What is Anastasis?
I was reflecting on a passage from the movie, "The Dark Knight", yesterday wherein Bruce Wayne's father asks, "Why do we fall down, Bruce? So we can learn to pick ourselves up again." We all fall down. Error, misjudgment, failure are part of the human condition. In the Ancient World, though, and for many of us still today, this part of the condition can be such a source of stress that it causes anxiety, paralysis, even utter ruin & death. Whether one experiences failure of the body, failure due to error in judgment, or the unavoidable vicissitudes of a seemingly random universe, the world shows little mercy for failure.
Yet as Thomas Wayne points out, there is life after falling down. We can survive even the most traumatic events, recover and learn from them. We learn to stand up again even after something debilitating. This is the original meaning of the word in Greek, ᾰ̓νᾰ́στᾰσῐς - anastasis, which means not only recovery but a standing up" and "the act of making someone move" as well as "rebirth". When shifted to Latin the word becomes "Resurrection" - rising again, and is most immediately represented in the Christian religion in the person of Jesus Christ.
"Recovery is possible," this image suggest, "failure is not the end." And indeed, I believe, our recovery is initiated through words. The scriptures relate the story of the raising of Lazarus and of the revivifying of Jairus' daughter. Each calling back to life commences with a word; the name of the person and the command to come forth. In the Eastern Orthodox Church the paschal greeting for Easter is Christos Anesti ("Χριστός ἀνέστη!" - "Christ is Risen!") to which one responds Alithos Anesti ("Ἀληθῶς ἀνέστη! " - "Truly He is Risen!" or "He Has Risen Indeed!"). The joy is not just that the anointed one has arisen but that similar resurrection is possible for each of us.
This universal theme speaks to the very heart of human joy and reminds me that through words, through the command of words, sentences, phrases, we gain the ability to stand up again from our crushed and fallen condition. We learn to express to the world our sorrows and our joys and gain courage in the process. We no longer are small-souled, pusillanimous individuals, but grow in greatness to become the truly magnanimous people we are meant to be. Words help create that ladder upwards which Virgil describes when he says
facilis descensus Averno;
noctes atque dies patet atri ianua Ditis;
sed revocare gradum superasque evadere ad auras,
hoc opus, hic labor est.
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