We must always remember that the Crucified One is also the Risen and Exalted One. And His Paschal Mystery is our mystery too. We have all been promised that what happened to Jesus will happen to each of us who share in Christ's humanity and who conformed ourselves to his image in baptism. Gerald Sloyan is a visiting professor of religion at Catholic University. Specifically, the earliest believers, Jews and non-Jews alike, were invited to consider what their own hard lives of suffering and their seemingly meaningless death might mean, once God's plan for a life to come in the body was revealed to them.
Easter celebrates that plan unfolding in creation - and in our own lives.
Oh, and the word Easter comes from the name of a pagan goddess of springtime and dawn - Estre. Using her name is just an example of how early missionaries used what was already in place to make Christian feasts attractive to those they hoped to convert.