The word most often used to describe the church in Albania is resurrection – ngjallja. Everywhere you turn in the Church, the word or one of its icons awaits you. The church’s seminary is dedicated to the resurrection. The church newspaper is called Resurrection. Many churches have been given the same name.
During my final visit with the archbishop before returning home, Archbishop Anastasios took me to the small chapel – his “hut of prayer” next to his apartment – and gave me a newly painted Resurrection icon.
“Let this remind you of Albania. The original model for this version of the icon comes from an ancient church in Istanbul, Chora. You have noticed the emphasis we have on resurrection. The power of the resurrection is linked to bearing and sharing suffering. The theme is Christ conquering death. You see Christ standing on the destroyed gates of hell while pulling Adam and Eve from their tombs. Adam and Eve represent the entire human race in which each woman is a daughter of Eve, each man a son of Adam, and all linked to each other in Christ. The icon also mirrors the experience of the Church in Albania. It too has been pulled out of the tomb. It is also an icon for the biblical text, ‘Unless the wheat falls into the ground and dies, it cannot bring forth new life’.”
He showed me the reverse side of the bishop’s pendant he wears. There was a simple engraving of the cross surrounded by two shafts of wheat – the same symbol I had noted on his stationery. “The image represents this Gospel text – Christ is the wheat that has been buried. His dying gives birth to the resurrection. People sometimes think of the cross as a death symbol, or as a stop along the way to the resurrection, a dark doorway leading toward the light. But the resurrection is not beyond the cross. It is in the cross.”
From: Jim Forest, THE RESURRECTION OF CHURCH IN ALBANIA. Voices of Orthodox Christians, WCC Publications, Geneva, 2002.
