"Christian faith is the Russian faith. They will object: Orthodoxy is a universalist Church open to all of mankind. To identify it with Russians is to restrict its meaning, relegating it to the status of a national religion. There is a notion of the "heresy of filetism", i.e. the "love for one's people". For the enemies of Orthodoxy - especially those among Western Christians - this is the central argument against Byzantium and against Rus'. [...] But what are they to us, those who abolished the sacred Julian Calendar, those who give up the very basis of Orthodoxy for the the needs of the Uniates...What are they to us, my friends..."
[...]
"In the Russian Easter there is the resurrected nature of the world, our nature, mother-desert, luxurious, like a lady, like a virgin, like a universal acute painful comfort. Suffer with us, die with us, kill with us, sing with us, come with us, disappear in us, be buried with us, fast with us, prostrate yourselves with us, disappear with us, love with us, hate with us, in order to be resurrected with us, to enter the Russian Easter, the great Passover of Christ."
"The fact that Russians are a great people is an axiom, it cannot be proven, since it does not require proof. True greatness does not humiliate others, does not make them less significant. Just as the resurrection does not kill them, does not trample them, but saves them. True greatness elevates everything it touches. There is no hatred toward it, only delight, joy, merriment, and love. This is dancing greatness."
I photographed fellow Russians participating in an Easter cross procession here in North America:
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