The general decline of
the cultural life of civilized humanity has also matured an almost complete
inability to understand and celebrate the great festivals of the Christian
year. Therefore it seems to be necessary to open new gateways for the
comprehension of the facts connected with these festivals.
At Easter, Christian
humanity commemorates the Death and the Resurrection of Jesus Christ. According
to old customs, it is celebrated on the Sunday following the first full Moon in
spring.
Modern humanity can no
longer comprehend these two facts by means of ordinary cognition. Nowhere in
the world, which is perceived by the senses, is there to be found anything that
suggests the possibility of the resurrection of a human being from death, as it
is described in the Gospels. It has gradually become a matter of faith. Yet
modern humanity demands knowledge acceptable to the intellect and not mere
belief in the various Christian confessions. And in proportion, as knowledge
cannot penetrate to the real facts behind the historic event of Easter, this
festival is less understood and taken less seriously. Moreover, the fact that
the time of Easter is fixed according to cosmic conditions, it also cannot be
comprehended by modern thought. People have emancipated themselves so much from
nature by their technology, that there seems to be no necessity to arrange any
festival in accordance with conditions pertaining to the starry heavens.
Therefore, the present tendency is to do away with the customary movability of
the Easter festival. The moral effect that results from its celebration,
according to cosmic conditions, brings only disturbance into the calculations
of the business world. Therefore, it is proposed to fix it to a certain date,
for instance, as the keeping of Christmas is fixed for the 25th of
December.
Behind all of this is the
fact that Easter has become a matter of mere tradition. Hardly any inner
experience is connected with it, and one could just as well make a fixed
holiday of it for the usual kind of seasonal recreation. It has become a
challenge for the modern world, like the other Christian festivals, and we must
first of all decide whether we want to have a mere public holiday instead of
Easter, or whether we desire to make it a festival of true religious devotion
and inner strength. But, how can we once again find in the Eastern festival a
source of inner experience and strength?
We can try to look at it
from the point of view of the seasons of the year. It takes place in
springtime, always after the Spring Equinox. This is the time of the year when
the long, dark, and cold winter nights have been overcome by the ascending Sun.
The days grow longer again, and warmth and light fill the life of the Earth
anew. Nature awakes from her deep sleep in the wintertime, and countless little
flowers and leaves come forth from their imprisonment in seeds and buds. Soon
the barren landscape of winter is transformed into a beautiful carpet of
brilliant colors.
Is not springtime a true
picture of the power of resurrection inherent in nature? Every year, again the
warmth and light conquer the signs of Death. Winter’s ice and snow are melted
away, the frozen soil is softened and covered with abundant manifestations of
life. Even the process of germination provides us with a true picture of the
preceding Death on Good Friday. For millions and millions of seeds buried in
the womb of the Earth must die, so that the reappearance of life is possible.
Thus nature provides us
with crutches, as it were, for the understanding of the festival of Good Friday
and Easter. It is not a person who has chosen this time of the year for the
celebration of Easter; but the events that are described in the gospels, have
really taken place in springtime, about the time of the Jewish Passover. The
powers of destiny have brought about this coincidence.
Yet, we must confess that
the picture of nature in spring only lends us crutches for the understanding of
Easter. They help us along only a certain part of the way towards the
comprehension of this festival; but then they fail. For even though we perceive
the picture of resurrection in nature, as thinking beings we know quite well
that all the splendor of nature will fade away in autumn, when the nights grow
longer again and darkness and cold wipe out that beautiful carpet of color and
life. Thus the manifestations of nature do not really provide a picture of
resurrection as we desire to find it in connection with Christ. It is a
seemingly eternal circle of destruction and re-creation. Moreover modern,
scientifically-minded people know quite well that this circle will cease to
operate in a very far future. People know this, and even try to pre-calculate
the time when the planet on which we live will receive no more warmth and light
from the decaying Sun. Then no more vegetation will be possible on the Earth.
Death will overtake Nature. Therefore nature too leaves unanswered the
questions that we must ask when we are confronted with the message of the
Easter festival.
We too are involved in
the fate of nature, because our body is a part of nature. We know that our body
will one day be worn out; we have to die inevitably, and nothing in the world
of our sensory experiences suggest that there is an imperishable part in us,
besides that which vanishes in the course of natural events.
