Christ Pantocrator
In the bustle of Holy Week activities there is no “day off.” Even the rector’s customary quiet Monday with family was occupied with meetings and some long overdue appointments up in D.C. The streets were clogged with spring break tour buses, and the usual trip downtown was made even more complicated by road road work cunningly scheduled for the height of the tourist season. “Protest time” in the Nation’s Capitol also kicked off with the unwashed and over-indulged enhancing the gridlock with the now-obligatory manifestations outside of the World Bank. A holy time was not being had by all, and, for traffic-bound clergy, it was a test of vocation.
Leaving the downtown, I opted to swing wide of the madness and took 16th Street north toward Maryland. For those unfamiliar, this is a broad thoroughfare along which one can find churches and houses of worship of every denomination from thoroughly revisionist Methodist to the Buddhist Vihara of Washington. There is even the Washington Ethical Society, a band of self-proclaimed “right living” atheists who serendipitously meet on…Sundays.
As I crossed the park, I happened to see the sign for St. John the Baptist Russian Orthodox Cathedral and was moved to stop in to see what another cathedral church might be up to at the beginning of Holy Week, as well as to spend some time in private prayer and meditation. It was a bit of a “busman’s holiday” of the ecclesiastical sort.
I suppose that people may stop in any church for a variety of reasons. Here in Washington, D.C., high school Russian language students come to St. John the Baptist on field trips, university students may come to fulfill a requirement for a course in Russian history or culture, different flavors of seminarians pop round as part of their studies of other denominations, and tourists might stop in before or after tasting some of the ethnic foods sold at the cathedral’s well-known bazaars.
Perapatetic priests and other wanderers may stop by to pray, find a bit of respite and see what our brothers and sisters of the “Eastern church” are about this holy season. Others come for reasons known only to them and to God. As the website notes, “[a]ll are made welcome, for regardless of what prompts them to enter, that entrance may be a first step on the path to salvation.” We should remember that with each new face we see at Saint Alban’s or in any parish in which we may be.
A burly gent running a construction crew warmly greeted me and went to get someone to open the church for me. Shortly, the rector’s wife (the matushka) Mrs. Victor Potapov arrived with the keys and to give me a tour of the church. Although busy directing kitchen workers and fielding parishioner calls, the Matushka generously afforded me nearly an hour of a busy day to explain the history of the church, the exquisite iconography and to talk about parish life at St. John the Baptist. Things apparently have become so busy, expecially at Holy Week, that three priests were not enough, and they had to “call for backup” from Russia. On Palm Sunday, the crowds were so large that there needed to be three liturgies, and confessions were heard late into the evening.
Narthex
Entering the Narthex, I could only gape as I saw the nave filled with incredibly beautiful icons, and beyond it, elevated by several steps, a large iconostasis. Entering the nave itself, the world outside disappeared and the world of the Church seemed to surround and embrace me. In the central cupola, there is the Christ Pantocrator looking down upon the nave and the paople of God. Within the cylinder supporting the cupola are representations of the six-winged seraphim, angels in constant attendance at the Heavenly Throne. Below them, written in chain calligraphy are the words “Look down from the heavens, O Lord, upon this vine which Thou didst plant with Thy right hand, and keep it.”
The air was redolent with incense, and the early afternoon light refracted through clouds of air filled with that smoke and the aroma of the candles from the Sunday commemoration of Christ’s entry into Jerusalem.
My guide, returning to her work, left me to pray and to try to take in the beauty and timelessness of that sacred space. To borrow from the tour book of the cathedral, the entire Church “is an icon of mankind’s relationship to its Creator, and we see that each of us is an essential part of that icon.” I thought of yesterday’s Palm Sunday Mass at Saint Alban’s and the voices lifted in solemn hymnody, the smell of incense and candles offered to the glory of God, the prayers, and even our own iconography-stations of the Cross, icon of Saint Alban and the Crucifix. Indeed, the faithful people of Christ are each an “essential part of that icon”-God’s icon.
I left the Church to be given a tour of the rest of the facility by the work foreman, a parishioner, who showed me the magnificent transformation he had worked in the old parish hall, a new kitchen, library and the sacristy. It was all work done for glory of God by a man who was found again by Christ in that place and among that community. (He was baptized just last November.)
After being given gifts of cds of the two cathedral choirs, I returned to the main church for one last look and moment of peace from the world of Washington traffic. The light had shifted and dimmed, the haze of smoke seemed thicker, as if the shroud of Good Friday were approaching to obscure the Light of Lights. Yet, even in gathering darkness and gloom, the saints still hold their line against the devil, the flesh and the world; the angels still soar over the Church swords drawn against the ancient enemy; and Christ Jesus still looks upon, loves and blesses His people.
Holy Week blessings,
Canon Nalls
Take a tour of Saint John the Baptist here http://www.stjohndc.org/Russian/tour/e_tour.htm
Iconostasis at St. John the Baptist Cathedral
The Cathedral Close 
Leave a Reply