EASTER VIGIL 2022
Whether we realize it or not, we have just passed through the whole of salvation history. We have not merely listened to sacred readings from the past, but we have been present with our God from all eternity in His actions of love and power for our sake. It is not merely a “recalling” of events of the past, but a powerful inserting of our very selves into these events as taking place NOW! St. Paul tells us that God has blessed us with “every spiritual blessing, even as He chose us in Christ before the foundation of the world”. This means that God saw each one of us in the very events which we celebrate this night. But, like the apostles themselves, we find this hard to believe.
Each of the seven readings which we have just heard insert us personally into those seeming events of the past. We were present in the mind and heart of God when He spoke the words of creation – those words of God which are themselves a resurrection. Where before there was only “darkness and void”, the Word of God pierced that emptiness as a primal resurrection, brought to fullness in the creation of Adam and Eve – including each one of us.
At some point in life, each one of us were given a test similar to that of Abraham in asking us to surrender our choicest possession. And while Abraham was spared that radical choice, yet God Himself was not spared. God calls each one of us to share this night in the event of yielding up His own Son, in order that we might become truly the sons and daughters of God in Christ.
That is the meaning of the renewal of Baptism in which we just shared. But sharing in Christ’s resurrection through Baptism entails also the sharing in His passion and death. That sharing continues throughout our whole lives. The very Eucharist, of which all of this is a part, is a sharing in the very death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Both the death and the resurrection must be present in the lives of each one of us at this very moment. If they are not, then we are living a lie before God and the whole Church. But we are empowered to do this because of the presence of Jesus Christ Himself and His Spirit in our hearts and lives. The risen Christ is present in each one of us, but – like the apostles – we find it hard to believe. Jesus Christ – the Risen Lord Himself – comes to each of us this night – in the very celebrations of this Eucharist – just as truly as He came to the apostles that Easter evening. But like them, we find it difficult to believe that Jesus Christ Himself is truly alive and well in each one of us.
But truly believing in the presence of Christ within each one here present requires a faith even greater than that of the apostles. It requires that we believe that the risen Christ Jesus is truly present in myself and in each one, present both in His dying and His resurrection. We do not have angels present to assure us that Christ is alive and active within ourselves and within one another. But we do have the very Holy Spirit of Christ living in us and calling us to follow Jesus in this mystery. It is a slow process of daily following Jesus Christ and allowing His risen life to gradually show forth in our own lives. By sharing in these sacred mysteries during the past forty days, and particularly in these mysteries this night, we profess that we believe that the risen Christ is present in my own life and in the lives of all my brothers and sisters. It is we ourselves who are called this night to BELIEVE that truly Christ IS risen! Alleluia!!