The passover of Jesus and the passover of the universe
1 – We celebrate the passover of Jesus, the prophet from Nazareth, condemned and crucified because of his brotherly and risky life, his liberating and free life, his paschal life. We celebrate the passover of Jesus because we recognize that his life of solidarity and violent death were a passover, a liberating passage from life to Life for himself and the entire community of the living.
2 – Yet, we cannot celebrate the passover of Jesus but in the open horizon of the universal passover: the passover of all prophets, of all martyrs, of all the living. We still do not know –and the living of today will die without knowing– but an infinitesimal fragment of the universe, both of the infinitely large and of the infinitely small, but we can say –with astonishment and admiration– that everything we know is in permanent passover: in passing, moving, being endlessly transformed.
3 – So is life, that prodigious phenomenon emerged from physics and chemistry, from the so-called “matter”, which we should better call mysterious “matrix”, loaded with inexhaustible potentiality and endless creativity, eternal “animated” matrix in never-ending and universal dynamism, relationship, transformation. There does not exist “inanimate matter”, nor does it exist a “spirit” or “soul” that could exist without “matter”, without a bodily shape of some kind, even if it were invisible to our eyes.
4 – Every shape –an atom, a molecule or a crystal, a blade of grass, a bird, a dog, a human being– is unique and mortal. Transformation implies the “death” of some forms and the emergence of new ones. The “death” of a form is the disintegration of its “material” elements, necessary condition for the birth of a new form from the same “matter”, which is neither created nor disappears. We see it particularly in the forms we call “living organisms”. Life is, thus, and infinite network in communion of life and death. We live on living organisms that we eat. Ultimately, life and death consist in eating to live and in giving oneself to be eaten for other to be able to live: “Take this and eat it: this is my body”. Upon dying, the organism makes available, “offers”, its cells, molecules, atoms, particles, energy… so that another living being may be born. Deep down, the universe is an infinite communion of life in permanent passover, a communion of life through death. Every death is a gesture of donation.
5 – And what happens with these forms that we are and that, upon dying, we offer for others to live all that we have lived, what we are and have, all our atoms and particles and our energy or vital breath? Will the form –or the individual “I”, unique and temporary– simply disappear for good when all the “material” elements that make it disintegrate? We do not know what to say, nor is it essential that we know it. Even if our individual “I” –this “material”, sentient and conscious form that remembers itself– were to dissipate and annihilate, we would not lose the value and grace of having been, of having lived and having given ourselves –in life and in death– so that others may live.
6 – We know nothing about our future beyond the passage of death, but we can wonder: this infinite and eternal universe or multiverse –made of “matter”, energy, information, endless potentiality– will it not be like an infinite memory or a beating heart that houses the information, the living, life-giving and paschal “memory” of all forms that have been? In any case, it is good for us to remember –with sorrow and gratitude– the dead that gave us life or that improved our life. To remember them is a way to acknowledge that they live and to make them live. And to transform our life and the life of the community of the living.
7 – It was in this manner that the disciples who followed him remembered Jesus crucified. They did not follow him because he was the only full incarnation of the only Son of God, of “the same nature” as the Father, a “divine person in two natures”. They had followed him because they felt that the prophetic life of Jesus transformed their lives; his parables, his beatitudes, his healing neighbourness, his open communion, his risky freedom, the Jubilee of liberation that Jesus announced and incarnated, convinced them, deeply, vitally and incarnatedly that another world in this world is necessary and possible. When the Jewish Sanhedrin and the entire religious apparatus condemned him, when Pilate and the entire imperial power crucified him on the eve of the Jewish Passover, their disciples’ hope was shaken, but their flame was not extinguished, nor did their love for Jesus die. They mourned his death, mourn they did. Their tears cleansed their eyes, strengthen their spirits, kept his memory alive. They remembered him again, recognized him as living, celebrated the Passover. They did not recognize him as living because they found his tomb miraculously empty, nor because they witnessed miraculous apparitions, but because they looked deep inside themselves, healed their memory, widened their hearts.
8 – The passover of Jesus cannot be separated from the universal passover. The passover of the first full moon of spring that so many cultures have celebrated millennia before our Christian era. The Passover of Neolithic farmers and shepherds wo live by the rhythm of full and new moons, solstices and equinoxes, by the rhythm of mother earth and the cosmos, who by the light of the sun and the moon, at night, glimpsed the irresistible power of life. The passover of the universe which, in his infinite memory or heart, perhaps keeps alive the life-giving “memory” of all the forms that existed.
9 – Will the heart of the universe also keep the living memory of all personal forms of lying and cruelty, of oppressive and life-stifling power that existed in the past, as well as so many other ones that exist today and threaten and terrify us? If the universe were an infinite memory, it should keep –beyond space and time– not only those forms that make life happier, but also all those ones that make it more miserable. When we celebrate the Passover, we cannot maintain only the former ones while forgetting the latter ones. But we do not remember each of them in the same way: we remember the stories, the lives and the liberating persons to be thankful for them, to let them accompany, teach and inspire us; we remember the stories, the lives and the oppressive persons to learn about the sorrow they caused and to heal it, actively hoping that the breath of the universe, through the action of all beings including our action, will continue to open trails towards the full realization of its best possibility: the liberation of all beings.
10 – For those of us who even today are or want to be followers of Jesus, the free and good prophet of Nazareth is the figure and the most intimate reference point of the universal hope that today, too, continues to inspire us. That is why we celebrate his passover, his passage through life, his resurrection in the life given and in the terrible cross endured. We recognize and celebrate his presence, and we want to realize it and resurrect it today. In our Galilees of today, he walks with us, communes our bread and wine, accompanies our mourning and feasts, shares our encouragement and disappointments. And in spite of everything, we sing alleluia, because in the heart of the universe, beyond time, the future passover is present. And we walk on.
José Arregi. Aizarna, April 9, 2025
Translated by Mertxe de Renobales Scheifler