The Easter Vigil mass is such a joyful
and wonderful time for us as Catholics – there is really no other mass like it
in the rest of our Church’s liturgical year.
I was speaking to some of our parishioners about this mass several weeks
ago, and we were all remarking how the symbolism of this mass sticks out in our
minds, how it so very dramatically represents what our faith is all about. The sun sets before our Easter Vigil mass
began this evening, and then the Easter fire became a light shining in the midst of the
evening’s darkness, symbolizing the light of Christ that is brought into our
world and into our lives in our very special way through tonight’s celebration of
our Savior’s death and resurrection.
Our first reading from Genesis tonight
brings us back to the very beginning of the world, where there is this formless
darkness covering the abyss, where wind is sweeping over the waters, and God
announces: “Let there be light.” As we
hear this reading in the midst of the darkness of our church, the symbolism is
striking. The lights of the paschal
candle – the lights of the small candles that we held which were lit off that
paschal candle – they are all lights penetrating the darkness of the
world.
We celebrate Christ’s resurrection
today as we hear about the women who go to the tomb to anoint his body, but to
their amazement they find that the tomb was empty. It took awhile for those women, the apostles,
and the members of the early Church to figure out all the implications of what
resurrection meant to them in terms of their faith. And that is for us to figure out as
well. How does Christ’s death and
resurrection affect our journey? How does it influence the ways we live out our
faith?
The significance of these events, of
the cross and resurrection, is present in our community in a special way in
some of the sacraments that we will celebrate this evening. We have three adults who are coming into
full communion into our Church. They
have been journeying through the RCIA process this past year, they have
undergone a time of prayer, discernment, and preparation. They will receive the sacrament of
confirmation and will receive Christ in the Eucharist for the first time in
their lives. We also have a group of six
youth and children who will be receiving first holy communion for the first
time as well. And a member of the RCIA
group who is coming back to the Church in a very committed way will receive a
special blessing tonight as well. The
Easter Vigil mass had been the time in the early Church when adults would enter
into the faith. The reforms of the
Second Vatican Council, which we have been celebrating this year in the Year of
Faith, revived this practice. With
great joy, we celebrate this special moment with these members of our faith
community.
As we celebrate this evening's mass, what
we cannot forget is this: that the resurrection is intrinsically tied to the
cross; that the cross is intrinsically connected
to the resurrection. We had 40 days in
the desert during Lent in order for Easter to really mean something to us in
our lives of faith. We live in a world
today where our faith is under attack, where our government is taking stabs at
the freedom we have to practice our religion and to live out our faith. In
order to see the light of the resurrection, we in turn must be lights shining
in the darkness of our world. And while
we had 40 days of Lent, we need to be aware that the Easter season does not end
with this Easter Vigil mass and with Easter morning tomorrow. We will travel through the Easter season to
Pentecost on May 27. For these next
weeks during the Easter season, we will ponder what the resurrection of Jesus
really means to us, we will ponder what it really means to live the
resurrection in our lives.
No comments:
Post a Comment