Yesterday was the centerpiece of our stay in Moscow: the Divine Liturgy at Christ the Savior Cathedral commemorating the 1025th anniversary of the Baptism of Rus’. But one of the themes of the celebration is also the second baptism that has been taking place these past twenty-five years. So we sang “As many as have been baptized into Christ have out on Christ,” and the baptismal prokeimenon: “The Lord is my light and my Savior, whom shall I fear? The Lord is the defender of my life, of whom shall I be afraid?” Those were powerful words ringing out in a cathedral that had been destroyed by the Soviet regime in 1931 and replaced by a swimming pool. The fact that the cathedral has been resurrected, that we were praying in this place with Orthodox primates and representatives from the Orthodox Churches around the world, with hundreds of bishops and priests and a crowd of faithful that could not fit inside this cavernous edifice was powerful confirmation of those baptismal words.