Nevertheless, there is
the picture of Christ’s Resurrection. Can it be experienced by modern humanity
as a Truth, beyond the mere traditional records? Our salvation from the
ever-turning wheel of nature depends on the answer to this question. We must
say yes, there is an answer, and it can be experienced by each single human
being.
The life of Christ
spanned the time between Christmas and Easter. He was born in the Christmas
Night, He died on the Cross on Good Friday, and rose from the grave at Easter.
In between these two fundamental events is a time of 33 years, thirty years up
to the baptism in the Jordan and three years of the actual ministry. In the
Christmas Night the impulse of Divine love was born; in the Easter events, 33
years later, this impulse resurrected and has since dwelled among people for
the sake of its realization.
Since that time, this
rhythm of 33 years, the rhythm from the birth of an impulse to its resurrection
and realization, is deeply written into the history and activities of humanity.
It can no longer be denied, and the recognition of it can open the gates for
the entry of the Easter message into each single human soul, if it is willing
to listen (Rudolf Steiner the great teacher of a New Spiritual Revelation, was
the first who emphasized the fact of the 33-years-rhythni with regard to
historical events).
In 1113 the great St.
Bernard of Clairvaux entered the monastery of Citeaux as a monk. He took up the
strict discipline of the monastic life with great energy and unerring religious
fervor. He performed the exercises to the point of complete bodily exhaustion.
This monastic life as lived in the Middle Ages is no longer suitable for people
today. But for those monks it meant the development of unusual will-forces, far
above the will of ordinary people. Thus the year 1113 was for St. Bernard the
time of the birth of tremendous will-forces with regard to the religious life.
It was really a kind of Christ-mas-time for St. Bernard. Thirty-three years
later this impulse of the will, which had been born in 1113, resurrected, and
mightily realized itself as a historic impulse in the world. For in 1146 St.
Bernard proclaimed the second Crusade all over Europe, and through his
brilliant religious eloquence, he kindled enthusiasm in thousands of men for
this idea.
The failure of the second
Crusade is another matter. But the example of St. Bernard shows that such a
strong impulse of the soul may rest for a long time in the bosom of a person,
until one day it breaks forth with power, overcoming all obstacles in its way.
It took thirty-three years for this impulse, born in the innermost being of St.
Bernard, to be resurrected in humanity. This time corresponds to the Christ
period of life from Christmas till Easter, and it opens a gateway to the
experience of the power of Resurrection, of immortal existence, which came into
the world through Christ Jesus.
But this reality of the
development of an impulse of the soul from its Birth to its Resurrection is not
only confined to a human earthly life. It reveals its creative power even still
more strongly beyond the boundaries of life in a mortal body.
Prince Henry of Portugal,
who is usually called “the Navigator,” employed all his capacities almost
exclusively in the endeavor to find the sea-passage to India and Eastern Asia.
He made several attempts at great sacrifice, which carried him far down the
Western Coast of Africa. Yet, when he died in 1460 (13 Nov.), the final goal,
the rounding of the southern end of Africa, had not yet been achieved. One
might say that in the moment of his death, his impulse, which hitherto he had
made his personal affair, became the concern of the whole of civilized
humanity. It was then born, so to speak, into humanity. And thirty-three years
after Henry’s death, in March 1493, Columbus came back from the West and told
the astonished world that he had found the passage to India. He did not know
then that he had discovered a hitherto unknown continent. His idea was that if
the Earth is a globe, one should be able to establish a passage to India in
going East as well as West. He had chosen the westward way and had discovered
America.
In this case, an impulse
or an idea had taken hold of a man. He himself could not realize it, and when
he died he left it as a kind of spiritual testament to humanity. Then thirty-three
years later it celebrated its resurrection and realization. However, in fact it
turned out differently from the way it had existed in human minds. Instead of
being the passage to India, it became the discovery of a new continent. Thus
impulses and ideas sometimes reveal themselves as having different purposes
from those of ordinary human wishes. Just this fact unveils the independent and
real existence of ideas, like objects in the material world. Yet even single
human beings can gain a higher, immortal existence, if they are able to
penetrate to their essential nature.
