I could start with dry numbers and facts that, as a historian, should reassure me. I could write that in the case of Jesus of Nazareth, we possess a greater number of surviving manuscripts than for any other figure of antiquity. I could mention Papyrus P52, a small fragment of the Gospel of John, which scholarly consensus places only 30–40 years from the original’s composition—it is upon this scrap that the Roman prefect asks the famous question: “Are you the King of the Jews?” For comparison: the oldest copies of the works of Plato or Caesar are separated from their creation by centuries, and sometimes over a millennium of silence. I could go further and recall how the author of the Gospel according to St. Luke explicitly declares to the most excellent Theophilus in his prologue that he compiled accounts from those who were eyewitnesses from the beginning. This work, according to scholarly findings, was written approximately 50–60 years after the events that were so meticulously chronicled within it.
In fact, I have already done so, but this text is not about the history of the New Testament.
ONTOLOGICAL RIFT
We live in an age of deserters. As people of the 21st century, we have defected from the eternal order that, for millennia, allowed us to maintain our uprightness. Nature—that harshest of teachers—functions in a rhythm that cannot be cheated: memento mori precedes every resurrectio. Winter is not a glitch in the universe’s code, nor a system failure to be fixed with air conditioning and artificial light. Winter is a prerequisite for spring. It is a period of necessary stillness, where life does not vanish but retreats to the roots, gathering strength in the darkness and cold for a new beginning. It is a time when the earth rests from bearing fruit, preparing in silence for the next labor.
Yet, we have deemed “winter” a personal enemy. And I am not speaking only of biological death, from which we flee into medicine, aesthetics, and the cult of eternal youth. I am speaking of the death of plans, of ambitions, of ending relationships, or falling authorities. We are terrified of closing chapters, as if every end were an ultimate catastrophe rather than a chance for a new opening. We have forgotten the simple truth that Andrzej Sapkowski [polish writer, author of the Witcher saga] put into words: “Something ends, something begins.” Modern man tries to stop time, to freeze the moment of success, or to persist in toxic stability just to avoid a confrontation with the void. Meanwhile, it is precisely this void—this lack and this silence—that are the only places where something authentically new can happen. Without an empty space, there is nowhere to invite life.
Once, man, living closer to the earth, was acquainted with this order. Moreover, he aligned the rhythm of his existence with this immutable harmony. He saw the ear of grain that must be cut, and the seed that must disappear into the dark soil so that it does not remain barren.
He understood the profound meaning of the annual cycle: the spring joy of sowing, the summer labor of growth, the autumn harvest—a time of gathering fruit but also of slow decay—leading finally to the deep sleep of winter. He knew that each of these stages was sacred and indispensable. Today, isolated by concrete, notifications, and technology, we have lost the ability to “die to ourselves.” We want only to take, we want only summer; we fear autumn and we loathe winter. But without the consent to death, Resurrection becomes merely an abstract legend, rather than a biological and spiritual necessity that pulses in every blade of grass.
THE SEED AND THE CONCRETE
At the very heart of this story lies a sentence that sounds like a brutal law of biology, yet remains the greatest promise of theology:
“Truly, truly, I tell you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit” (John 12:24).
The problem is that we desperately long for the harvest, yet we are terrified of the soil. We want success without the risk of loss, intimacy without sacrifice, and hope without passing through the darkness of Holy Saturday. We have chosen a life of eternal, artificial summer—in a sterile space of comfort where nothing truly ripens, because nothing has the courage to die. Our hope has turned into cheap optimism, for we have extracted the pain of failure from it. Meanwhile, true hope is born only when we come face to face with the limits of our own capabilities—at the point where patterns and self-assurance end.
Contemporary culture teaches us that every “winter” in our lives is an error, a mood malfunction to be concealed. We no longer know how to mourn our unfulfilled dreams; instead, we carry within us the corpses of old ambitions, rather than allowing them to fertilize the ground for new endeavors. Resurrection requires letting go of the old. It requires the courage to cease controlling the process and to allow the seed to stop being a seed. A total transformation must occur—a change of form that can neither be predicted nor planned in a spreadsheet. This is a painful process, for it demands the renunciation of our current identity in favor of something yet to come.
THE RESOUNDING QUESTIONS OF THE EMPTY TOMB
On Easter Monday, as the dust of the festive breakfast slowly settles and we prepare to return to our ordered, technocratic lives, we are left alone with the Empty Tomb. And that tomb, in its terrifying silence, asks us today some uncomfortable questions:
- Does your panic at the end of a life stage not stem from the fact that you believed in the illusion of your own self-sufficiency?
- When was the last time you allowed a plan of yours—one that clearly bore no fruit—to “die,” so that space could be made for something real to grow in its place?
- Are you ready to return to the natural cycle, where loss is not a final defeat, but a necessary sowing, without which future harvests will not be possible?
Perhaps it is not yet too late to return to this natural rhythm. Hope flows from the fact that this cycle still endures, and we—despite all our pride, concrete, and paralyzing fear—still belong to it. Cherishing the traditions of our ancestors is not merely folklore or a sentimental return to the past; it is grasping a rope that connects us to a meaning hidden deep within the earth. It is an acknowledgment that we are not masters of life and death, but their humble participants, who must learn to wait for the dawn in the very heart of the night.
The morning of the resurrection reminds us that after every night, even the longest and darkest, dawn follows. The only question is: do we have enough courage and humility within us to stop fighting and allow the seed to die at the proper time, trusting that life will always find its way back to the surface?
As early as next week, another article will appear on the blog. This time, we will inaugurate the IMAGO section (The Path of the Image).
Take care, wherever you are, and see you on the trail!