What Easter Owes to Good Friday

        I love Easter, with its tranquil certitude that death is vanquished. Easter! It is a brightness of the soul more beautiful than the brightness of the day, more evident than the sun. I would that I could carry into all hearts filled with shadow, veiled in mourning, a ray of that divine dawn.
       Why, then, do so many Christians fail to catch the vivifying secret of this royal day?
       It is because they do not know what Easter owes to Good Friday. The glory of Easter is not directly accessible to us. To conquer it we must pass through the "via dolorosa." Such is the meaning of the Scripture. Superficial man sees the spirit of God only in the miracle that reads the rock of the tomb into fragments, and he stretches out his hand to grasp the miracle; but his hand remains empty. The Christian soul throughout the ages is not thus deceived. It says, "From the Cross, the Crown."
       Thou tellest me, brother, that thou canst not believe in the Easter message. Thou dost not astonish me beyond measure. Didst thou see the Christ die? And those who, like Him, die for love of others? Hast thou felt the greatness of those vanquished for God, for justice? Hast thou wished to be able to die like them? If these things are unknown to thee, how canst thou discern the Easter message? Thou hast not the eyes to bear the light.

       The crucible of life is terrible. In our nights, in our dungeons, in our supreme struggles, show us not the Risen, but the Crucified One! It is from His dead eyes that the eternal dawn of Easter is kindled. To die as He died, to die with Him, is to spell the unknown Verb of the true life. There is no other school to liberate men from the hideous chains of all their slaveries, and from the most awful of all--their slavery to death. There is no other school that does this but the school of the Cross.

       If, then, thou wouldst bathe thy soul in the victorious brightness of Easter, know this: Easter is the supernatural daylight: Good Friday the night of anguish, from whose bosom the cry arises on the air, "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?"

       But do not misapprehend -- this light comes from that night. There, in the thick darkness, opens the door into the "kingdom that cometh not with observation."

       It is Thou, O Christ! It is Thy spirit which is the Resurrection and the Life! Have pity upon us who are children in faith! Thou Who hast trod the dust of our earth! Thou Who hast passed through our twilights! Thou Who hast lain with us in the tomb, that the tomb might be less dark! Holy Victim of Calvary! Man of Sorrows! May our souls across our humble religious symbols be granted a glimpse of Thine ineffable grandeur.

       Come and tell us words of life, Thou Who art eternal! Sound the awakening in our torpor, in our lassitude! Sound the trumpet of morning through the night of our graves!

       And in this Easter time may all that is divine in us thrill and rise in holy insurrection against death and all its conspirators, and for life and all its alliances. Amen. by Charles Wagner.

 

 Sandi Patty sings "Via Dolorosa"