Pentecost is the birthday of the Christian church. Twelve people were together in a room – of which they, out of fear, kept the door closed – and God “filled them with power”. This changed the syn-agoge, “the assembled” into ek-klesia, “those called out”.
This recalls to me two images.
On the first picture by war correspondent Margaret Bourke-White some American soldiers attend Mass in March 1945 in the bombed cathedral of Cologne.
Having grown up in the depressing climate of the Hungary of the seventies, I had an image of the church something like this. It was agreeable to imagine it like this. It is so uplifting to believe in the power of the cathedral, of the together-ness, of the syn-agoge.
Nowadays, with much less illusion, I find more precise the image of an Easter procession in April 1942 somewhere in the Ukraine occupied by the German army. There is no priest with them: he was put in lager, has fled, or has changed over to the invaders just like the members of the Communist Party’s puppet organization “Priests for the Peace” delegated to the workers’ district of my childhood. There is only one male among them, probably because he was not good enough either for forced labor or for a partisan. He tries to hide behind the cross from the lens of the German soldier. The everydays of the women stumbling along behind him through the puddles are marked by tensions, small-mindedness, envy, misery. On this image there is nothing uplifting. From the gate of the house put in requisition some German officers are watching the march.
There is but one thing that cannot be seen on the picture. There is a music pertaining to it that is not always heard. But it fills with power whoever hears it, just as it used to do to those twelve.
Христос воскресе из мёртвых – Christ has risen from the dead. Orthodox Easter troparium. Choir of the Cathedral of Novokuznetsk.
This recalls to me two images.
On the first picture by war correspondent Margaret Bourke-White some American soldiers attend Mass in March 1945 in the bombed cathedral of Cologne.
Having grown up in the depressing climate of the Hungary of the seventies, I had an image of the church something like this. It was agreeable to imagine it like this. It is so uplifting to believe in the power of the cathedral, of the together-ness, of the syn-agoge.
Nowadays, with much less illusion, I find more precise the image of an Easter procession in April 1942 somewhere in the Ukraine occupied by the German army. There is no priest with them: he was put in lager, has fled, or has changed over to the invaders just like the members of the Communist Party’s puppet organization “Priests for the Peace” delegated to the workers’ district of my childhood. There is only one male among them, probably because he was not good enough either for forced labor or for a partisan. He tries to hide behind the cross from the lens of the German soldier. The everydays of the women stumbling along behind him through the puddles are marked by tensions, small-mindedness, envy, misery. On this image there is nothing uplifting. From the gate of the house put in requisition some German officers are watching the march.
There is but one thing that cannot be seen on the picture. There is a music pertaining to it that is not always heard. But it fills with power whoever hears it, just as it used to do to those twelve.
Христос воскресе из мёртвых – Christ has risen from the dead. Orthodox Easter troparium. Choir of the Cathedral of Novokuznetsk.
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