On March 8th of this year, the Christian Community begins its observance of the 4 preparatory weeks before the great festival of Easter. The time is limited to the same time of preparation given for Christmas in the Advent Season. By shortening the time from the traditional 40 days, it helps us to be more earnest and focused in using these four weeks to gradually bring before us the thoughts and feelings that culminate during the Passion week and ultimately to Easter itself.

While Advent has become a season of externalized and commercial excess, there is still a palpable sense of anticipation and reminders to ‘get ready’ that can hardly go unnoticed. In contrast, the passion is a time when the transition between winter and spring can be subtle, submerged in the preoccupations of our worldly life and muted in the drenched browns and greys of thawing winter. One must make an effort to pause and connect with the miracle that is slowly transpiring in nature. We may witness skeletal remains of blackened trees and the first buds forming on tree and bush. The first haze of subtle green, hints of the etheric life that hovers over the plant world. The days grow longer, the birds sing more brightly and our spirits can become intoxicated with the delicious warmth and fragrance of earth in bloom.

It takes a deeper effort to direct our gaze inwards, away from the life already pressing forth in nature, to the soul of the earth, which accompanies the steps of the Christ towards the ultimate sacrifice. His deed is a mystery to man. We cannot easily comprehend it’s meaning. We may only dimly feel the gravity of sin that has isolated us from the heavenly spirits. It’s easy to live in the mirage of our earthly lives and ignore the whisperings of our Higher Self. Modern man is increasingly divorced from any sense of responsibility for what takes place around him. It is not only the gross pollution that destroys life in oceans, land and biosphere, but the mechanized, abstract thinking and indifference to the suffering of others that wounds the spirit being which is our earth.

The Christ gazed upon humanity and saw that the descent of man into the realm of matter to discover free will had gone too far. He had lost all connection with his true being and lost all knowledge of his true purpose. Death had seized not only his body but threatened his immortal soul. Only the willing sacrifice of a God could change the course of creation. And so the Christ descended through all the hierarchical spheres to meet man at the turning point of time. He joined in efforts to save man’s physical, etheric and astral bodies from corruption, with the help of the Nathan soul, early in our human evolution. But the mission to save the human “I” could only be accomplished by penetrating down to the physical level of bone and blood, to encounter death where it lived in us, and transform it from within.

Dr. Steiner helps us to contemplate this journey with Christ Jesus, as do our Christian Community priests, but only we can walk the walk. We must sense our own poverty and powerlessness in the face of evil. We must face our weakness to overcome the sins of egotism, our role in the death of the earth. As the priest faces the altar in the offertory, they confess their unworthiness and their sin before God. They offer a contrite heart that has been transformed by daily discipline of reverence and humility.

It is this awareness that we must strive to awaken in the weeks of passion; the yearning of an empty heart for the presence of an all-loving God. This is a time to acknowledge that, without the gift of Christ’s sacrifice, there would be no seed, no hope, no redemption – no spring. However, the deed of Christ did not magically transform us. It only planted a seed within our I, that yet requires our will, devotion and disciplined thought to develop. We must still face evil in the world and in ourselves, but with the help of Christ, we are assured that Life will prevail.