Expecto Bock-Peck?

It was going to be my first Pascha in the Byzantine Catholic church.

I wanted to get everything right.

This was impossible, of course. I had not been physically well enough to fast for all of Great Lent, as I’ve already written about. I drank vegetable-and-yogurt smoothies and ate beef and cauliflower every day, because that’s the food my stupid autoimmune body can digest. I even brought myself a meat-containing snack at the Wednesday Night soup social.  Now I was not physically well enough to get Easter right either. It all started on Lazarus Saturday, when the church was baking shiny and delicious-smelling paska bread in the social hall, with flour all over the tables and the windows closed. I went in to use the bathroom and found myself in a mine field; I pulled my shirt up over my mouth and nose and ran.

This is not a polite thing to do without explanation when you enter a room where all the pleasant old people of the parish are happily baking a hundred loaves of paska bread. But I didn’t have a choice. I could be sick for days if I eat, touch or inhale wheat. My lungs burned just from the exposure I got sprinting to the bathroom.

Days later, on the day I’d made an appointment to finally go to confession, I had an autoimmune flare-up and spent the morning in bed.

Then it was time to prepare the Easter basket. In my new church, we get our Easter meal blessed after Easter Matins, and you’re supposed to bring it to Liturgy in a basket. But it’s supposed to be an attractive heirloom grown-up’s wicker basket, and it’s supposed to have an attractive heirloom embroidered basket cover on top of it. I didn’t have either of those things, just a flimsy children’s basket from Wal Mart. I did, however, have fabric paint and a clean pillowcase.

I consulted with my friends on Facebook. “I’m squinting at photos of basket covers online,” I said. “I see something that looks like xpntoc bocpec and I see something that looks like Xpltoc Aveoton. Which one should I paint on a Byzantine Catholic Pascha basket? And somebody stop me from pronouncing that first one ‘expecto bock-peck,’ because that’s what it looks like.”

It turns out that the correct inscription was the thing that looked like xpntoc bocpekc, which if you actually read Cyrillic is pronounced “Christus voskres” and means “Christ is risen.” The other thing was “Christos Anesti” which is Greek for the same thing. But Expecto Bock-Peck makes an excellent Harry Potter-style Easter greeting, so I kept saying it.

The basket cover was the only thing that turned out nicely, even if it was painted and not embroidered.

I tried to make gluten-free paska bread to put in the basket. The recipe I tried was disgusting– burnt to cinders on the outside while still curds and whey inside, tasting of sour lemon peel with too little sugar. I doctored it up with store-bought cream cheese icing and pastel sprinkles. I put it in the basket with sausage, bacon, and a stick of butter– this was going to be a butter lamb, but the melted butter leaked out of the lamb mold and into an ice cube tray in the freezer. I threw in some pysanky, which were cracked and smudged because I’m terrible at making pysanky, and some candy eggs from Aldi.

At the last minute, my daughter refused to put on her Easter dress because she hates dresses. At that point I had a Mom Fit. The dress cost twenty dollars. It was too small to make into a tablecloth or something useful. She needed to wear the dress, but she would not. And there was no making her.  There was no time to argue. My ride was there. We went to Liturgy, with Rosie in her leggings and star-spangled Wal Mart top.

And I can show you what the liturgy was like directly, because my church has a livestream.

Christ is risen  from the dead. With all of my physical limitations, my ignorance, my lack of resources, my bad temper, my poor cooking skills, I still failed to ruin Easter, because Christ rose from the dead. I couldn’t prevent that any more than the Roman guards that were sitting in front of the tomb when it happened. And it was a beautiful and grace-filled Easter after all.

I’m reminded of a homily by Saint John Chrysostom:

If any have toiled from the first hour,
let them receive their due reward;
If any have come after the third hour,
let him with gratitude join in the Feast!
And he that arrived after the sixth hour,
let him not doubt; for he too shall sustain no loss.
And if any delayed until the ninth hour,
let him not hesitate; but let him come too.
And he who arrived only at the eleventh hour,
let him not be afraid by reason of his delay.
For the Lord is gracious and receives the last even as the first.
He gives rest to him that comes at the eleventh hour,
as well as to him that toiled from the first.

To this one He gives, and upon another He bestows.
He accepts the works as He greets the endeavor.
The deed He honors and the intention He commends.
Let us all enter into the joy of the Lord!

First and last alike receive your reward;
rich and poor, rejoice together!
Sober and slothful, celebrate the day!
You that have kept the fast, and you that have not,
rejoice today for the Table is richly laden!

Feast royally on it, the calf is a fatted one.
Let no one go away hungry. Partake, all, of the cup of faith.
Enjoy all the riches of His goodness!

Let no one grieve at his poverty,
for the universal kingdom has been revealed.

It is Easter. Christ has passed over from death to life, because He loves me, and everything else is decidedly irrelevant. Whether you fasted or whether you didn’t, whether you felt yourself to have a good Lent or not, whether your paska has store-bought icing, He is risen, and He shares with you the spoils of His victory. Of course, that isn’t fair of Him, but we should be grateful that He isn’t fair. We couldn’t have earned them anyway.

Expecto Bock-peck. Christus Voskres. Christos Anesti. He is Risen. Indeed, He is Risen! Christ is risen from the dead. By death He trampled death, and to those in the tombs He granted life. And the ones in the tombs were you and me.

I don’t deserve it, but here I am.