Two Sisters - One Christ

This week in normal time my sister from out West is focusing on the Crucifixion of Jesus Christ in passion plays and church services of many styles, while my house in the East is dark and the parking lot is empty. This Sunday the difference will even more dramatic. Her mother will be tying pink ribbons around her Easter bonnet and filling her basket with chocolate bunnies, jellybeans, and sugary peeps, while I will be grateful for a little olive oil and a piece of fish.

The rest of the world looks on shaking their heads and wondering what the scandal was that caused our parents to get divorced. Then they shrug their shoulders and go back to hot dogs and a ball game.

And yet no one seems to think twice that while it’s daytime in Dayton, they are sleeping in Slovakia and yet there is only one sun. Geography shows us how it is possible to be far apart and yet have one major thing in common. The truth is that there is only one Son of God: Jesus Christ, and one day: Friday upon which He was nailed to the Cross, and one day on which He showed the world that it didn’t really kill Him. For my Western sister, and me in the East that is every Friday and every Sunday.

Calendars can be deceiving. Our two ways of calculating when we are happy and when we cry, have not separated us as much as some think. The most wonderful part of it all happens when we cross the street to cry louder with our sister on her Good Friday and rejoice raising that glass of champagne on Easter Sunday giggling about the holy supernatural phenomenon that happens when the Son rises in the West first. Both good sisters know that it is not ever normal time anyway because we live in the mystical immortal land of Christendom.  

Easter in Rome, Pascha in Constantinople