Monday 12 April 2010

Lokomotiv Easter

One year when I was a seminarian in Rome, some of us attended a Russian Byzantine Easter Vigil. The extremely long service was interrupted every so often by the deacon proclaiming to the congregation in Russian "Christ is risen" and we had to shout back "Truly He is risen!" So this little dialogue is deeply embedded in the Russian celebration of Easter. I doubt, however, whether it's ever been used in the way it was this Easter...
I came across this amazing and strangely uplifting video. It seems that during a soccer match on Easter Sunday itself at Moscow Lokomotiv stadium, opposing soccer fans started chanting at each other. But these weren't the usual taunts you'd expect. At the beginning of the second half of the match thousands of fans of Dynamo started chanting "Christ is Risen!". Thousands of fans of Lokomotiv on the opposite side of the stadium responded "Truly He is Risen!"
In Moscow. Amazing.

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