The holiest day on the Christian calendar was a greeted with uplifting celebrations for rebirth and redemption around Southern California on Sunday, April 17, as more people attended in-person ceremonies amid the weakening pandemic. But it was also steeped in deep concern and prayers for peace as Russia’s bloody invasion of Ukraine appeared to have no end in sight.
The faithful also helped to ease the pain of people ensnared by a tragedy closer to home, the enduring homeless crisis, and prayed for solutions. Revived on Sunday was the annual Easter event at Los Angeles’ Midnight Mission, canceled for two years because of restrictions imposed to stop the spread of the coronavirus.
Around the region, Christians flocked to grassy knolls and lily-filled sanctuaries as the most sacred day of the liturgical year provided the culmination of Holy Week, which began with Palm Sunday and included Holy Thursday and Jesus’ crucifixion and death on Good Friday.
The Feast of the Resurrection is the oldest and most important Christian celebration. Christians believe Jesus, the long-awaited Messiah prophesied in the Hebrew Scriptures, offered his life and his death for the forgiveness of sins. But God raised him up, showing his power over sin and death and revealing Jesus as his beloved Son. For many, Sunday’s new morn provided a symbolic rising up out of a two-year pandemic that has taken its toll in unfathomable ways.
At Green Hills Memorial Park in Rancho Palos Verdes, where an annual Easter sunrise service resumed for the first time since 2019, the mood was joyful, yet reverent.
The nondenominational event, which in pre-pandemic years drew upwards of 2,300 people, included a benediction, a community prayer and a release of doves, all overlooking the port of Los Angeles.
The return of the community to the grassy expanse of the 120-acre cemetery was important, said spokesperson Jennifer Olvera, in a phone interview Friday.
The pandemic was especially tough for staff members whom she called “final responders,” who offered solace to families who lost loved ones to COVID, so the Easter service was Green Hills’ opportunity to help heal families and honor loved ones.
“Giving people a place to worship and a place to praise in such a beautiful setting is what it’s all about,” Olvera said.
Church leaders throughout the region were hopeful congregation sizes would return to pre-pandemic levels. But, the advent of live-streaming worship services meant some would still opt for the security of home, with coronavirus cases ticking upward last week in Los Angeles County, despite declining hospitalizations.
The Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels in downtown Los Angeles seated its full capacity of 3,000 for Easter Masses after being limited to 130 people in 2021 and being closed in 2020. The archdiocese also offered livecasts for those still uncomfortable with live gatherings.
Riverside’s traditional service on Mount Rubidoux returned for the first time since 2019, returning to one of Southern California’s most striking Easter-sunrise vistas. “Every year there’s a lot of interest, this year especially, because for the first time in two years it’s official,” says Brenda Wood, the lead pastor for the nondenominational service.
At La Canada Presbyterian Church, where Easter included four services, associate pastor Rev. Chuck Osburn said it is definitely easier to minister to people when he can meet them face to face. And, he was hopeful that will continue.
“I think this might be a coming-out time for people in terms of post-COVID,” Osburn said, adding there are many church members he has not seen since March 2020.
At nearby Lake Avenue Church in Pasadena, a full house attended Sunday to hear newly installed Senior Pastor Rev. Dr. Mathew P. John’s message.
“It was wonderful to have a full church again as people continue to drift back into church and we try to figure out the dynamics of post-pandemic life,” said Associate Pastor Rev. Scott White. Amid all the daunting challenges posed by recent headlines, the message of Jesus’ rebirth endures, he said.
“The focus today was on the durability of the resurrection — the resurrected life of Jesus is as real today and as unexpected as it was 2,000 years ago. It’s especially vital in the context of everything that life has thrown at us in the last couple of years.”
Osburn concurred. The Easter Sunday message, he said, is time-honored and the fact that this year’s resurrection day arrived amid a global pandemic and a deadly war in Ukraine, is really nothing new for the church.
“Down through history, the church as always faced problems,” said Osburn. “There has been pestilence, disease and wars.”
So, that is something that should not take us by surprise, he said, adding that a world in crisis was the world God came into in the form of Jesus all those centuries ago.
And, so now, said the pastor, every Easter, we can be thankful salvation is at hand.
“Jesus did not come to applaud our good behavior,” said Osburn. “Jesus came because we all need a savior.”
In his column published Sunday on Angelus, the Archdiocese of Los Angeles’ multimedia news platform, Archbishop Jose H. Gomez wrote, “This is my Easter prayer: that we will arise from the struggles and miseries of this world and unite our lives with the risen Lord!
“When we reflect on our times, which are so disturbed with war and divisions, we know that there is only one way to find peace in our families, in our society, in our world, and that is through our faith in Jesus Christ, our personal commitment to follow his teaching and example.”
Meanwhile, the Midnight Mission expected to serve 2,000 pounds of herb chicken, 1,000 pounds of each of honey-glazed spiral ham and garlic mashed potatoes and 700 pounds of steamed vegetables topped by 45 gallons of gravy, according to Georgia Berkovich, the mission’s director of public affairs.
Sixth Street in front of the mission was scheduled to be closed most of the day to accommodate nearly 2,000 homeless and near-homeless individuals and families who would receive a traditional holiday meal and hygiene items.
COVID-19 vaccinations were available. Underdog Community Project provided free veterinary services and other needed pet care.
TMM also organized an Easter Village featuring the Easter Bunny, played by comedian and TMM alumnus Logan Hobson, and baskets full of candy and other treats for children.
For those with ties to Ukraine in the region, the deadly conflict in Eastern Europe cast its shadow over the Easter season.
This year, Orthodox Easter, or Pascha, will be marked on April 24. The Russian Orthodox Church celebrates Pascha using the old Julian calendar instead of the Gregorian one. That’s the reason it normally comes two weeks later after Protestant and Catholic Easter.
Nonetheless, orthodox churches hosted Sunday services in Southern California — and other local Christians remembered victims of the conflict in their homilies, their prayers and in vigils and fund-raisers.
On the battlefront Sunday, the shattered port city of Mariupol appeared on the brink of falling to the Russians after seven weeks under siege, in what would give Moscow a crucial success following its failure to storm the Ukrainian capital and the sinking of its Black Sea flagship. The Russian military estimated that 2,500 Ukrainian fighters were holding out at a hulking steel plant with a warren of underground passageways in the last pocket of resistance in Mariupol.
Father Yousuf Rassam, a priest at St. Innocent Orthodox Church in Tarzana, said seeing Ukraine being attacked by Russian forces feels “tragic and awful.”
“It causes a deep kind of wound in the brotherliness not just of Eastern Slavs but also of all Orthodox people,” he said. “This bothers me terribly.”
He added that bishops of the Orthodox Church in America condemned the invasion. “I agree with (the condemnation),” he said. “Both out of obedience and out of conviction. I hate that it came to this.”
Rev. Nazari Polataiko from Holy Virgin Mary Russian Orthodox Cathedral in Silver Lake, said on Easter he planned to talk about the power of goodness.
“Christ is risen,” he said. “That’s the reason evil will always be defeated. God has a way of doing that although we don’t always understand it.”
Staff writer Olga Grigoryants, City News Service and The Associated Press contributed to this report