That’s my plate full of roast pork (see below) and boudin, at a Pascha afternoon feast hosted by a couple in our Orthodox parish. That’s one of my church friends turned to watch a recording of the Paschal liturgy from Moscow’s Christ the Saviour cathedral, broadcast on RT. We were all agog at the richness of the liturgy. I stood there at one point watching the rite with a different church friend, and said, “We’re both old enough to remember a time when it was unimaginable that this sort of thing would be going on in Russia.” Despite all the troubles in the world today, this is a great blessing. Христос воскрес! Truly He is risen!

Think, though, how strange it is that a bunch of south Louisiana converts (most of us) to Orthodoxy would be sitting around eating roast pork and boudin, watching with delight a recording of the Paschal liturgy from Moscow from the night before. If you had said to people a generation ago that any of this would be possible, much less likely, nobody would have believed you…