Trials, suffering, resurrection: the essence of Easter has a special ring to Greeks as the country hopes to pull through a painful six-year recession. "We must undergo tests like Jesus Christ did in his time," says Kostas, a pensioner who has just attended a two-hour sermon in the working-class Athens district of Agios Nikolaos. "In Greece today, the Easter resurrection symbolises the return to better days and a chance for all to overcome adversity," argues theology professor Yiorgos Patronos. "Every year I would spend Easter with my family on the island of Chios.