It is hard to describe to my own children how different things were just a generation before them. Holy Week was taken seriously by Christians of all denominations. On Good Friday, retail businesses just shut down between the hours of 12 and 3. Most people tried to get to church during those hours. It was a solemn time. In this era the Friday noon before Easter is just the beginning of another weekend for the majority.

Yes, Easter is still a time for families to get together, but a recent survey of Christians in America determined that some 63% could not explain the significance of Easter unaided by the pollster. Some 18% confused Christmas with Easter in the theological sense.

That Easter, or Pascha as we call it in the Orthodox Christian tradition, is the feast of all feasts. It is not now understood in the midst of the Easter bunny, little chickies and cute dresses.

Without Easter, the Christian religion is reduced to a nice set of ethical teachings. It is no wonder that most American Christians now agree with the proposition that Christianity is just another religion on a par with other world religions, to be respected but not especially believed.

Either Christ rose from the dead and established His Church on earth or He did not. If he did, then Christianity has a claim like no other religion. If Christ rose from the dead, and is the Son of and co-equal to God the Father and the Holy Spirit, then Christianity may indeed make its bold claims about salvation of the human race.

But if Easter is just some pleasant myth, as even some so-called Christian bishops in England and elsewhere now claim, then why should anyone take Christianity seriously?

For decades now, mainline Christian churches have de-emphasized Christ's divinity, stressing only His humanity. It is little wonder, then, that the average Christian thinks of Christ as some sort of gloried social worker who went around causing problems for the ruling class. No wonder that Christ is now viewed by so many Americans who bear the name Christian as just on a par with Gandhi or Nelson Mandela or Martin Luther King.

Whatever these men accomplished in earthy terms (and that is still being debated) none was God; and modern attempts to make them into lesser Gods will ultimately fail.

We speak much of restoration these days. We look to the past to recover what has been lost. Despite unprecedented wealth and prosperity, these same Americans who don't know the meaning of Easter do know that something profound is missing from their lives. If restoration is possible, it will only be possible because the true meaning of Christianity, marked by the Glorious Resurrection of Christ Our God, has first been restored.

When the churches begin to tend to the business for which they were created, then perhaps they will rediscover how truly revolutionary it is to be associated with an organization and a system of beliefs handed down by God himself. Central to that system of belief is that Christ voluntarily rose from the dead after three days and ascended to His father in Heaven and sent in His place the Holy Spirit to guide His church. Where that is taught, Christian belief is still strong.

That minority of Christians who yesterday celebrated the true meaning of their religion get it. The rest of the poor misguided and lost Americans must listen to their pangs of conscience and search for the faith of their Fathers. Then and only then can they join in that never-ending chorus, begun by the Apostles and Mary, the Mother of God, who proclaimed from ages past and forward "Christ is Risen! Indeed He is Risen!"