Easter Sunday

Happy Easter! Christ has Risen!

The traditional greeting between Christians on this most Holy of Days in the Church Calendar, is: “Christ has Risen” to which the customary response is, “Indeed he has risen!” This has been taken as a kind of affirmation of a shared faith in the Paschal Mystery. But it is also more than this. It is an acknowledgement that with Christ we have risen also.

But how? What does it mean to us, as Gnostic Christians that Christ has risen?

The story of the crucifixion and the resurrection of Jesus as the Christ is in many ways the archetypal story of our own souls. We are born, we possess a Divine Spark within us, we are called to know it fully and by doing so we are destined to defeat all things which keep us in this fallen state and to resurrect and ascend back to God just like Jesus did. In other words to find, like him, eternal oneness with the Father; the Divine source of all things; the ineffable One. 

In a way we can say that a kind resurrection happens every time a human being defeats the forces of evil within himself and lives in the Truth of the Divine Presence. There are in fact countless number of small resurrections happening every day in people’s lives everywhere. However, what we truly must strive for is to be in a constant “state of resurrection,” or a permanent state of gnosis, grace and holiness. 

Fortunately, we are aided in this by our God given soul’s ability for gnosis, by Divine Grace and by that boundless Cosmic Force which is the Christ; an eternal and miraculous Love and Compassion which surrounds us at all times. It is also not an exaggeration to say that there are a limitless number of Angels and Archangels constantly helping everything thing towards this ultimate destiny. It is also these Angels which Mary of Magdala first saw at the tomb of Jesus. Jesus’ Guardian Angels guiding him on his path to oneness with the Father. We too have these Angels guiding us to our own resurrections and they are linked in many ways to our own virtues and strengths, which are a great boon to our souls.
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Let us therefore pray as One Gnostic Community and One Universal Gnostic Church, that we may have many of our own small resurrections daily and through these become so purified as to experience that Resurrection of resurrections; that permanent state of gnosis, grace and holiness and that in the meantime we may also share whatever holiness we have accumulated through our struggles with those with whom we have the privilege to share our lives. Amen.

The Three Maries at the Sepulchre, William Blake; ~1803.

"Jesus said to John: Thou hearest of me suffering, yet I have not suffered; pierced, yet was I not smitten; hanged, but was not hanged; blood flowing from me, yet it did not flow. And in a word, what they say of me, these things I did not have; while what they do not say, those I have suffered. Understand me then as the slaying of a Word, wound of a Word, hanging of a Word, suffering of a Word, fastening of a Word, death of a Word, resurrection of a Word, and defining this Word, I mean every man!"  (From the Acts of St. John:)