Today in Christian tradition is the day Mankind is most intimately offered hope and joy, the consummation of the cycle initiated at Christmas. Easter is the fruit of Jesus’ sacrifice of Self for the welfare of all Others, His return representing how we may rise to the fullness of our humanity.

That is, a means to exceed our corporeal bounds alone, a premise in which we may partake by living consonantly with His example, the contentment to be gained by caring for more than just our Selves. By the outward-focused form of love, generally known by its Greek name: Agapé.

I initially thought to follow my post ‘The Radical Realism of Good Friday,’ with a representation of such awesome implications, the ‘Gloria’ of Beethoven’s ‘Missa Solemnis.’ I personally know no music that better depicts divine omnipotence.

But I’m not really comfortable using endorphin-evoking works like the ‘Gloria’ in a religious context, which should need no bombast.  So instead, I chose the hymn ‘Christ the Lord is Risen Today.’ This is often performed with a triumphalist tone (like the ‘Gloria’), but this version is serenely modest; all the trumpets in the world could not make its underlying message more potentially compelling.

Bach, Beethoven’s peer in music’s pantheon, might have said that in his B-Minor Mass, he was channeling the divine, just serving as God’s instrument. Beethoven, who lived 75 years later during the hyper-individualistic Romantic Era, might have asserted the opposite: God was Being channeled through him, and his personal genius.

For that very reason, monumental though it is, the ‘Gloria’ feels unsuitable for the gentleness elicited and required by Agapé – from whose true nature, its hyperbole may even distract (tempt?) us. Easter’s message, that love is both the source and sustenance of life, may give us pause to wonder if there is more to our Being than physical existence. And if, with its flaws and challenges, physical existence should be assumed to be the only reality that matters. That it may not be, is perhaps the single most quintessential element of ‘faith.’

Of course, the ‘Gloria’ is also worth listening to, and to ponder whether any species that could produce such a thing could be just an apparatus of flowing blood, firing nerve endings, etc. If it implies that we are inexpressibly beyond mere biological mechanisms; or at least, capable of aspiring to act as if we are. Something that echoes of the infinite promise bestowed today – not in spite of our imperfections, but because of them, in effect evoking greater love, as from a parent – in which we may repose faith, find peace and gain strength.

Not because our bodies will not return to dust, but because the best of our innermost being – the genuine good that we do, parallel to the benevolence Christ offered – need not vanish with our flesh, but may go on reverberating, contributing to the well-being of those who live after us. Whatever form such ongoing presence may take, it may constitute Eternal Life, in the realest sense, for Agapé may connect us with both eternity and infinity. Including with our brother beings, forever.

So please enjoy and contemplate this gently insistent music. What it lacks in grandeur, it may, with its lyrics, make up in serene suggestion of the goodness of existence.

To any who will allow themselves to perceive ‘existence,’ thus.