KEEPING VIGIL FOR THE LORD.
April 8, 2023.
Holy Saturday - The Holy Night of Easter – A.
“The night when Yahweh kept vigil to bring them out of Egypt
must be kept as a vigil in honor of Yahweh by all Israelites, for all
generations.” (Ex 12: 42).
A Romanian proverb says: “When the night’s darkest, the
dawn’s nearest.” And a Rwandese proverb adds: “The night might be long, but
whether you want it or not, the day will announce itself.”
In the Quran, the Holy Book of Muslims, one night is to be
considered with a unique value and predominance over all other nights. It is
said that on that night, the Most High, the Most Merciful and the Almighty,
Allah, gave to Mohammed the Holy Book. So, for the Muslim, the “Laylat Al Qadr
is a night better than a thousand months.” Surat 37:3
We could paraphrase this, to say, the Easter Vigil is the
night that gives meaning to all our other nights. For, on this night, life has
contested and battled against death and has won. Light has battled against the
powers of darkness and has defeated them. Christ, the one who was nailed on the
Cross and laid in the tomb, has risen to life.
In the solemn Exultet, we can hear it as we sing: “This is
the night when once you led our forebears, Israel's children, from slavery in
Egypt and made them pass dry-shod through the Red Sea. This is the night that
with a pillar of fire banished the darkness of sin. This is the night that even
now, throughout the world, sets Christian believers apart from worldly vices
and from the gloom of sin, leading them to grace and joining them to his holy
ones. This is the night, when Christ broke the prison-bars of death and rose
victorious from the underworld…”
This song comes like an answer to St. Paul's questions in
his address to the Corinthians: “Death, where is your victory? Death, where is
your sting? The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin comes from the Law.
Thank God, then, for giving us the victory through Jesus Christ our Lord.” 1Cor
15:55-57
With Christ, death has lost its power. Night and darkness
have been enlightened by the light of victory and life. Thus, our Easter candle
reminds us of the new light springing from the Lord's Resurrection. Tonight,
the greatest mystery is accomplished. Therefore, let us exult and sing our
unending Hallelujah and the Glory to God who gives us life in Christ Jesus his
Son.
On this night, the mother of all Vigil, all the readings we
are given to meditate speak of creation, fall, salvation, regeneration, and
redemption. God created us free and good. We fell in sin through disobedience,
the disobedience of our ancestors. We were led to slavery because of our sins,
thus the captivity of the children of Israel in Egypt. But God, in his
graciousness and his unending love, does not abandon his creatures in their
evilness nor their suffering. So, the Lord decided to act for the salvation of
his people. For the children of Israel, he raised Moses and sent him to bring
them out from Egypt. Through great power and wonders, he worked at their exit
from Egypt, made them cross the Sea, and led them into the desert. The
foresight of the Baptism as the sacrament of salvation. To them, the water was
given to quench thirst and also to purify and regenerate. The story of
salvation will go on as a divine mystery till Christ, with his blood shed on
the Cross, as the greatest source of purification and redemption. Through the
passionate death of the Lord Jesus on the Cross, our sinful humanity is
ransomed and regenerated.
Christ is Risen, Hallelujah. Sin and death and the grave
have been defeated. A new dawn, a new life, a new light is given to us. All
this challenges us to live now as children of light, as people who have
received life and are ransomed from sin and death. The candles we have held
while entering the church tonight and the song of the Exultet must always
remind us what Jesus Christ did for us and our promises to live under his light
in truth, peace, freedom, justice, and love. Day after day, may we open
ourselves to let God complete in us his Paschal Mystery, a work of salvation by
the fullness of redemption.
The Easter night tells us that every night we go through
will end with a new day, a new dawn. That there is no night so deep that cannot
be disrupted or broken by a new light. Death, sorrow, and suffering will always
be defeated, no matter the time that could take.
We live in a world and societies filled with so many sorrows and darkness. Wars, corruption, violence, political and economic crises, abuses of all kinds, immorality, all these darknesses will one day be overthrown by light. The Agony and Good Friday of Jesus were not eternal. There has been the Glorious Easter Sunday to make them forgotten. So too, our darkness of today will not be eternal. Hallelujah, Christ has risen from the dead, Hallelujah... May the happiness of this Easter strengthen our faith and awaken us to new life.
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