My old communist friend would, I think, relate to my favourite Easter “glimpse.”
Even while reciting “religion is the opium of the people” he would know that if the revolution is for anybody, then it’s for everybody. Our religious comrades are part of the whole package. Of course a Marxist can be religious. I know because when two exchange students came from the Soviet Union to our campus they surprised us by giving out badges showing the patron saint of their city. At that moment, the exchange of ideas went both ways!
To me, caring for the masses means that instead of seeing them as remote, hard objects, I try to loosen my heart to walk in their shoes. For example, I want to share with Jane her joy about her new easter bonnet, and feel a sympathetic exaltation when glad-eyed Oprah and Miriam rush onto the porch saying, “Jesus has risen!”
Even if I am an atheist, in a grey Godless world, trudging down the block to my Sunday Marxist-Leninist study group, I nevertheless deserve, on occasion, to walk into the mystic.
I remain tantalized by the three days in-between the crucifixion and the resurrection, because experts say Jesus was both totally human and totally divine. Yet instead of going from the hill of death (cavalry) up to heaven… he went down to hell for three days. What happened down there? Did sinners take solace from seeing him?
The idiom of being a “doubting Thomas” comes from the disciple who heard about the recent sightings of Christ, but doubted the stories. One day Jesus entered the room and invited Thomas to trace with his fingers the wounds from the Roman spear, the nails of the crucifixion; Thomas did so—and rejoiced.
As for sightings, my “glimpse” of Easter is from a moment in the novel The Robe. Two men are walking in dusty Palestine. One notices how his friend, at every cross roads, peers both ways into the distance: maybe from optimism, maybe from a hopeless, desperate longing. He gently advises his friend, “If you don’t stop that, you’ll go mad.”
Verily, I can relate.
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Sean Crawford
On snowy, wet great plains
Easter Sunday
2026 Ano Domini
Movie review: To “brighten up this miserable world” comes Roger Ebert’s review of the movie version of the musical Godspell.
And, without any grey skies, here is a zesty song clip from that movie, of “Day by Day.”
