From On Life in St.Petersburg by Liz H. Sukhovskaya
My husband is preparing the Easter sermon for tomorrow (according to the Orthodox calendar) and I am collecting my own Easter thoughts.
I was thinking about the standard greeting and response and how I have heard it from childhood, though maybe in different forms and languages.
We used to gather with other families on Resurrection Day, and it was quite easy for the kids to learn the greeting: “He is Risen.” -” He is Risen Indeed!” Sometimes we repeated it while passing Communion around.
And one year, at the kids’ table, the girls and I (we tended to stick together) came up with our own version. Though the greetings had already been exchanged, we began to pass different things around the table, proclaiming to each other, “Bread!” -“Bread indeed.” “Butter!” -“Butter indeed.”
It was very childish and quite funny to us, but as I was reminiscing, I realized that the rationale behind the joke was that we were merely confirming what we regarded as fact. The “elements” on the table were tangible, and to argue with our proclamations would have been illogical. But we also had no reason to doubt that the news of the Resurrection was anything other than fact. We listened and repeated it and came to know, in our hearts, that it was true.