The birth of such
impulses in the human soul are sometimes a painful experience, taking place in
the midst of inner despair and depression. The famous Italian sculptor and
painter Michelangelo (1475-1564) went through a most difficult crisis in his
life. It was a turning point for him (in 1505), and afterwards he was
inclined to moods of depression and gloom. Even in this, we can recognize the
entering of a spiritual impulse into the soul of Michelangelo. For thirty to
thirty-three years later, it revealed and manifested itself majestically in his
famous painting “The Last Judgment” (1535 and later) in the Sistine Chapel.
That which had shown itself as heaviness and depression at the time of its
birth had come to its resurrection in the painting as the gigantic imagination
of the judgment of souls by Christ.
None of the Spiritual
impulses that enter the world through human souls get lost, although they may
be rejected for a time. People, who have in their destiny the necessary
provisions for the conception of such ideas, may not always be willing to
identify themselves with these impulses and to fight for their realization; but
ideas are immortal beings, and they will come again to other souls, and seek
their resurrection there.
But how is it with those
impulses that seem to be destructive in human history? Their existence and
development also finally fulfill the manifestation and realization of the good.
They too are involved in that same rhythm of thirty-three years. The
Crucifixion of Christ took place, according to reliable sources, in the year 33
AD. The Acts of the Apostles tell of the persecution of the first small
Christian community by the Jews. This was the great tragedy of the Jewish
people: they denied in Christ Jesus the Messiah whom they had expected since
the very first beginning of their existence as a nation. An impulse of hate was
born instead of the recognition of Christ, and it also developed within a
period of thirty-three years. In the Spring of 66 AD, the so-called Jewish War
began, which lasted seven years; and in the midst of which stands the
destruction of Jerusalem and its temple.
In this case, the
impulse, born in 33 AD, seems to have resurrected in destruction only. But if
one looks at it more carefully, one can discover in it a great teacher. For
many of those souls who were caught in the idea of a Jewish World Empire in
contradiction to the Christ Impulse of Divine love, were taught by the facts
and events, and by their own death, the wrongness of their nationalistic
tendencies. Thus Resurrection is not an event that happened only once, and
which is recorded in the Gospels.
It can be experienced
again and again in the development of pure spiritual impulses that enter the
human soul. Behind the manifold single impulses, it can be assumed that there
lies one great guiding principle. It can be called the principle of the
evolution of humanity, in which all the single Ideas and impulses have their
dwelling. The principle of human evolution may be exalted high above the
impulse of a single person. Yet, it is the unfailing judge of each single
spiritual impulse in mankind, whether it be the Idea of the Crusades, the
spirit of Globe-encompassing discovery or artistic fulfillment. In reality, in
each human being who is awake for the performance of some cultural task, such
an eternal being comes to life and goes through its development in one or
another way. Single sheep may stray from the guiding hands of the original all-human
purpose for a while. The power of Resurrection, even in its manifestation in
the thirty-three years’ rhythm, will call them back, sooner or later. And what
sometimes appears to be a catastrophe instead of a resurrection, may be the
necessary teaching for further evolution.
Therefore the idea cannot
be so very strange that, having once gone through developments of this kind,
human spirits come back to Earth again and again in order to purify themselves
and to advance in harmony with the guiding Humanity-principle. A person may
have given birth to a certain impulse, which may have resurrected during that
lifetime or only after death. It may not have served the purpose of the
evolution of Humanity. Is it then not possible that the soul of such a person
comes back into another body, in order to receive anew the impulse that is akin
to him and to develop it further under changed world-conditions? And are not
all human beings under the same fate: that they can never fully achieve what
with their highest intentions they desired to achieve?
But we can notice one
fact: the higher the moral quality of the guiding impulse of a human being is,
the more, one might say, is he misunderstood and even persecuted by his
contemporaries. Here appears the other side of Easter: Resurrection is not possible
without Good-Friday. The mortal world hates the world of the Ideas, when it
becomes manifest in the higher being of people, because it finally overcomes
that which is mortal. Therefore the mortal world resists that which appears in
one’s inner being as its adversary. And only if the mortal gives way and
renounces the desire for permanence, then the eternal in one can shine forth
unopposed.
