April 24, 2012
Brooklyn, NY: God’s Cupola: Pascha in the Parish of the Mother of God "The Inexhaustible Chalice" ‒ An Article by the Rector

Where have we not been forced to serve the Divine Liturgy! I remember, when I was still a subdeacon, helping Father Archpriest George Kallaur (now rector of the Church of our Lady "Unexpected Joy" in Staten Island, NY) open the Church of the Holy New Martyrs & Confessors of Russia in Brooklyn. "And there was no room for them in the inn…," reads the Holy Gospel on Christ’s Nativity – so it was for us, at the parish’s nativity. The only location we would find was in a smoky little restaurant called Papa Leone on West End Avenue. "It’s nothing but another temptation!", ‒ said one Archpriest at the time. When the Lord summoned me to stand before His Holy Altar, we served in a school gymnasium, beneath the basketball hoop, in a small concert hall at a home for the elderly, and in a tiny chapel, where all we had for an altar table was a window sill. And that is to say nothing of molebens, which we served and serve in the most uncultivated spots in Brighton every time we go to care for our homeless parishioners… After all that, where could we serve that could possibly stun us? But this Pascha, we served in local Seaside Park, and such a Liturgy I have never seen at a single service in my entire life!

O Lord! What a Liturgy! You could practically feel in your skin what is meant by the words "joint service." And into the boundless cupola of the sky your very heart itself could cry out: "In pe-e-e-e-e-ace let us pray to the Lord!" ‒ and it seemed as though it were not the choir, but the angelic hosts, defending a sleeping New York, replying to us: "Lo-o-o-o-o-rd, have me-e-e-e-e-rcy!"

After Paschal Matins, when our watches read 1:00 AM, the organizer of this marvelous undertaking, Orthodox Business Association President Igor K. Popov, peeked in the altar and, bowing, quietly informed us that the police earnestly requested that we finish by 1:30. I told him that, if we start Liturgy now, then until it is completed, the only way I would be taken away from it is if they were to drag me by my legs, Chalice and altar table and all. I promised to serve quickly, although I dislike rushing while performing the Sacrament of Sacraments. Without skipping a word of the service, having read the Holy Gospel in Church Slavonic, Russian, Georgian, and French, and communed 75 people, we completed this Great Service in forty-five minutes, and our souls continued singing alongside the World Above: "CHRIST IS RISEN FROM THE DEAD, TRAMPLING DOWN DEATH BY DEATH!..."

At first it seemed to me that the rain had chased away the daredevils that came to the park with us to celebrate the Feast of Feasts. When we began the procession, however, we saw that almost 400 people were walking with us.

The following day, on Bright Monday, one unfamiliar mother came up to me with her children and loudly thanked me: "You have given us such a feast! We have never seen anything like it!"

During the service in the park, the spiritual front in the church was being a defended by our second priest, Fr. Paul Ivanov. Everything here proceeded as it should, without a hitch. After Liturgy, one of our little altar servers, Andrusha, counted and counted, in obedience, all those who came up to congratulate the priests on the feast. He counted on, muttering to himself, "One hundred and seventy-five… Who needs this?... one hundred and seventy-six… Mama, you’re our hundred and seventy-seventh!" There were one hundred ninety-nine communicants alone in our tiny house church. On Sunday at 9:00 AM, our elder priest, Fr. Ilya Gun, celebrated a third Liturgy on a third altar table. The church was once again filled to the brim. "Like sardines in a can! What grace!" ‒ said someone among the worshippers.

O Resurrected Christ! Help us to build a church in Thy Name!

Priest Vadim Arefiev
www.svdom.org

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