are not reluctant then to rise
From sweet and grassy beds, with udders full,
Cow-gossip-lowing to the dairy barn.

Anastasia lights the ikon lamp

And crosses herself as her mother taught.
She’ll brew the tea, the strong black wake-up tea,
And think about that naughty, handsome Yuri
Who winked at her during the Liturgy
On the holiest midnight of the year.
O pray that watchful Father did not see!
Breakfast will be merry, an echo-feast
Of last night’s eggs, pysanky, sausage, kulich.
And Mother will pack Babushka’s basket,
Because only a mother can do that right

When Father Vasily arrived last night

In a limping Lada haloed in smoke,
The men put out their cigarettes and helped
With every precious vestment, cope, and chain,
For old Saint Basil’s has not its own priest,
Not since the Czar, and Seraphim-Diveyevo
From time to time, for weddings, holy days,
Funerals, supplies the needs of the parish,
Often with Father Vasily (whose mother
Begins most conversations with “My son,
The priest.…”), much to the amusement of all.

Voices fell, temperatures fell, darkness fell

And stars hovered low over the silent fields,
Dark larches, parking lots, and tractor sheds.
Inside the lightless church the priest began
The ancient prayers of desolate emptiness
To which the faithful whispered in reply,
Unworthy mourners at the Garden tomb,
Spiraling deeper and deeper in grief
Until that Word, by Saint Mary Magdalene
Revealed, with candles, hymns, and midnight bells
Spoke light and life to poor but hopeful souls.

The world is unusually quiet this dawn;

The sun is new-lamb warm upon creation,      
For Pascha gently rests upon the earth,
This holy Russia, whose martyrs and saints
Enlighten the nations through their witness of faith,
Mercy, blessings, penance, and prayer eternal
Now rising with a resurrection hymn,
And even needful chores are liturgies:
“Christos Voskrese  – Christ is risen indeed!”
And Old Kashtanka limps around the yard
Snuffling the boundaries on her morning patrol.

 

 Published in Longbows and Rosary Beads, http://longbowsandrosarybeads.blogspot.com/, 5 May  2013