Our higher impulses
constitute our Higher Self. It cannot be so, that the Ideas and impulses of
human evolution lead a kind of impersonal existence, and only from time to time
settle, as it were, in a human body. No person on Earth was ever able to evolve
and realize creative impulses, who was not able to speak of himself as an “I”
in the highest sense. The “I’’ person and the being of the idea must form a
unity, otherwise no Resurrection is possible. The Idea is only creative as the
higher fulfillment of the “1.” One cannot imagine Ideas working in the world
separated from the “l”-person, any more than creative ideas can manifest
themselves in animals.
Hw is it then with that
guiding principle of humanity’s evolution, in which all the single historical
impulses and ideas have their origin and their union? If the single idea and
the human “I” are indivisible, must not then a much greater and universal “I”
be the hearer of that united cosmos of creative Ideas, of which the single
impulses are like rays from a Sun?
Furthermore, if those
manifold impulses have become incorporated in the mortal sheath of an
“I”-person, is it not possible for that great, universal “I” of the cosmos of
creative Ideas has once been incorporated in the mortal body of a man?
Answering honestly all
these questions, it should not be too difficult to perceive in the Christ Jesus
of the Gospels this One exalted Being. For He shows in all the recorded details
— and we must confess that they are only fractions and very much distorted — the
archetype of all the described facts of the power of Resurrection in a human’s
higher being. His life was built up during the thirty-three years, which are
the foundation of the Birth-to-Resurrection-rhythm in the life of historical
impulses. If that cosmos of creative Ideas, as Divine beings, was really alive
in Him, then the mortal world cannot but have developed the utmost possible
hate and desire for His persecution. And finally only Death, the complete
overcoming of the mortal, can have opened the Gate through which such a
fullness of Spiritual Light could gradually resurrect in humanity.
The reasoning of mind may
say that the words and deeds of the One of whom the Gospels speak do not
justify one’s seeing in Him such a universal greatness, that He could be
regarded as the bearer of the spiritual cosmos of Ideas. His words and deeds
are merely those of a simple man. Such a judgment would only reveal that it has
not comprehended, by a long way, the unfathomable depths of the Gospels. Only
ages of human evolution still to come, will be able to bring the light that
which is hidden in those seemingly unpretending documents to the understanding
of humanity.
The celebration of the
Easter-festival should unite both these facts: the commemoration of the
original Good Friday and Easter scenes, as they are described in the Gospels;
and the creation of a consciousness for the spiritual reality in each single
human being, through which people are united with the One who manifested the
power of Resurrection. Then Easter will not be a fading commemoration and
tradition, but a time of experience of the universal Spirit of Human Evolution,
Who sends His healing rays of spiritual Sun-light into each human soul. Thus
Easter must become a festival of contemplating the purpose of human existence.
Such contemplation leads us to look up to the examples given by those members
of the human race who endeavored to realize the highest evolutionary impulses
of humanity, in spite of difficulties, opposition and even persecution. Finally
this can lead to the experience of the One in Whom are present the purified
archetypes of all human Ideals and evolutionary impulses, and Who is the Resurrection
and the Life.
Such experience demands
cosmic greatness from us. Surely we can only gradually evolve to such a height.
Therefore the Easter festival cannot be determined by earthly factors only, it
must be arranged according to cosmic conditions, and people can more and more
become conscious of this necessity. The first Christians, who still lived in
the personal memories of the actual Easter events, knew this demand for cosmic
greatness. They arranged the Easter festival on the Sunday following the first
full Moon of spring. They had two reasons for this, and a true commemoration of
the first Easter was established.
For the gospels relate
that the Crucifixion of Christ took place on the Friday preceding the Jewish
Passover. The Passover was fixed according to the first full Moon after the 21st
of March, or the Spring Equinox. Thus Easter morning, the morning of
Resurrection, was the Sunday after this spring full Moon. And as the following
centuries celebrated Easter according to this tradition, it was not only a true
commemoration, it was also an uplifting of the festival to cosmic heights and
grandeur.
Only if we will
consciously create such a cosmic background behind and above the Easter
festival, will we be able to celebrate it as an event that can give us inner
strength and dignity.
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