When Easter Comes

New Zealand Listener, Volume 36, Issue 922, 12 April 1957, Page 10

When Easter Comes

HERE is to be a late Easter this year; and although summer has passed almost imperceptibly into autumn, the golden days moving tranquilly in procession, it cannot be long before we feel the sharpness of winter. It has been a wonderful summer. As men grow older they sometimes imagine that all the best seasons occurred in youth. The climate, they say, is not what it used to be; and even the Weather Office, producing statistics with scientific detachment, is unable to persuade them that memory might be unreliable. Time moves slowly in childhood, and is deceptive. A poor summer can be brightened when the mind throws up a sunlit memory, and the seasons merge in retrospect. This time, however, there is no illusion: the summer has earned memories in minds naw young; and the old may be grateful for one more season of plentiful light. But in mid-April the warm days are nearly over. The autumn mood comes down, and adds its own poignancy to religious occasions. In northern countries the transition from Good Friday to Easter Day takes place in the spring, when cloud and sunshine are never far apart, and are blown across the sky like thoughts of death and life in a troubled mind. The final breaking in of hope is supported by the new green of the earth, a resurrection in nature which quickens the spirit. In New Zealand it is different: the trees are almost bare, and if there is sunlight on Easter Day it may have a thinness which speaks of the dying year. Some people say that these things do not matter. The solemnity of Holy Week and the joyfulness of Easter are eleiments of a spiritual progress, and

need no support from the world outside. Yet the moods of earth and spirit have always had their close connection; and _ people, especially in doubtful times, are reassured when they can lift their faces to the sun. It is no weakness of faith, but only the insistent flesh, which colours their response. The season is part of the experience; and so also is our human condition. Every year Easter has special meanings for men and women who in some way have felt the touch of winter. These people need no parables on the frailty of existence: they know what sort of world they are in, and how thin are the walls that keep them there. But knowing is not enough, and indeed can be a sort of torment, if the knowledge is in a protesting mind. Beyond the private sorrows, too, are the public anxieties. For the most part these are dispersed in the background. Men cannot sit down all day to bemoan the ills of the world. They must work, and be happy now and then, and take what comfort they can from the rising and setting of the sun. But there are times when thought is seasohable, when it comes like a ceremony or festival, and is shared with neighbours. At such times, as on Good Friday and Easter Day, the ancient mysteries remain inscrutable; but they take a symbolical power which seems to lighten our dilemmas. Life is hard, and so is faith; but without faith the journey is in-supportable-except, perhaps, for those who lean on others, or draw upon the spiritual reserves of family and society, and are closer to faith than they realise. All men, even the strongest, must look outside themselves for support; and once a year, with the approach of Easter, the Christian message reassures them.