The Holy Significance of Easter Festival ||||| Bidyot Bhowmik
Christians across the globe are celebrating the holy festival of Easter with due solemnity, Church services, necessary rituals with religious fervour which started on 7th April, Good Friday and will continue up to 10th April, Easter Monday in 2023. Easter celebration generally include Church services, festive family meals, Easter procession, Easter eggs decoration and gift giving. Easter includes Good Friday or Holy Friday, Easter Sunday and Easter Monday. There is a national holiday for Easter in the whole of Europe, in the continent of North and South America including Canada, United States, Mexico, Brazil, Argentina, Australia, New Zealand, Parts of Africa and Asia. Christianity is the largest religion on earth with 2.382 billion population. Good Friday commemorates the crucifixion of Jesus Christ and his death at Calvary. Accounts of the Christian Gospel state that the son of God, Jesus Christ was put to death sentence by crucifixion by the then Roman Governor Pontius Pilate after Jesus was inhumanly betrayed by Judas. Easter Sunday is a festival and holiday celebrating the resurrection of Jesus from the dead, described in the New Testament having occurred on the third day of his burial after his crucifixion by the Romans at Calvary approximately in 30 A.D.
The holy book of the Christians is the Bible. In the Bible, the New Testament states that the Resurrection of Jesus Christ which Easter celebrates, is the true foundation of Christian faith. Easter is the celebration of the resurrection of Jesus from the tomb on the third day after his crucifixion. Easter is the fulfilled prophecy of the Messiah who would be persecuted, die for our sins, and rise on the third day. The resurrection established Jesus as the powerful Son of God and is cited as proof that God will judge the world in righteousness and justice. For those who trust in Jesus’ death and resurrection, “death is swallowed up in celestial victory by the resurrection or rebirth. Any person who chooses to follow Jesus receives “a new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.” Through faith in the working of God, those who follow Jesus are spiritually resurrected with him so that they may walk in a new way of life and receive eternal salvation. Through his death, burial, and resurrection, Jesus paid the penalty for sin, thus purchasing for all who believe in him, eternal life in Jesus Christ.
For this journey until Easter 2023, Pope Francis, the head of the Catholic Church left a message for everyone, inviting us to set out on the journey. In the message, the Holy Father highlights “Lenten penance” as “commitment, sustained by grace, to overcoming our lack of faith and our resistance to following Jesus on the way of the cross. In this sense, to “understand and embrace the mystery of his salvation, accomplished in total self-giving inspired by love, we must allow ourselves to be taken aside by him and to detach ourselves from mediocrity and vanity”, Francis stressed.
The head of the Church of England, Archbishop of Canterbury named Justin Welby’s Ecumenical Easter letter of 2023 which says “It is a recurrent theme of the resurrection narratives in the Gospels that the disciples are struggling to fully comprehend the good news of the resurrection. They do not understand what has happened. They are cautious and fearful, they lack decisiveness and wait for something to happen. Jesus always seems further ahead or seeing further than them. Just as the angel urges them to follow him to Galilee, so we constantly have to hold up our eyes and focus on the future, God’s future, where Jesus is leading us. One of the tasks of Christians is surely to keep reminding people steadfastly of that horizon of hope, the risen Jesus. We ought all to walk together, whatever our traditions, towards that horizon, trusting in faith in the one who has gone before us. Our walking together, working in love and fellowship as did the early church in the days after Pentecost, is itself a sign of the power of God’s re-creation of humanity and of the world in the aftermath of the first Easter.
As we experience the challenges of these times, may we continue to turn towards each other, remembering the unprecedented nature of this time in history of the friendships and dialogue opportunities between us.
And so I bring you joyful greetings of Easter – a time of renewal, of a heartfelt trust in a resurrection that includes us all. As Christians, we have a central, certain source of hope – he who sprang from the tomb on the first day, bursting into life and sharing his love with the world.”
Wishing all of you all the best from the bottom of my heart on this holy festival of Easter.
Bidyot Bhowmik-Former Professor, writer and advisor to CBNA, Montreal, Canada-7tht April, 2023
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