Vigils Reading – Easter Sunday

From a commentary by

RUFINUS OF AQUILEIA

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“On the third day He rose again from the dead.” The glory of His

resurrection brought out in Christ the splendor of everything that previously

seemed feeble and weak. If a few moments ago you thought it impossible for

One who was immortal to reach death, you can now perceive the impossibility of

His being mortal who is declared to have vanquished death and to have risen

again.

In this you should discern the Creator’s goodness, in His readiness to

follow you down to the depths to which your sins have plunged you. You should

not, either, suggest that anything is impossible for God, the Creator of all things,

imagining that His work could have been brought to an end by falling into an

abyss to which He could not penetrate in order to accomplish salvation…

So He returned victoriously from the dead, bringing with Him spoils from

hell. For He conducted forth those whom death held prisoners, as He Himself

had prophesied in the words: “When I am lifted up from the earth, I will draw

all things to myself.” The Gospel bears witness to this when it states: “The

graves were opened, and many bodies of the saints that slept arose, and they

appeared to many, and entered into the holy city.” By this is meant…the city

intended by the Apostle when he wrote: “But that Jerusalem, which is above is

free: which is mother of us all.”

He made the same point again to the Hebrews: “For it became Him for

whom are all things, and by whom are all things, who had brought many

children to glory, to perfect the author of their salvation by His passion.” By

His passion, therefore, He made perfect that human flesh which had been

brought down to death by the first man’s sin, and restored it by the power of His

resurrection: sitting on God’s right hand, He placed it in the highest heavens. In

view of this the Apostle says: “Who has raised us up together, and has made us

sit together in the heavenly places.”

It was He, you see, who was the potter mentioned by the prophet

Jeremias: “The vessel which had fallen from His hand and was broken, He

again raised up with His hands and formed anew, as it seemed good in His

eyes.” So it seemed good to Him to raise the mortal and corruptible body He had

assumed from the rocky tomb, and rendering it immortal and incorruptible to

place it, no longer in an earthly environment, but in heaven at His Father’s right

hand…