One Missionary's Experience of One Pascha

Very low-key easter vigil. I can almost say that not one of the 'old-guard'— that is, the 20 to 30-something faithful— was there; only the boarding students at Chwa II (our local high school), and some of the newly baptized. Really, only about 5 of the old guard showed up. So there was none of the fighting, the struggling over language, the grabbing or hoarding or pushing aside from the singing, as had so marred last year's vigil for me. In fact it was oddly one of the nicest vigils I've taken part in, and I've been to 30 of them now.

I'd actually been kind of grimly prepared for trouble. Or at least for having to practice "patiences", as a friend of mine puts it. But as it turned out, there wasn't anyone in the church except me and two or three high school kids when the bishop began the first heirmos of the nocturnes (in luganda) and told me to continue with the first troparion (in english)— I barely had the right page open— but I found it, and we went back and forth like that until some other guys showed up and took the left choir; whereupon it was natural to continue, first the bishop (luganda), then the right choir (english), and then the left choir (in luganda), and so on, just like that, very orderly, very peaceful, very beautiful, just as it should be.

I don't want to insist on english, by the way; it's just that i can't sing unpracticed luganda yet, and in any case there are other non-luganda speakers in the congregation, so it seems only reasonable to do something they understand at least part of the time. But the feeling I often get here is one that's very familiar to anyone who has lived through the struggle of an ethnic Orthodox parish in America to accommodate non-ethnic speakers— with the difference, of course, that that here it's the 'traditional' language (luganda) that must carry the day. Acknowledged! But last year had been so unpleasant. There had been a lot of tension in the community anyway, due to reasons I had nothing to do with, which was playing into our services somewhat noticeably; and in addition there seemed to be a good deal of resentment among the 20-30 year olds who grew up under Bishop Nankyama and remember him very fondly, but who (to be honest) really haven't learned anything new since he died— that i was here and teaching the seminarians to sing in english with in a style of music they themselves didn't know. Well, but I didn't have much choice about that. In fact Bishop Nankyama has been dead for a long time, and nobody else was teaching the seminarians anything at all. So, what i know is what I know, and it's all I can teach. I was doing the best I could, even though i will be the first to recognize its inadequacy.



But when it came to holy week, a mean-spirited contentiousness and exclusion seemed to come out, as if to say, 'Ok, buddy, you can do the daily services however you like, but we're not going to let you take holy week from us!' Which had not been my intention at all— but the fact is, the seminarians and I had been carrying the weight of all of the services through all of Lent— no one else was even coming to them— and since some 10 to 20 percent of the congregation did not speak luganda or at least it wasn't their first language anyway— it did not seem unreasonable to expect the new forms I was teaching would have some role in the scheme of things. So, to be snubbed like that was a little depressing. Well, I have no right to insist, of course... and Madam Sharon thinks that I do insist, too much!— so I deserve what I get... but in the long run, it just felt sort of petty. Well, maybe so, maybe no. But in any case, there was none of that, this year.

As I expect most of my readers will be aware, in general, the services of pascha are much shorter and quicker than those of lent and holy week. Paschal nocturnes doesn't consist of much more than the canon, for example. And the bishop here likes to keep it to a minimum even then, so our celebration of the nocturnes consisted entirely and only of the canon. But we chanted it at a nice, relaxed pace, and still ended up repeating the last three odes in order to fill the time till midnight. It was fine, very smooth, very peaceful. I often wish there were a way for us to slow down and absorb the words more deeply, even when they are as familiar as old friends; and I truly wish people in the congregation here could hear and understand what we're saying, at all— but at least the singers are getting a taste, anyway:

O Lord my God, I will sing you a funeral hymn, a song at your burial: for by burial you have opened the gates of life to me, and by death you have slain death and Hades.

All things above and all beneath the earth quaked with fear at your death, O Savior, as they beheld you on your throne on high and in the tomb below. For you lie before our eyes and beyond our understanding, a corpse yet the very Source of Life.

