The New and Improved Resurrection
It's Easter. Christ is risen. Indeed, He is risen. God, whatever you want to call Him - Adonai, Elohim, or Yahweh - commands the spilling of blood: He commanded Avraham to sacrifice Isaac (that He prevented the sacrifice is quite beside the point); on the high holy days the Temple flowed with the blood of innumerable animal sacrifices; Christ was a great teacher in life, but only in death did He defeat sin and save us all. (Why He permits/endorses violence and blood is another discussion altogether and quite beside our purpose.) So, for the purposes of saving souls, Good Friday is a more important day than Easter; and, after all, the cross is the symbol of Christianity, not an empty grave. Still, though sin died on the cross with Christ, without the Resurrection there would have been no Christianity, or it would have been perpetuated only as a minor sect of Judaism. The hard work was done on Good Friday, but Easter provides that needed touch of showmanship to convince all the doubting Thomases. *wink* A lot of people died on Roman crosses (including both Peter and Paul), but only two guys in all of history ever rose from the grave. (And the first, Lazarus, was just a bystander, since the second, Jesus, did all the work of both resurrections.) To make people believe that Jesus of Nazareth was the Christ, you needed Him to come back from the grave. (The bodily assumption into Heaven didn't hurt either, but that's not for a few weeks.)

So, it's Easter. A holy, holy, holy, holy day. Celebrate. For those of you who believe, I hope you had a good Holy Week; I know I sure did. (Though I still owe two Rosaries for some illicit snacking.) For those of you who don't believe, don't worry about it. Eat, drink and be merry, you'll have plenty of time to regret your disbelief in Perdition. ^_^

As a side note, and the product of coincidental timing, Father Bill reminded us during Good Friday Mass that Friday was the Feast of the Annunciation, one of only two feasts that may be observed during Lent. God planted a seed, the Archangel Gabriel told Mary that God needed her to do Him a solid, and nine months later a virgin, a woman immaculately born without Original Sin, gave birth to a bouncing baby Messiah. It's a hell of a faith, Christianity.

I'm going to have some M&Ms now. Easter! (*insert thumbs up here*)