The Meaning of Easter

Again and again we must ask: What is a festival such as that of Easter for the greater part of mankind? It may be said of very many people that when they are in the circle of their friends who still want to gather together to keep the festival, all their thinking about Easter runs along the lines of old habits of thought; they use the old words, they go on uttering them more or less automatically, they make the same renunciation in the same formula to which they have long been accustomed. But have we any right today to utter this renunciation, when we can observe on every hand a distinct unwillingness to take part in the great change that is so necessary in our own time? Are we justified in using the words of Paul: “Not I, but Christ in me!” when we show so little inclination to examine into what it is that has brought such great unhappiness to mankind in the modern age? Should it not go together with the Easter festival that we set out to gain a clear idea of the destiny that has befallen mankind and of what it is that alone can lead us out of the catastrophe—namely, super-sensible knowledge? If the Easter festival, whose whole significance depends upon super-sensible knowledge—for knowledge of the senses can never explain the Resurrection of Christ Jesus—if this Easter festival is to be taken seriously, is it not essential that people should consider how a super-sensible character can be brought again into the human faculty of knowledge? Should not this be the thought that rises up in our minds today: All the lying and deception in modern culture is due to the fact that we ourselves are no longer in earnest about what we recognise as the sacred festivals of the year?