April 9, 2023 | By John Kass

My cousins and I got our ears boxed one Easter Sunday long ago. The whipping that we deserved involved snakes. We’re not complaining. Whenever the Kass boys got together with Ekonomou boys, there was trouble, something would be broken, something would be smashed, some aunt or uncle would be at their wit’s end and the only solution was grabbing us by the ear and cracking us on the back of the head.

We called this, onomatopoetically the good old kaff-keef or better yet a hastouki. A good thwack or two with a wooden spoon or koutala wouldn’t hurt.

How did the snakes enter in on Easter Sunday? Let me tell you. We were compelled to wear our itchy Sunday Best clothes including ties, and we asked my mom if we could go on a bike ride. We rode off angelically, seven boys between the ages 8-11, to Lawn Manor Park eight blocks away. Oak Lawn was then spanking brand new, even the parks were brand new, and the open grassland was full of snakes. It was a boy’s delight.

There were Garter snakes. There were green snakes. None of these were poisonous. My cousins Jimmy and Johnny were experts in the ways of snakes. We caught them by the handful and filled two large egg boxes full of snakes. Then we rode home.

“Come and see!” We told our aunts, uncles, and parents, “look here!” and then we poured the snakes onto the patio. There were conservatively 200 snakes at least. I silently dodged a kick from my father, but my brothers Peter and Nick weren’t so lucky. Our cousins weren’t so lucky either. And I remember it now in stop-action with blows to the head with open palms and the hastoukis and kaff-keefs raining down upon us all.

The thing to remember about such events—is that they’re often quickly forgotten. And in about a half hour we’d forgotten our punishment for introducing the Evil One into our Easter celebration. I almost wanted to say Jesus loved children, but I thought discretion was the better point of valor.

Why did I bother telling you of the boys and the snakes, and the Greek family descending on us with slapping hands?

Because Easter Sunday is all about family and love. And though today April 9^th, 2023, is Easter for Western Christianity, our own Orthodox Easter is the following Sunday. And there still are mischievous boys in all families. And I also mentioned it because my brothers and I love and miss our cousins and the way our families were then. We are not the kids with snakes. Now we are the village elders with our aches and pains and canes and white hair.

One special talent we have as human beings is that we can easily forget painful memories. We easily forget some social failure in school, our regrets, the score of that horrible game. And we’ve easily forgotten, I think what happened to us just a few years ago. When the real snakes entered our lives and closed our churches during Easter Sunday.

I remember writing just three years ago now, that the ancient Church of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem was last closed during the Black Plague of the 1300’s. Then came COVID 19, the political stampede and Fauchism.  And the Holiest church of all was closed again. The heavy bolts fell into place like thudding hammers upon the heart of the Christian world just before Easter. And the closing of churches all over the world, of the East and the West, came at the worst possible time.

Do you remember what it was like then when we thought we had everything, when our families could be together at Easter? But then churches were closed, and families were isolated and hurting.

 Many of us barely remember what happened. Oh yes, we remember church doors being closed in our faces but many of us forget why.They sold it to us by  telling us it was for our own safety. But it wasn’t. It was about soothing political fear.

Back then we carried our phones in our pockets and could pull forward the sum of all human knowledge with a touch of a button. The economy was thrumming, there was money in our wallets, there was no inflation to speak of. Employers were desperate to find workers and anyone who wanted to work could find a job.

But we forget the spiritual chasm. Now many of those jobs are gone, people are afraid, and some of us barely remember how we attended church via laptop, and missed Ecclesia which means gathering, which means church.

Going to church via laptop is not being in the pew next to your family, kneeling and begging forgiveness, thinking of the Publican and the Pharisee whispering Lord have mercy, Kyrie Eleison, Lord have mercy.

When the politicians and the holy men join to close us off from church services, we learned some truths about ourselves. We learned that secular media is extremely uncomfortable with religion, particularly Christianity, at times barely tolerant at most other times quite hostile. Athletes score touchdowns, dunk basketballs, and praise the lord. Politicians can campaign in urban churches seeking the political blessings of clergy and journalists are cautiously benign. They don’t dare roll their eyes.

Other times you can hear the eyes rolling, popping out in rage, sounding like heavy ball bearings rolling about in a tin pan. These are the eyes of angry parents, who are trying to protect the innocence of their children during public political appeals for Drag Queen Story Hour at your local library.

We are engineered by God to be able to forget so much. But if there is one thing we must never forget, is that our political leaders including many governors and presidents, and many senior clergy joined together when we needed to be in church and told us the doors weren’t open.

ECCLESIA is not about commemorating chocolate bunnies. It is not about glorifying the yellow sugar peeps. And though we are the creation of God that forgets our pain, there is one thing we should never forget: Our lost feeling when we closed the churches of God in the mistaken belief that we would feel safe.

This is the season of Easter, the season of Ramadan, the season of the Jewish Passover, the Pesach. However you worship, please remember the love shown to all of us by the carpenter’s son.

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