246 E15h St

The grand-parents of my future wife have a particular tradition for easter, the most important religions festival on the Christian calendar. Everything on the table on Easter sunday has some particular symbolic significance and the food is brought in a basked to the Easter service to be blessed.

This year, we had made a little basket on our own and in order to do it right, we needed to find a church to bring the basket to be blessed. According to google.com, there are 2 Byzantine or Eastern Catholic churches in Manhattan, the closer one in the east-village. We went on Saturday night, since Easter sunday is still a family feast hosted by the grand parents - both 86 years old, almost to the day. It turns out that St. Mary's was their church as well, after coming to the US from Slovakia after the war and living in the east village only a few block from where it used to be on 13th st.

The new church is a modern steel and glass structure with full hight stained glass facade towards 2nd avenue. The modern look and the relatively sparse decoration create a strange contrast with the age-old traditional liturgy being performed - partly in Church Slavonic, the old language of many eastern orthodox churches. The dress changes from black to white during the service and some of the icons are replaced for the same effect as the tragedy of holy week gradually makes room for the happy news of resurrection: Christos voskrese!

After the almost 3h long service, we proceed to the blessing of the baskets in the basement of the church. Interestingly the basket all look almost the same, including the blanket to cover it. Attending easter service on Saturday night creates a theological loophole, which allowed us to try the food as soon as we came home...




(Easter basked, shown here in its blessed state)