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| Medieval illuminated manuscript. Slightly irrelevant image, but amusing. |
It is worth commenting on the pagan relationship with the Christian Easter.
Before reading on you may want to watch the following Youtube video [linked here]. It is not a Christian video and doesn't capture the Easter reality, still it is insightful, it is titled: "EASTER REBIRTH: How Rabbits and Eggs Came to Symbolize New Life".
Some may invoke the alleged pagan origins of Easter as undermining the truth of the Christian Easter which is about Jesus' resurrection. However, the pagan concepts, images, and symbols appropriated by Christians to refer to Christ's resurrection do not undermine what is believed by Christians to be a historical event and true spiritual mystery: that Jesus Christ, true God and true man, rose from the dead after been crucified. Christians, once converted from pagan religions, were happy to adopt pagan symbols and transfer their meaning to a Christian meaning. This process, called inculturation, is not seen to undermine the Christian faith-claim, but to support it.
Since if God is Creator and He made the universe, setting in motion the chain of causes that brought about all people; choosing the Jewish nation and preparing them through covenants and teachings to receive Himself in human form in Jesus as the Christ - the Messiah - who was promised to them; this same Creator would prepare the pagan peoples to receive His Son Jesus Christ, by sowing what St. Justin Martyr called, "seeds of truth" among the pagan faiths, cultures and philosophies. Hence the theme of resurrection, rebirth, divine fecundity, rising from the underworld - all such concepts were sown, as it were, among all peoples as myths, preparing them for their fulfillment in truth and reality in Jesus the Risen One.
Had this not occurred, that all such ideas were not common to all peoples and religions, one should in fact doubt the truth of the Christian message. Yet the universality of the Easter mystery, foreshadowed in fragmented myths throughout the ages and across the world, shared by all human cultures no matter how geographically divided, points to something intrinsic to the human spirit and the experience of life in the world.
The resurrection of Jesus was meant to be, it was ordained by the Creator from the beginning, knowing the path the world of men would take, so that the longing for new life, a resurrection from death and darkness, a deliverance from an existential winter into an eternal spring, and the intuitive awareness of this mystery as a possibility and truth, was woven as it were, into nature itself, especially into the soul and mind of humankind, so that even pagans, unaware of the One God, longed unknowingly for the true resurrection of Jesus in whom Easter is no myth, but reality.
Happy are we who cling not to myth but reality. Who steal images and symbols of myth and apply them to what they were always meant to, and indeed, truly do signify: Jesus the Risen Lord, God and Man, Jewish Messiah sent to save all humanity and to open the way to new life in union with the Creator.
Before reading on you may want to watch the following Youtube video [linked here]. It is not a Christian video and doesn't capture the Easter reality, still it is insightful, it is titled: "EASTER REBIRTH: How Rabbits and Eggs Came to Symbolize New Life".
Some may invoke the alleged pagan origins of Easter as undermining the truth of the Christian Easter which is about Jesus' resurrection. However, the pagan concepts, images, and symbols appropriated by Christians to refer to Christ's resurrection do not undermine what is believed by Christians to be a historical event and true spiritual mystery: that Jesus Christ, true God and true man, rose from the dead after been crucified. Christians, once converted from pagan religions, were happy to adopt pagan symbols and transfer their meaning to a Christian meaning. This process, called inculturation, is not seen to undermine the Christian faith-claim, but to support it.
Since if God is Creator and He made the universe, setting in motion the chain of causes that brought about all people; choosing the Jewish nation and preparing them through covenants and teachings to receive Himself in human form in Jesus as the Christ - the Messiah - who was promised to them; this same Creator would prepare the pagan peoples to receive His Son Jesus Christ, by sowing what St. Justin Martyr called, "seeds of truth" among the pagan faiths, cultures and philosophies. Hence the theme of resurrection, rebirth, divine fecundity, rising from the underworld - all such concepts were sown, as it were, among all peoples as myths, preparing them for their fulfillment in truth and reality in Jesus the Risen One.
Had this not occurred, that all such ideas were not common to all peoples and religions, one should in fact doubt the truth of the Christian message. Yet the universality of the Easter mystery, foreshadowed in fragmented myths throughout the ages and across the world, shared by all human cultures no matter how geographically divided, points to something intrinsic to the human spirit and the experience of life in the world.
The resurrection of Jesus was meant to be, it was ordained by the Creator from the beginning, knowing the path the world of men would take, so that the longing for new life, a resurrection from death and darkness, a deliverance from an existential winter into an eternal spring, and the intuitive awareness of this mystery as a possibility and truth, was woven as it were, into nature itself, especially into the soul and mind of humankind, so that even pagans, unaware of the One God, longed unknowingly for the true resurrection of Jesus in whom Easter is no myth, but reality.
Happy are we who cling not to myth but reality. Who steal images and symbols of myth and apply them to what they were always meant to, and indeed, truly do signify: Jesus the Risen Lord, God and Man, Jewish Messiah sent to save all humanity and to open the way to new life in union with the Creator.
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