Your column, “What does it mean to be an Easter person?” [Ken Trainor, Viewpoints, April 16] articulated what has been running around in my head for some time. I totally agree that we spend too much emphasis on the Triduum and not on the Resurrection. Indeed, we fixate on the “agony and bloody sweat” from the old 1928 Prayer Book of the Episcopal Church.
The message is not that Christ died for our sins. The message is that Christ experienced resurrection for us to know the better life of forgiveness and love — for us and for others. That is the great message of Easter. The cross is not the important thing; the Resurrection is.
Which calls to mind a conversation about the cross I had with Oak Park mathematician and eccentric Oliver Atkin who said: “Suppose Jesus had been executed in the electric chair. Would we then be wearing wires around our necks to commemorate it?”
The victory and joy in Easter is in our own Resurrection and our own renewal, however we as Christians interpret and celebrate that.
Charles Chauncey Wells
Oak Park
