By Demetrios Panagopoulos (1916-1982), Preacher
I once picked up the phone twenty days after Easter and said "Christ is Risen" instead of "Hello".* The person on the other line responded:
"What are you talking about, my child? What is this place?"
"It is a house."
"What are you?"
"What am I? I'm a man."
The gentleman on the line had made a mistake. He wanted to call someone else, but dialed the wrong number, though it became the occasion to make a great impression on him.
"What are you talking about, my child? Are there really still people who keep this beautiful tradition?"
He told me his name and said he was a lawyer.
"What do I know, perhaps there are. This is why apparently God hasn't drowned us yet, because such people are still around," said the lawyer.
"What are you talking about, my child? What is this place?"
"It is a house."
"What are you?"
"What am I? I'm a man."
The gentleman on the line had made a mistake. He wanted to call someone else, but dialed the wrong number, though it became the occasion to make a great impression on him.
"What are you talking about, my child? Are there really still people who keep this beautiful tradition?"
He told me his name and said he was a lawyer.
"What do I know, perhaps there are. This is why apparently God hasn't drowned us yet, because such people are still around," said the lawyer.
Notes:
* It is customary for Orthodox Christians to greet each other with "Christ is Risen", with the response being "Truly He is Risen", from Easter Sunday until the Wednesday before Ascension Thursday, which is forty days after Easter. In Greece, with a great majority of the population being Orthodox Christian, this custom extends to answering the phone this way as well.
Translation by John Sanidopoulos.