A Pascha of the Faithful

By Protopresbyter Thomas Hopko

In Great Lent of 1966 I turned 27 years old.  I had been serving as pastor of St. John's Church in Warren, Ohio for a little more than two and a half years.  During that time a high-strung young mother with plenty of problems came down with colon cancer.  She underwent surgery.  For several months we believed her disease had been stopped.  But by Lent of that year it was again virulently progressing.  Katherine, whom everyone called Kay, was 38 years old.

I visited this simple, tough woman almost every day. I read her Psalms and other parts of the Bible.  I recited the appointed prayers from the Priest's Prayer Book.  I heard her confessions and gave her Holy Communion.  I anointed her with oil from the Unction Service that we held for her in church.  We talked about everything.  I wrote down what she told me, and what she showed me by her behavior.  I still have the notebook.  It was about what it means to be a Christian, and to be a Christian priest.  

Toward the end of Lent Katherine insisted on going home from the hospital.  She wanted this so that her family and friends could "learn what it's all about."  On Friday evening before Lazarus Saturday I was hearing confessions in church.  Her three daughters, between five and twelve years old, were there.  Her brother-in-law brought me word that she was finally at the point of death.  I told him that I would drive the girls home. On the way I told them that their mother was going to die that night.  They asked me if she would be raised up like Lazarus.  

Loads of people were milling in and around the house when we arrived.  I went with the girls into the living room where Katherine's bed was.  We found her sitting up and talking.  She spoke clearly to all of us.  She told us to believe.  She gave motherly admonitions to her daughters.  She wanted her hair washed and combed.  And she asked for something to eat and drink.  The doctor who was there said that he couldn't explain it.  She had been totally unresponsive just minutes before.  On Monday morning, having severely relapsed, she was taken back to the hospital.  She was unconscious most of the time.  But she also rambled incoherently, sometimes loudly and vehemently.  She seemed to be engaged in a terrible struggle.

On Great and Holy Friday we served Royal Hours in church. Her daughters were there.  Just before I was to read one of the Passion Gospels my mother-in-law, who was with us since my wife had just had our second baby, came to say that the hospital called saying that Katherine was now at her end.  I decided to read the Gospel, and then go to her bedside.  When I finished the Gospel with the words "and he gave up the spirit," I told everyone to stay in church and directed the reader to keep chanting psalms and hymns until I returned.  

When I entered Katherine's room I saw her still body.  Her emaciated face, bronze from jaundice, with staring eyes, pointed nose, parched lips and gaping mouth, struck me as both terribly ugly and awesomely beautiful.  Katherine's husband Charley told me the exact time his wife died.  It was during the Gospel reading.  I know, because I was wearing a wristwatch in church, which I never do, and looked at it when I began to read.  I had on my watch because early that morning I served the funeral of an old man who had to be buried before Pascha, and I wanted to be aware of the time.  I had forgotten to take the watch off.  I went back to church and told the girls that their mother was now with Jesus.

Kay had a splendid Paschal funeral.  We sang Paschal Vespers on Sunday not in the church, but over her body at the funeral home overflowing with people.  Her head was covered with white lace.  What was left of her body was clothed in a pretty white gown.  Her face was peaceful and, again, strangely beautiful, but now with no ugliness at all.  The funeral was served with the Divine Liturgy on Bright Monday.  Everyone there said they would never forget it.  And, obviously, neither would I.