CHRIST Is R IS£H
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SECOND CLASS POSTAGE PAID AT LINDEN, NJ AND OTHER MAILING ADDRESSES NO.7 CARPATHO-RUS, ALLENTOWN.N.J. MARCH3l,2000 VOL. LXXIII Translated from one of our old 1930s calendars. CHRIST Is RIS£H In Our Native Land This happened last year, in one of our Galician villages. With bright sunshine and bright happiness, spring appeared in Peter Zarechny's home. I don't want to write about this happiness, because as a rule it is not possible to describe happiness exactly, and also I would have to get inside Peter's soul to understand this happiness as he understood it. Orphaned from childhood, he had wandered around in foreign lands. He had spent some time in Prussia and in America, searching for his fortune. But nowhere could he find this fortune. He was never destitute, never hungry, and yet something was always lacking. He was hard working, so he never knew any great want. Nevertheless, he always had this overwhelming dream of familiar: happiness, not out there somewhere among foreigners but right here in his native land, among his own people, on the banks of a mountain brook, in a cherry orchard, under a thatched roof. That is what he thought of as his fortune. f) L.urdIlluffKing, p.s II fll()rto!illl1n,!)'iJu w!I ill Ule /Olllb willi That is how he saw himself in the days of his Your icdj;, lIS yod'; !foil m>~ on tile ulirt!tIiI!f rsli.fiIlg.l"IMm childhood, living with his good parents. How well from &OlTIJption (InatUs1To!llil# tkutJi. 701I11T~ tIle !Pu.Jsov.:r 0/ they lived or if they were happy, he did not know I'KQ1TlII'tilJn Imd Ule -;fair/a/ion 0/ Ule 'J-J.1Jr/J. nor did he dwell on it much. He knew only that he himself lived very well then. He went to school and The Holy Synod of the Orthodox Church In of eternal life by your Resurrection." And studied, and after school he herded geese outside America through the darkness of this world we each came the village. He gazed on this simple peasant life forward with our candles to take light from the with his child's eyes, and he liked it very much. PASCHA paschal light of the risen Christ. Making our Then, suddenly, Heaven willed that he lose both his procession together into Church again and again, To the Vendrable Hierarchs, Clergy and Faithful of father and his mother in the same year. we joyously discover that: "As giving life, as the Orthodox Church in America more splendid than paradise, and more radiant His older brother took over the homestead, than any royal chamber, your tomb 0 Christ, is Dearly Beloved in Christ: and he himself went to work as a shepherd for the the fountain of our Resurrection!" local pastor. He continued going to the village We are struck by the exuberant words of school, and his life with the priest was not bad at Then tasting of the fountain of immortality, the paschal homily of St. John Chrysostom - by all. He moved up from shepherd to wagon master, we sing our festal shout to the God who has given the all-embracing generosity with which he, on and since he was a well behaved lad he stayed us light: "0 Christ! Great and most Holy behalf of Christ, invites all to partake of the Paschal with his pastor for ten whole years! When the old Paschal 0 Wisdom, Word, and Power of God! Joy. For surely, even as all have failed - some reverend closed his eyes in eternal sleep, Peter Grant that we may more perfectly partake of more, others less - St. John echoes the glorious went to Prussia and then to America. Since he you in the never-ending day of your Kingdom!" gift we have been given in the feast of Pascha: was a hard worker, he managed to save some "And of His fullness we have all received, and What we have received in this sacred money, always with the notion of returning to his grace for grace" (IN 1:16). pascha is not ritual, but life! Then let us, as native village, claiming his share from his brother, followers of the risen· Christ, walk always, not as buying some more land, building a new house, Each of us is invited to partake of the children of darkness, but as children of the light getting married, and raising a family. fullness of this joy and enter into the feast of the and chikten of the day. Let us witness to this light Resurrection. Let us therefore receive the words of which overcomes the darkness of sin and death. And he had managed to do all that the :grace shining forth: from the lips of the Golden Even as we share the joys and blessings of the previous spring. He had married the prettiest girl in Mouthed like