CHRIST IS RISEN

Khrystos voskres! Voistynu voskres! (Ukr: Христос Воскрес! Воістину Воскрес; Eng: Christ is risen! Truly, He is Risen). It would seem that these words are familiar to every Ukrainian since childhood. The words that we use to greet one another in the springtime when gardens are bloom and when Ukrainians and whole Eastern Christians are celebrating their biggest holliday - Velikden (Easter).

In fact these words are reflects the deepness of our faith and the foundation of our traditions. In contrast to other religions Orthodox philosophy considers Velikden or Easter (in the Occidental tradition) a most important holiday. And this is very symbolic in the modern world, which has been trying to impose us a materialist world view. It is not difficult to understand the meaning of Christmas, everyone understands this because every creature was born one day. But what means the concept of resurrection? A person with materialist type of world view will never understands this because only the faith can explain us such transcendental concepts. Our faith connects us with the Lord, and by our faith He sends His grace upon us.

Of course there are someone, who don't like this. Even in the Holy Scripture (Matt. 28:15) we can find mentions of the attempts of Jews to deny the truth of the Resurrection of Christ. Moreover, the same forces and their hirelings haven't left their attempts to outshine and destroy our faith till now! Few dozens years ago, in Soviet times representatives of communist authorities in cooperation with police were trying to drive away the Ukrainian youth from church during the Easter night service. Nowadays, in the times of rule of godless extreme liberalism, the servants of transnational capital are trying to humilate our faith, traditions and church through TV and the internet. They try to replace our traditions with all sorts of neo-manichean and "modern" traditions like Helloween  (in its modern form, which has nothing similar to traditional Celtic All Souls' Day), or "international" feasts, like May 1, that isn't inherent for the Ukrainian culture.

But this didn't worked then, and don't work now despite all efforts! Recall, according to opinion polls most part of Ukrainians consider Velikden one of the most important feasts and usually celebrate it (70%). And this year on the Easter night millions of ordinary Ukrainian families put their Easter cake and few pysankas to their festive baskets and went to the night service in Church on May 1, , not to a night club.

All Ukrainians, as one great family, gathered together as their ancestors had gathered for hundreds years before. And the feast we were celebrating is not something established by politicians and governments, but a great day, meaning of which is higher then materialist world.