Making Easter a time for spiritual rebirth, with insights from Marianne Williamson and Richard Rohr. Photo via Joshua Sortino & Unsplash.
Let us not spend this holy week brooding on the crucifixion of God’s Son, but happily in the celebration of his release. For Easter is the sign of peace, not pain. ~Helen Schucman, A Course in Miracles
While the stories of the resurrection vary from gospel to gospel, one thing’s for certain: The days leading up to the crucifixion of Jesus were a dark time. But as we get closer to Easter, things begin to change. We move beyond the darkness to the light and hope of the resurrection. In The Mystic Jesus: The Mind of Love, Marianne Williamson reminds us:
The point of the crucifixion is not the suffering of Jesus; the point is the resurrection that followed. The resurrection was God’s response to the crucifixion, or the ultimate appearance of the light after even the deepest darkness.
Reading The Mystic Jesus reveals that Williamson’s message isn’t solely about the resurrection of Jesus. It has to do with our own personal resurrection. Not a literal resurrection from the dead, but a resurrection of the mind that moves from the deepest darkness to the bright light of God within us.
Easter is a time to move to the Light.
We have all been through tough times during our lives and you may be experiencing them now. For some, it has been highly personal, difficulties with your health, your finances or your relationships. For many, these troubles extend to the soul as we bear witness to things that were once unimaginable in our politics and civil society.
Easter serves as a time to renew our faith. Williamson proclaims that the Easter season gives us a “reason to hope when all hope seems lost. It gives us “the possibility for a new beginning that seems impossible when all has gone wrong.” We each carry this seed of hope within us. Our personal journey, with its ups and downs, peaks and valleys, wisens us and gives us strength. Williamson writes:
We become different because of what we’ve been through. We become wiser, nobler, more humble, and more aware. We become more peaceful and more open to the miracles of life…we die to who we used to be and are reborn as who we are, thus rising above the consciousness of darkness, ignorance, and death.
The choice for the future, our future, is to move away from darkness and fear, toward light and love. If we throw our hands up in the air and give up, darkness wins. But if we choose to resurrect ourselves, to view the Easter season as a time to reconnect with the spark of the Divine at our core, not only do we win—those in our circle of influence and society win. Williamson says that:
We must be willing to be reborn into a higher version of ourselves if we’re to achieve the miracle of transformation. The world as it now exists is a reflection of who we have been; the world of the future will reflect who we choose to become.
Is such radial change even possible? With Jesus (or God) at our side, Williamson says that all things are possible. She writes, “Jesus is someone who has been authorized by God to help anyone who calls to him…a power that can do for us what we cannot do for ourselves…a power beyond the powers of the world.”
Richard Rohr also believes resurrection is happening now.
The Christian author and sage Richard Rohr also claims that we can experience resurrection in our own lives—through acts of love, forgiveness, and by pursuing a new beginning. He teaches that resurrection is happening now, in the present, whenever we choose love over hate, or hope over despair.
Rohr sees resurrection not as a one-time miracle, but as a fundamental pattern of creation. He connects it to the natural cycles of death and rebirth, such as springtime, and to processes of transformation and renewal. Rohr emphasizes that “resurrection” is another word for positive change. He sees it as a source of profound hope, especially in the face of suffering and loss.
According to Rohr, the resurrection demonstrates that “God will have the last word,” and that love ultimately triumphs over hate and even death. Writing in his weekly newsletter from the Center for Action and Contemplation, he says that:
Easter is the feast of hope. This is the feast that says God will have the last word and that God’s final judgment is resurrection. God will turn all that we destroy and hurt and into life and beauty.
I’ll next turn to a powerful sermon on the resurrection that Rohr wrote and published last Easter, 2024. I’ll let his lightly edited words stand by themselves:
We don’t need to wait for death to experience resurrection. We can begin resurrection today by living connected to God. Resurrection happens every time we love someone even though they were not very loving to us. At that moment we have been brought to new life. Every time we decide to trust and begin again, even after repeated failures, at that moment we’ve been resurrected. Every time we refuse to become negative, cynical, hopeless, we have experienced the Risen Christ. We don’t have to wait for it later. Resurrection is always possible now.
Truly, the only way we can hold onto grace, mercy, love, joy—any spiritual gift—is to give them away consciously and intentionally. Once we stop acting as a conduit, we lose them ourselves. That’s why there are so many sad, bitter, and angry people. Disconnected from God, we choose death. We ourselves contribute to negativity, cynicism, anger, and even to the oppression of other races and religions.
Spiritually speaking, we live in a world of abundance, of infinity. But most of us walk around as if it were not true, operating in a world of scarcity where there’s never enough. There’s not enough for me, there’s not enough for you, there’s not enough for everybody. And so we hoard it—Spirit, Love, Life, Grace, Mercy—to ourselves. We don’t allow ourselves to be conduits through which it pours into the world.
How do we become “conduits” so that in Rohr’s words, “Spirit, Love, Life, Grace, Mercey” pour into ourselves and out into the world? We do it by making the choice to do so, not just in our heads, but deep within our hearts. If you’re note feeling it, you might try starting with the prayer below.
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