EASTER VIGIL 2

EASTER VIGIL

This week Christians have watched their king come to them, humble, mounted on a donkey, acclaimed with palm fronds. They have let their Lord kneel and wash their feet, as a servant does. They have seen him tortured and dying. His death convicts us all, and makes us contrite and sorrowful. We are also aware of the conspiring and plotting that manoeuvred his death. His enemies must have said, “If he is the Light, arrest him in the dark. If he is the Truth, bring false charges against him. If he is the Way, make him walk the way to Golgotha. And if he is the Resurrection; oh, well, that’s the simplest. Just seal the tomb and plant some commandos to ward off body snatchers. It’s all so simple  -  solve the problem by putting out the light and killing the fellow !”

It all began in the villages of Galilee. There is where the outposts of satanic empire were attacked and overwhelmed by Jesus Christ. But before evil could be finally defeated, he had to meet the full force of its legions and penetrate right into the destructive heart of its purposes and power. That he did on Calvary. All hell broke lose there that day, in the excruciating pain that the Lord suffered, in the blank abandonment that made him cry out, “My God, my god, have you forsaken me.” Sin, death and hell fell upon him in consuming fury. There was no weapon in his armoury that Satan did not display against the Son of God. Here the malignant mystery of evil hurtled itself against him through its human agents. These put the upstart from Nazareth, this “parvenu”, in his place  -  the cross and the sepulchre.

So finally the crazy young fellow was put into the tomb and his enemies breathed a sigh of relief that it was all over. His followers’ hopes were shattered, because even though he was mad, there was something special about him and he did hold out something for their future. But now he was pinned down, down into a rock sepulchre. Could this keep him down ? A sepulchre hewn out of hard rock ? Scripture says that the earth shook, that the boulders split apart, many graves opened and vomited their dead. The earth groaned because something (or someone) had entered its bowels, someone strong, powerful, and uncontainable. The body of the Son of God had entered into the heart of creation, the essential domain of the universe from which all nature springs, into those very depths were creation was groaning in travail, and would turn it inside out with a force that a million nuclear flashes could not equal. When Christ in death entered into the totality of cosmic reality, all people of pre-Christian times knew him in a flash of transcendent discernment, and were confronted with the decisive choice of their lives. Then followed the eruption of the world to God. No wonder the earth shook and the rocks split. At this moment, a movement extending over thousands of millions of years reached its goal. The universe is no longer the same as it was before. From now on, Christ lives in all that is deep, essential and foundational. From now on, every death and burial in the earth is an entry into Jesus Christ. The world has been “christified”, and Christ has become the innermost focus of the human heart. We have seen that happen, and we proclaim that God is yet the master of his creation.

In descending into “hell”, Jesus entered that numbing sense of darkness. If the sinner has chosen isolation, then the Christ, stripped by the Cross, disturbs the sinner’s loneliness, so that the condemned man can find Jesus sharing his severance from God. The descent into hell is the ultimate disclosure of the triumph of love. It is the experience of God lowering himself into what is lost and hopeless, opening up a way for us through the very powers that would otherwise destroy us. Jesus did not play around death; he bored right through it, like a powerful drilling engine. Our human sorrow, darkness, hopelessness, powerlessness, silence, absence of God, and fear  -  all this hell of ours has been penetrated by the Son of God’s taking our pain and silence seriously. Here is another opportunity of intimate union with God in our abject hell.

Jesus’ tomb had been sealed and guarded by the Temple police. The women’s shock, horror and fright at finding no corpse were compounded by an encounter by serene white clad young men. These celestial beings spoke words of awesome and powerful authority, confirming the fact that the jaws of death could not contain Jesus of Nazareth, the Son of God. The power of the Resurrection broke the hold of hell and released us from its grip of death and destruction.

Tonight we can rejoice and praise, exult and give glory to Jesus in anticipation of the joy and glory of Easter Day. Easter is the greatest victory the world will ever know. All other victories vaporise into insignificance. The battle over evil is over, the final victory accomplished. Sin and death, despite indications to the contrary, will not have the last word. No darkness will ever overshadow the light of Christ, no hatred destroy his love. Resurrection reveals the unchanging love of God for all that he created. God loved the world so much that he not only gave us his Son but also raised him from the dead for us. The Cross of Jesus shows us what God is like. He is on the side of the human family. Before Good Friday, no one knew what God would say to man. The Resurrection proves that the Father accepted in full the life and sacrificial death of his Incarnate Son. That is why he could not let his Holy One see corruption. God’s saving action will yet prove successful !

The grace we receive from Christ in the liturgy affects our whole lives. His sacraments can change our hearts and intensify the indwelling presence of the Spirit within us, and from this can flow the many other blessings: healed relationships, a new ability to give ourselves to others, greater inner peace, less nervous tension, and improved mental and physical well being. Even though our bodies will decline with the years, the blessings of God we experience now in our bodies are a sign of the resurrection to come.

There is much darkness yet. The tomb, like a mother’s womb, may seem dark, but, like the miracle of birth, life emerges from there. Christian hope looks through the darkness in the knowledge that the road cannot be harsher than its Lord went down before. Christian hope does not believe that the verdict on the human family will be negative, nor that God will expose our endeavour to futility. And its reason for saying this is the Easter message: Christ is raised, He is risen, indeed !