Easter. And the spirit of Easter

We will not discuss Easter from a religious perspective. For me Easter implies ‘the resurrection of Jesus Christ’. However, I don’t expect all readers to hold this view, yet the following observation may be beneficial to all:

Religions try to give answers to people’s most intimate and essential questions. Which affect their raison d’être. Many religions, philosophies, conceptions of the world and of humanity do this by having in mind people’s yearning to live, their yearning to be and exist, and to do and create. Even the yearning to perpetuate themselves, to project themselves beyond existence. Whether it is through memory, an accomplished work or descendents. Or, for some, through immortality. At any rate, through the rejection of death. Through their continuance, not disappearing one fine day into a tunnel or into the ground. All this is human nature.

It is therefore logical that men and women, either as individuals or within the framework of collective actions that group them and provide them with systems that aid their own development – since the human being’s very essence is the need to communicate –, to feel the need of a vital impulse, continually renewed, which helps them offset aging, weakening. The threat of the void.

The Christian Easter responds to this need. To the desire to be. The Resurrection means the triumph of life. It means the renewal of the vital spirit.

Other religions and philosophies offer different answers. An invitation to indifference, to passiveness, to resignation. This does not hold for western religions and philosophies. From the beliefs of the ancient Greeks (one need only consult “The Iliad” to confirm this) to today’s American protestant sects, the common denominator is to live, and live life to the full, and live with hope for the future, for greatness.

They all have their version of the Easter spirit of a vitalist outlook. They all have their version of the Resurrection. Or, put secularly, all western philosophies have their own version of the Revival. They all manifest a desire to live.

Whatever the case, human beings have the right to draw on powerful vital and creative optimism from all these proposals. A reason to be and a reason for hope. The conviction that men, women, and peoples are called to do the work that corresponds to them in the time and place history has assigned them. Work that we cannot leave half done due to discouragement or to disappointment.

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All this might come as a surprise to regular readers of these editorials. I cannot depart from my own worldview. It does not imply that I seek to impose my views on others. But among those who share similar views, also promethean, views also averse to fatalism, we seek to encourage everyone to live in confidence, in serenity, in activism, in the struggle against everything that signifies renunciation and abandonment.

And in all the world’s religions and philosophical systems there comes a moment of consoling exaltation. Of joyous exaltation. There is a time of Resurrection or of Revival. Yet in all their calendars, there comes thereafter a long period of daily toil. Often unrewarding, but which can be done. In easy or difficult conditions. However, always with a spirit and will renewed and strengthened by a new impulse of life, by the justification of one’s own raison d’être. By a moral Revival.

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Let us return to the beginning.

Catalonia has endured and is enduring trying times. A threat hangs over us. It is not just her economy, or her political power that is in danger. That others seek to undermine. It is her spirit.

Those who see the situation thus need to denounce it, oppose it. With their might. And with realism. As we have said so often, we are what we are and we have what we have. Perhaps we will have more. Or less. But while our desire to live remains strong, our intelligence is not blinded and we remember our sense of the common good; while our instinct of wanting to be, to live, is not suppressed; while our spirit of Revival remains steadfast, Catalonia can win the battle.