Holy Week Contemplation Nr 8

Saturday: The Day Death Died

Read slowly and allow the pictures to come alive within your mind. Practice living thinking. 
I have heard a beautiful story from Rudolf Steiner.
Imagine, he says, that you were looking at the Earth from the far distances of space.
Imagine that you had been doing this for long long ages of time.
For, he says, there came one moment when you could see something astonishing.
Suddenly, the earth began to glow. To shine. To radiate light out into space.
The light that it sent out was no reflected light, such as the moon sends sunlight back into space.
This light came from within the earth itself.
This, he says, is what happened at Easter.

At the moment when the blood of Christ fell from his body into the earth, the earth received a substance unlike any other, the blood of spirit-man, God-human, divine-earthly. This blood was holy wine for the earth.
Legends also tell us that when the body of Christ-Jesus was laid into the grave, earthquake tremors shook the earth. The earth opened its own body to take the body deeply into itself. This body was holy bread for the earth.
Through his sacrificial death, Christ offered Holy Communion to the earth.
The soul of Christ then entered with His body and blood deep into the earth. There the seed force of His soul burst forth from the seed with spirit light, shining in the core of the earth.

We human beings were created to be citizens of both worlds: of the heaven and of the earth. Or perhaps to say it better: when we were created, both worlds were still one. But as the earth-world became more solid and as we human beings became more enmeshed in it, the spiritual world faced the very real danger of losing the human race to materialism.
When they die, human beings who have not cultivated a relationship to the spiritual world while on the earth face the very real danger of not being able to find their way in the land of spirit. They face the danger of dying not only in body, but also in consciousness.
Our consciousness has relevance not only for ourselves, but also for the spiritual world. Dead thoughts rely heavily on material processes and the brain, but living thinking can access the spiritual world. Living thinking can build the bridge to the spirit even while we are living on earth.
But the more people turn away from the spirit, the less they can access higher world, and the fewer the forces of spirit rejuvenation the earth has access to. This sets the stage for a continuing cycle of cosmic-earthly devolution.
Christ, the creating spirit of both worlds, bridges spirit and matter. With the force of a spiritual sun, his gift of light, love and life to the world returns life forces to the earth, and shines in the spiritual world for all people, whether living in body or not.

It is said that the new Sunrise of Easter already occurred deep in the center of the earth on Holy Saturday. There the new day dawned for those human souls who had previously not been able to find their way back to spirit.
The creating Spirit-Sun united itself with the earth, offering to the earth its seed forces for the future evolution.
The death of matter has been overcome. The resurrection of the human race in the realm of the etheric forces has begun.
Can we awaken in ourselves the capacity for love and living consciousness? Can we participate in the new future?