Whenever Easter arrives, we say that it is the greatest Christian holiday. We always assure ourselves of this, even though Christmas and its harmless joy seem much dearer to our hearts. Because Easter is tough. Despite being surrounded by tiny leaves that are beginning to sprout from their buds, flowers blooming, and tiny animals starting to appear everywhere, on Easter Sunday it is impossible to forget Friday. And Friday is the price. It is easy to accept a life full of colour and joy, but is there anybody who readily accepts darkness, sadness, injustice, and death? Still, there was a person who went through it all, of His own volition, promising us that, after all the suffering, His “Father’s house has many rooms”, where the ends justify the means in an inescapable causality, with the accompaniment of grace.
Easter is promising and full of hope, but it is at the same time frightening. It equally encompasses doubt and fear, anxiety and loneliness. That is why we try to muffle those last seven words spoken on the cross by covering them up in so much colourful lustre. We only see the bright side of our favourite symbols of new life - the egg and the hare - which both represent fertility and joy, but also have other meanings that we no longer think of on Sunday morning.
At that point, we are already in the future and the promise has been kept.
This year’s commemorative Easter postage stamp issued by Croatian Post shows us nothing but joy, with brightly - coloured eggs bathed in sunlight. Just like one cannot step in the same river twice, one can never see the same egg twice, because no egg is ever the same. Its perfect shape is modelled in perfect porcelain and each egg has a unique surface, ranging from completely white to all tones of yellowish and brown, bluish and greenish. We are not talking about eggs of a tropical bird, of course, but about those we hear announced by well-known clucking sounds. Their bright shells look as if they are waiting to be decorated, just like a white canvas waits to be painted on. To this end, plants lend their natural dye and the eggs change colour, turning green, yellow, red, purple, brown, and so on. Nowadays, dye is also produced artificially, with many artificial additives, but with its colourful eggs and vintage nuances, this postage stamp emphasizes that double joy of a combination of all-natural substances, thus conveying another beautiful message. We have been promised a happy ending - a beginning without an end.
Happy Easter.
Academician Željka Čorak