a "beacon enlightening the paschal night that fills all things with light, let us be the village, and she might even have been the universe" and "with rejoicing enter Into the Joy a joy and blessing to one another, bearing lights, richest! He had completed his military service, had of our Lord, - for Christ is Risen!" lighting the way for others~ Having taken light from fulfilled his obligations, and could now live the Ught that is never overtaken by darkness, "let peacefully and happily. This entrance begins with the baptism with your light so shine before men, that they may which we have been baptized and the cup from see your good works, and glorify your Father And now this spring gave promise of a which we drink - proclaiming Christ's death and Who Is In Heaven': (MT 5:16) good year. His crops were all planted and in good confessing Christ's resurrection. As we entered CHRIST IS RISEN! INDEED HE IS RISEN! shape, his orchards were blooming, and his dear into the holy passion of Christ, we sang on Palm With love in Christ, Sunday, ''When we were buried with you in Continued on Page 4, Column I / ~. baptism, 0 Christ God, we were made worthy Metropolitan THEODOSIUS and members of the Holy Synod Lr ~ PAGE 2 CARP ATHO--RUS FRIDA Y ,MARCH 31. 2000 An interesting in-depth analysis of the Soviet Union as a federation of "equal, sovereign discredit him by the Party apparat and other climatic events that began in 1985 in the former Soviet republics." contenders for the post merely served to Soviet Union up to the present day. This is the one To most, this program looked like a sure strengthen his image as the hounded sufferer for hundred first installment of the story from Moscow formula for another edition of zastoy, or Brezhnev the truth and for people's happiness. But the Party News. type stagnation, its mothball odor was too strong: was not giving up. Ryzhkov was actually proposing socialist recipes Not long before the voting day, on June 10, The Crash of an Empire Which, in the people's experience, had failed Pravda published an article'by three (more or less) dismally and continued to fail all around them. distinguished scholars based on an analysis of A Colloquial Chronicle, Russia, 1985-1991, Part In simple terms, the people had had more than 70 of Yeltsin's speeches and his 101. enough of Ryzhkov's SOcialism, with its empty shop autobiography Confessions on a Given Theme. counters, and were prepared to gamble on an The descriptiorT of Yeltsin's character that emerged Election of Peasant Czar uncertain future into which Yeltsin was luring them. from this analYSis was far from flattering-and On a gray, slushy, miserable day I was But then I may be exaggerating the importance of uncomfortably close to the truth. standing at a bus stop waiting for a bus that might these rational considerations: It may simply be that His mental processes were said 1:0 be never come, when I heard some of the other the people ~st didn't like Ryzhkov, who was too marked by the dominant stereotype of looking out sufferers in the small crowd mumble words that closely ass~ated with Gorbachev and the Party for enemies responsible for his personal failures; a made a big cold toad stir in the pit of my stomach: their hea~ went out to the man who so tough style of decision making; and the prevalence "Yeltsin ... accident...accident my fooL."1 moved dramatically- one might say histrionically, was of the emotional sphere over the rational one, of closer to the mumblers and soon got the full story: fighting agalilst those evil forces of the past. emotions over logic (a "feminine" type _of Yeltsin's car had been involved in an accident The fielding of Vadim Bakatin, a former character), and of tactical vision over strategic. downtown, right on Tverskaya. Yeltsin himself was provincial fi"t secretary and KGB head who, on Yeltsin's communication skills came in for in hospital badly smashed up, not expected to live, very slim ~dence, enjoyed the reputation of a even harsher criticism: The scholars commented but here someone objected-no, that was not true, liberal, was J;)bviously a Gorbachev ruse to split the on his -poor lexicon, long-winded, jumbled he only had concussion and a thigh injured, to democratic ;vote. Bakatin was much slicker than sentences that led nowhere, tongue-tied ramblings which another rejoined gloomily, Vsyo ravno ne Yeltsin the boll in a china shop and might appeal to with frequent "parasite" words like his trademark, uspokoyatsya, poka ne udelayut ('~II the same the less imp.