Easter transformation

This year we celebrate Easter again, we prepare with fasting and prayer, we participate in religious services, we "paint Easter eggs" (two centuries of Njegoš) and we prepare - what God has given - to treat ourselves to our family and guests. The celebration of Christ's Resurrection coincides with the spring awakening of life and it is so logical and natural because the essence of both terms, Resurrection and spring, is identical, and that is - the manifestation of Life. Life still exists and persists, despite various deaths and mortifications.

Nevertheless, this obvious and understandable connection of Easter with natural phenomena is not simply a copy of ancient religious cults that followed changes in the human environment, but is, first of all, caused by the God-given fact that Christ suffered and was resurrected on the days of the Jewish Passover, which - according to the Old Testament calendar - it falls in the spring time. Until the time of Christ, Old Testament Jews sacrificed the Passover lamb as an expression of their covenant with God.

However, one of the basic truths of Christ's gospel is exactly that, that Christ gives himself for slaughter and sacrifice - "for the life of the world", "for human sins". Christ abolishes the blood sacrifice and the slaughter of the lamb, establishing, at the Last Supper, the New Testament, bloodless sacrifice, which, under the form of bread and wine, makes all believing people partakers of the Kingdom of Heaven.

Then again, many will ask, why start all over again every year? Why am I celebrating Easter again, fasting beforehand and painting eggs, when I did all that last year, and the year before that, and the years before that? Why and until when? Isn't it a little frivolous and unconvincing to repeat the same thing every year from the beginning? It's always me, one and the same, and different holidays roll in front of me. Sometimes they are happy, sometimes they are sad, and sometimes I am indifferent in front of them.

Here I would like to use an ancient Greek philosophical remark, made in the time before Christianity, which says that "everything flows and everything changes", and that - to put it figuratively, "a person never enters the same river". Among all other things, this image of a river that always carries some new water refers to man himself. I, on the one hand, am the same man from last year, but on the other hand, I'm not exactly the same.

Meanwhile, I lost my job; I got a long-awaited job; a good friend of mine died; I fell in love; I was deceived by a good friend; I was dishonest with another; I took out a loan; i went bankrupt...etc. Last year I celebrated Easter in good company, and this year I am lonely; last year I saw myself as a safe and reliable person, and today I feel like an impostor, last year I went to the temple without the hope of succeeding in business, today I work in a company...

When I think about it, Easter is always solemnly and joyfully the same, but I change, and always in front of Christ's empty tomb comes a new man, more experienced, different. A man with different experiences of life, but still alive and sure that this Easter joy, calls me personally, among millions of people present, past and future, calls me too, that in accordance with the church prayer "again and again", once more again, I ask - where am I in all these events?

Am I among those who condemn Christ for lying and deceit? Am I among the uninterested, who observe the gospel events from the sidelines? Am I among the apostles who strongly believed, and yet, in an instant, they all scattered? Am I among the few who follow Christ until His, hopeless (as it seemed to everyone at the time) death on the cross? Am I like Joseph and Nicodemus, disciples of Christ, who sadly, disappointed but bravely and dignified, bury the dead Master? Am I a Roman captain, who commands the execution of the condemned Christ, and then, shaken by miraculous signs, sincerely repents of his deed? Was I an elated believer last year, enchanted by the holiday, and today I am confused and unsure? Where am I and what am I? Will I shake my head in doubt at the joyful greetings and news of Christ's resurrection, or will I also joyfully confess: "Indeed, Christ is risen"!

Njegoš, who was born exactly two centuries ago, ends one of his great works by confessing the "Savior of the earth" who "defeated death with the Resurrection". We know that Njegoš burned some of his manuscripts. This one is not. If it were, then it wouldn't be this One we know, and we wouldn't be us either.

So, as for me personally, I choose Njegoš's company, I choose the company of his readers, followers, and sometimes, where he allows, his like-minded people. I am too far away from the opportunity to follow him and understand everything he wrote and said, but in this I share his joy, I repeat in myself these lines, understood by all, by Metropolitan Peter II of Cetinje, Christianly perceiving them as my own: "O gentle and quiet teacher. .." Look for them at the end of "The Secret of the Microcosm". Look for yourself in them. Enough for this year's flow of water in the rivers of our souls.

Christ is risen.

(The exclamation mark is clearly superfluous to this expression. The meaning of the word thunders in itself.)