It was 2005, and I was wrapping up the last of my five years in Romania. Friends kept telling me that I shouldn’t leave Romania without having attended an Orthodox Easter vigil. So, with Corina agreeing to stay home with our son, I decided that I would stay up until midnight on the Saturday before Easter and attend the service outside the Orthodox church building across the street from our apartment.
Participating at a Romanian Orthodox Easter vigil was a new experience for me. I had been with Corina to Orthodox church services, but apart from some of the Orthodox theologians we had been acquainted with at my university, the Easter tradition of Romanian Orthodox Christians remained a mystery (except for those elements that had been adopted by evangelicals).
Just a few minutes before midnight, I headed out to the Orthodox church across the street (see picture on the right). People were already gathering outside the church, many of them holding long, unlit yellow candles. Others were entering the church to buy candles and then returning outside to the swelling crowd. To make sure I didn’t miss any of the action, I moved up next to the outside steps at the entrance of the church. It was chilly outside, so I was thankful for my light jacket.
At midnight, the church bells began to ring triumphantly, their sound pealing through the crisp evening air. Someone came out of the church with a candle already lit, and one by one, each candle was lit until a yellow glow surrounded the church.
Moments later, the main priest, dressed in bright vestments, came out of the church holding a large cross. Several banners waved behind him.
When the priest came down into the crowd, he turned and faced the church building, and the doors were solemnly closed. He then took a large Book into his hands and began reading from Matthew 28. After several moments of chanting and spreading the aroma of incense into the crowd, the priest shouted: “Glory to the holy, life-creating and undivided Trinity always, now and ever, and unto ages of ages!” Then the classic Romanian Easter song began – the voices of the crowd raised in one accord in celebration:
Christ is risen from the dead,
trampling down death by death,
and to those in the tombs
bestowing life!
Moments later, the priest walked to the doors of the church and began to beat on them, shouting: “Open your gates for the King of Glory!” The doors were opened, and the bells began to ring again. Then, the entire crowd outside, with candles lit, began to walk up the steps and into the church. Being in the corner near the stairs, I was swept up into the church with the crowd. Since everyone around me had lighted candles, I was afraid to try to leave, since it would have been easy for my jacket to brush up against a candle and catch fire!
The sanctuary was packed with people. All open spaces in the sanctuary were filled. I managed to make my way to the middle of the church, standing in the aisle between dozens of others. The priest continued to sing of the Resurrection. A few moments later, he announced, “Christ is risen!” And the entire church replied with a thundering, “He is risen indeed!”
The liturgy inside the church continued for another hour. One by one, the candles around me began to go out, until I felt safe enough to make my way through the crowd and head back home. It was 1:35 in the morning by this time, and the service was coming to a close.
Reflections
Many thoughts went through my mind during and after the Orthodox Easter vigil. I appreciated the strong emphasis that the Orthodox Christians placed on Jesus’ Resurrection. The added touch of candles being lit at midnight reiterated the importance of the new creation that dawned that Easter morning. The triumphant sound of church bells, the spine-tingling command to “make way for the King of Glory,” and the early-church announcement “Christ is risen” were edifying and celebratory features of the event.
At the same time, much of what I saw was disturbing. Some Orthodox Christians who arrived late, after the candles had been lit, wanted to go up into the church and buy candles so they could participate. The people around me did not want to be bothered by them traipsing clumsily through the crowd, so they lied and said that there were no more candles, this despite the fact that people will still exiting the church with lit candles!
The church service featured a beautiful liturgy, but except for the singing of the classic Easter song and the occasional reference to the Trinity (to which all the attendees cross themselves), there was little participation from the crowd. Most of the people around me seemed to be there out of obligation. The liturgy expressed beautifully the transcendence of our God, but left little for the crowd to experience of his immanence. (In many evangelical churches, we tend toward the opposite error – an expression of God’s closeness without an awe-inspiring vision of his “otherness.”)
I also wondered if those around me truly believed that Christ had risen bodily from the dead at a given time in history. Since the Romanian Orthodox church is so strongly tied to Romanian culture and history, it would be easy to go through the traditional formalities once a year in celebration of Easter, without ever really believing that the events celebrated had any bearing on today’s world or personal salvation.
Overall, the Easter vigil widened my perspective of Christian tradition and celebration, offering me a glimpse at a vastly different segment of Christianity. Still, I was happy to be back in evangelical church services for Easter services the next day, where I heard a powerful message about the meaning of Christ’s death for sinners and his resurrection to new life.
