As we go through Holy Week, it's interesting to reflect on the ritualistic, spiritual, and symbolic dimensions of this celebration and their relevance today.
Every society has rituals through which people process, digest, and experience various phases of their lives, thus facilitating growth.
How are we born? How do we grow? How do we mature? How do we relate to others? How do we grieve? How do we remember the dead? And ultimately, how do we die?
Living in a society with an active church that comes from a completely different social structure, as it was shaped much earlier, I wonder how the Easter ritual concerns us today. A ritual that passes through death and reaches rebirth, inviting each participant to connect with their own journey towards death to achieve rebirth.
Yes, but to what death are we referring? It would be shallow to remain in the literal sense of death, as humans do not literally resurrect like Christ.
On the other hand, it's interesting to think about it symbolically: what needs to die in our lives for rebirth to occur? A relationship? A job? A way of thinking? How would it be if we identified what would be beneficial for us to let die?
We could, along with the symbolic image of Christ, see our own aspect ascending the cross and dying. We could bury it in the Epitaphios and make a procession of it, so that everyone can see and mourn it collectively. Finally, after three days of mourning and death, the light, the new beginning, the newness, would be born.
For Christians, Christian rituals have their own value. However, they may also hold value for others who are looking for new ways to process life's experiences. By removing their religious dimension and viewing the rituals as symbolic experiential experiences, they suddenly have tremendous richness. After all, Christianity borrowed these rituals from elsewhere and adapted them to suit itself. How about we borrow the structure of the ritual and adapt it to what suits us?
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