To fill all things with your glory, you went down into the nethermost parts of the earth: for my person that is in Adam was not hidden from you, O Friend of man, but you are buried in the tomb and restore me from corruption.

Hades was filled with bitterness when it met you, O Word, for it saw a mortal deified, marked by wounds yet all powerful; and it shrank back in fear at this sight.

Becoming a creature formed from dust, O Creator, you make new those born on earth....

By death you transform mortality, and by your burial, corruption. With divine power you make incorruptible the nature you have taken, rendering it immortal; for, O Master, your flesh saw no corruption, nor was your soul left in Hades as that of a stranger.

O my Maker... becoming Adam, in ways surpassing nature you slept a life-giving sleep, awakening life from sleep and corruption, by your almighty power.

The fall of Adam brought death to man but not to God. For though the earthly substance of your flesh suffered, yet the Divinity remained impassible; what was corruptible in your human nature you transformed to incorruption, and by your Resurrection you revealed a fountain of immortal life.

Hades is king over mortal men, but not forever. Laid in the sepulchre, O mighty Lord, with your life-giving hand you have burst asunder the bars of death. To those from every age who slept in the tombs, you have proclaimed true deliverance, O Savior, who are become the firstborn from the dead.

O happy tomb! It received within itself the Creator, as one asleep, and it was made a divine treasury of life, for our salvation who sing: O God our Deliverer, blessed are you.

The Life of all submits to be laid in the tomb, according to the law of the dead, and he makes it a source of awakening, for our salvation who sing: O God our Deliverer, blessed are you.

...he who dwells on high is numbered with the dead, and lodges as a stranger in a narrow tomb.



The most pure Temple is destroyed, but raises up the fallen tabernacle. The second Adam, he who dwells on high, has come down to the first Adam in the depths of Hades.

‘By my own will the earth covers me, O Mother, but the gatekeepers of Hades tremble as they see me, clothed in the bloodstained garment of vengeance: for on the Cross as God have I struck down mine enemies, and I shall rise again and magnify you.’

Today a tomb holds him who holds the creation in the hollow of his hand; a stone covers him who covered the heavens with glory. Life sleeps and Hades trembles, and Adam is set free from his bonds. Glory to your dispensation, by which you have accomplished all things, granting us an eternal Sabbath rest, your most holy Resurrection from the dead.

What is this sight that we behold? What is this present rest? The King of the ages, having through suffering fulfilled the plan of salvation, keeps Sabbath in the tomb, granting us a new Sabbath. To him let us cry aloud: Arise, O Lord, judge the earth, for measureless is your great mercy and you reign forever.

— But the fact is, very little, if any, of this gets across, at all. English is a problem. We need to translate. Singing is a challenge— we need to learn to keep together. And we seriously need to prepare the ground with evangelization and catechesis.

As to the service itself, all the lights (both fluorescent and incandescent) were ON full blast from the beginning; I asked the bishop whether we might turn some off, and he said to do so "slowly by slowly"— but this was only about 7 minutes to midnight, so we managed to turn off only about half of them by the time the nocturnes were over. Part of the delay was that the kids who were near the switches had (and have) no idea that light and darkness are meaningful; they just figure if there's a service, you turn the lights ON. So— we had no experience, no liturgical iconography, of any passage from darkness to light. Just turning them off for 'Come, receive the light' and then turning them on again doesn't really make the passage from death to life very manifest. But anyway, the lights did go out, the bishop sang, 'Come, receive the light', we got our candles lit, walked to the back of the church, out onto the porch (no procession around the church), and heard the gospel of Mark and the paschal proclamation, and came back inside— into a still-dark church; they had neither closed the doors nor turned the lights back on, so again we missed the dazzling passage from darkness to light that is supposed to be such a strong part of the paschal vigil. I was at the head of the crowd (I won't call it a procession) and managed to get to the switches at least before the last half of the people were back in their pews, but I don't think anyone noticed anything about the light. Well, I tried. Then we sang the canon of pascha, again at a very relaxed pace, and the praises, and the paschal stichera, and it was over. They do liturgy here in the morning, as on an ordinary sunday. We went home and resumed with the doxology in the morning.

