Stockholm, Wednesday.
I remember when I was little and took communion during an Easter celebration in Greece. The spoon was cold, the wine was sour and the bread was dry. It was no wafer but a hearty piece of dry white bread that just grew in your mouth. I especially remember that you did not get your own spoon – but that you shared with everyone else. But that was the way it was and nothing was said about it.
And despite the pandemic is it is still what it looks like in some Orthodox churches in Southern and Eastern Europe. There is something particularly absurd in pulling down a mouth guard to put a spoon in the mouth that has been in dozens of other people’s mouths and then pull up the mouth guard again.
But what is it that makes so many people willing to take this risk still? Especially as it turned out that even the men of the church can fall victim to covid 19.
In November, the head of the Serbian Orthodox Church, the Patriarch of Belgrade, died in the suites of Covid-19. He was tested positive days after attending the funeral of Montenegro’s highest Serbian Orthodox religious leader, who also died in covid-19. Patriarchs have also been cared for in Greece and Albania. Despite this, mourners have continued to kiss the coffins and hands of the deceased during the funerals.
Of course, the churches play own message some role here. There are many examples of priests in Greece and the Balkans who have declared that it is possible to hold infectious services, some have gone so far as to claim that one cannot be infected during communion because one is protected by God’s providence.
In Cyprus, a priest walked around and kissed all the children in a primary school, while in Greece, the church recently defied the government, which wanted to stop the services on the thirteenth day. The church urged its clergy to hold worship services anyway, but the Greek government, which prefers not to go into open conflict with the church, agreed to some kind of compromise despite the protests of epidemiologists.
But of course there are also many priests who supported the guidelines of the authorities. In a church in Kalamata in southern Greece, it was captured on video when a priest suddenly interrupted the Mass on Christmas Eve and turned around to reprimand a man who did not have a mouth guard.
When the man did not obey, the priest raised his voice, he slipped, as it were, from that calm, tolerant role that one is used to seeing priests in, and simply instructed the visitor.
“We do not continue the fair until you either put on your mouthguard or go out – in here you must respect your fellow human beings and the law – rebel you can be at home”.
Oh, you wonder a little how that man felt on the way home – when he decided to go to church in the middle of a burning pandemic – only to end up in a quarrel with the priest.
Filip Kotsambouikidis, Eastern European correspondent
Source: ICELAND NEWS