Holy Week and the Easter pose us every year several difficult and far reaching questions. Those related to the nature of the saving role of the Jesus Christ, significance of the suffering, as well as those related to the nature the victory of life over death. Holy Week and Easter make us reflect on principal aspects of human life.
Easter this year is different than most of us would remember from before. A sudden blow of the pandemic is not just a challenge for doctors and medical personnel, for those responsible for public management of the crisis and for many others involved in guaranteeing basic functioning and services in the society - it is a challenge for all of us to see the message of Easter in the light of new experience.
Extensive and far reaching impacts of the pandemic reminds all of us that in spite of sudden and unexpected appearance of this particular calamity, we have been ignoring for a considerable length of time signs of the crisis that have been surrounding us. Or at least, we did not pay attention to these signs as they would have deserved.
For too long we have been living in the illusion. Illusion of security, the encompassing illusion of invincible power of rationality, illusion of growing wealth and illusion of the power of money that we think is able to manage everything.
We have not been listening sufficiently to warnings that we need to slow down, that we need to respect limits of the planet that we are living in. We did not pay attention to the warning that a misfortune, be in the form of pandemic or any other, is impossible.
Current situation offers us the lesson of humility, lesson of our vulnerability and fragility and lesson of our limited abilities, remind us the value of slowing down and muting.
At the same time, the current situation offers us the lesson of mutual dependency. Dependency in our families, dependency on one to another, as well as dependency of bigger communities, dependency even at the level of national states. We depend on each other and on mutual help. It is not possible to manage pandemic and to win over the virus in one country. We have to manage it all together. Mutual dependency is a lesson we should not overlook in spite of enormous wealth of the world, enormous capacity of our common knowledge and competence, as well as enormous bulk of available means we have at hand in order to face the challenge.
All material wealth, our knowledge and rational capacities, all these are relevant. However, all these are not sufficient.
Upcoming Easter is a moment enabling us to think more about the limits of our natural capacities. Are we not too ignorant to the signs of time? Are we not too much relying on our seeming independence? Coming days offer an opportunity to take seriously our vulnerability and the need for healing. Easter is a reminder of the value of life that is not based on amassing of wealth, but on the appreciation and respect of the world around us, respect for creation, for its beauty, but equally for its limits. Hopefully we will not forget too soon these reminders after the crisis is over.
Resurrection and renewal of life is possible. Easter is a reminder that what has happened around us is not an accident. If we do not change our way of life, if we continue to pretend critical situations happening in the world around as normal in spite of warnings that they are not, we will pave the way for more problems to come.
Easter is the promise of the new life. This year is this message more pressing than it was in many occasions before.
With wishes of blessed Easter
Peter Pavlovic