It was actually rather nice and blessedly short, after all the ordeal of lent. I have to admit I was rather exhausted from doing matins, great compline, vespers, and canon or akathist or presanctified as appointed— 5 or 6 hours every single day— for the past 49 days, so i was just glad that pascha had finally come and the ordeal was almost over, with a little rest before the finish.

In fact the only annoying part of the service was that they banged the bells from the paschal proclamation right through the end of the 6th ode— too loud to really hear the canon adequately, and since our bells are just broken chunks of metal, the sound is very unpleasant: Bang bang bang; bang bang BANG bang, bang bang bang; repeat. Yet that did not deeply mar the night.

I seriously wondered where all the faithful were. Well, Ugandans don't like to go out at night; nobody stays up very late since electric power is a luxury that few people even have, so they aren't used to it, and by midnight most people become zombies and fall asleep in the pews even if they do come. Then, there are security issues with moving around at night— thieves and robbers— not too many, thank God, but they are there. Most importantly, we make no effort as yet to really educate people about the services, what they mean, why this one is at night, why it's important to come, etc— so there's not much motivation to show up for a late service when the 'easter prayers' (sic) are going to be in the morning anyway. But really, if the Chwa students hadn't been here, we'd have had maybe 20 people in church. But the old guard hadn't been seen much throughout all of lent, and I do seriously wonder where they were. I think there has been a lot of attrition since last year, but it's hard to tell. Many did show up in the morning.



In the morning, the liturgy was ok, though there was nothing striking or special about it except people held candes and we sang 'Christ is risen' as often as appointed; in many ways, it was just another church ceremony gotten through, mercifully short, yet somehow too short, and yet again, somehow too long. Well, that's just my own feelings.

Of course it all in luganda, but that's mostly only proper somehow, even though a large number of people at this liturgy were once-or-twice-a-year slavs or greeks— not even ugandans— not to mention the non-baganda ugandans. Luganda is what they sing here, in our parish, for the liturgy, so luganda is what they sang. There hasn't been any effort to learn anything else— nothing like choir practice, for example; or when they do have choir practice, they learn protestant hymns like the ones they in fact sang during communion. The paschal stichera are, for instance, unknown. To tell the truth, there is as much effort to accommodate non-luganda speakers as there is to learn the paschal stichera— which does make me a bit sad when i see that the non-luganda speakers are not particularly few, and very sad when, for instance, three different Orthodox people asked me the other day, independently of each other, what was the big deal about easter, what did Jesus do on that day. But at least people sing with gusto here.

To be sure, in life there are always some difficult people, and one of them here rules the choir on sunday. And generally he does not make room for others, so even very repetitive things like the antiphons will be sung exclusively in luganda. That's not going to change any time soon! But I'm used to this and it's ok, I didn't even think to object. Yet at paschal vespers, when I moved to start a sticheron in english in the order we normally follow, he shoved me aside, so I felt, all right, have it your way, but really, thanks and what is this all about anyway. So the paschal services ended for me on a somewhat sour note.

There are things like the services of holy week and pascha— always things i care about deeply— which somehow or other always end up forcing me to ask how tolerant, flexible, understanding, forgiving, and compassionate I really am?



But I was able to give one very impoverished third-grader a new easter dress— something she never expected in a million years— and I had a very delicious meal at Fr Joseph's with his wife and daughters and my two godsons, Mambo and Apollo.

There are times I honestly wonder what I am doing here. Since the seminary is not operating and I have nothing to do with the office, I'm a bit isolated. I have a few friends, but the intellectual and cultural differences are pretty vast. There's plenty of work, but not the kind I am likely to see results from in any visible time frame. So there is little distraction to keep me from facing, daily, my own moods. And they're not always upbeat!

But I am always amazed at how meditation often works a deep change, unexpectedly, in the heart of the way one sees the world.