The Roman Missal describes our celebration this evening as “the mother of all Vigils,” and the “greatest and most noble of all solemnities.” It is singular in the vast array of liturgical feasts in the Church. There are many dimensions of the Easter Vigil that make it unique. One of them is the invitation we received which introduces the Liturgy of the Word.
Immediately following the musically enchanting Easter Proclamation or Exsultet, we were invited to listen to the great story of our salvation:
Let us listen with quiet hearts to the Word of God. Let us meditate on how God in times past saved his people and in these, the last days, has sent us his Son as our Redeemer. Let us pray that our God may complete this paschal work of salvation by the fullness of redemption.
Certainly we are called to listen with rapt attention every time the Sacred Scriptures are read, and we never cease to hear the story of our salvation when we are gathered around this sacred altar. Nonetheless, that introduction provides a specific key for entering into each of the nine readings presented to us at the Easter Vigil. The Church is signaling that this is our great story, and urging us to enter deeply into it as God ushers in the “fullness of redemption.”
Having listened to the first reading from the Book of Genesis, however, we may be tempted to ask the question, “Salvation, or creation?” In fact, the first reading is the only text we are given to "meditate on” this evening that takes place before original sin, before the fall of Adam and Eve. There is nothing in that reading regarding sin and death, or any mention of the need for salvation. There is only the divine command that initiates the cycle of life, “Be fertile and multiply; fill the earth and subdue it” (Genesis 1:28).
In his "Theology of the Body," St. John Paul II notes how “This cycle, so deeply rooted in the potentiality of the human body, was subjected, after sin, to the law of suffering and death.” He goes on to treat of the peculiarity with which Adam names his wife, Eve, and how that title was given to her because she was “the mother of all the living” (Genesis 3:20). But the nomination happens immediately after they receive the divine sentence of death as a consequence of sin! It is as if Adam, still feeling the effects of original sin, nonetheless is buoyed with the hope that life will somehow continue under the direction of God. St. John Paul II explains:
Awareness of the meaning of the body and awareness of its generative meaning come into contact, in man, with awareness of death, the inevitable horizon of which they bear within them. Yet the ‘knowledge-generation cycle always returns in human history. In it, life struggles ever anew with the inexorable perspective of death, and always overcomes it.
This is salvation, but on a very natural level. It is substantial, it is powerful and gives new meaning to the divine command, “Be fertile and multiply.” But it will never be enough. God has created each one of us individually, to know and love Him personally, and together we make up the human family that longs for nothing less than eternal life with God.
In the subsequent chapters of Genesis, God calls Abraham in a deeply personal way. He promises to make of him a great nation, and the source of blessing for all the nations of the world. In our second reading from the Book of Genesis, all of that appears to be in jeopardy as God challenges Abraham to sacrifice his only son. Isaac already senses that something is amiss, and asks his father where they will find a sheep for the offering. “God himself will provide the sheep for the holocaust,” Abraham assures him (Genesis 22:8). This is supernatural faith, and rightly is Abraham referred to as “our father in faith.” God does provide the sheep that will be sacrificed. God’s salvation enters once again into the human family, this time through the sacrifice of the animal gratuitously provided.
In the Book of Exodus we listen to the salvation of the People of Israel through water. This reading is never optional in the Easter Vigil. Moses raises the wood of his staff over the waters, and the power of God parts the Red Sea. Israel is saved in the midst of the sea while their enemies are summarily destroyed. This is God’s salvation writ large, and a preparation for the wood of the cross that will be lifted up over the earth as God destroys the enemies of sin and death. God is bringing His people into the Promised Land, and the stage has been set for a deeper, more intimate life with Him.
Suddenly, however, with the entrance of the prophets, our story changes. That invitation to intimacy and a deeper relationship with the God who saves has been left wanting; the covenant God made with Israel has been broken. We meditate on the words from Isaiah in the fourth reading:
“The Lord calls you back, like a wife forsaken and grieved in spirit, a wife married in youth and then cast off, says your God. For a moment I abandoned you, but with great tenderness I will call you back” (Isaiah 54:6-7). Yes, God allowed Israel to experience the consequences of her infidelity, but He reminds her with great tenderness that her foundations have been laid in sapphires and her walls are built of precious stones (see Isaiah 54:11-12). She need only return to Him, and with haste He will build her back up again, magnificent and splendid among the nations.
In the fifth reading Isaiah is still pleading, “All you who are thirsty, come to the water! Heed me ... listen ... seek the Lord, turn to me ...” (Isaiah 55:1-8). But still they remain unfaithful. The Prophet Baruch, in the sixth reading, intensifies the longing of God to see Israel living in the fullness of the covenant, walking, once again, in fidelity of heart:
Hear, O Israel, the commandment of life: listen and know prudence! How is it, Israel, that you are in the land of your foes, grown old in a foreign land, defiled with the dead, accounted with those destined for the netherworld? You have forsaken the fountain of wisdom! Had you walked in the way of God, you would have dwelt in enduring peace. Learn where prudence is, where strength, where understanding.
—Baruch 3:10-14
Over and over again God cries out to Israel through the prophets, and His plea fails to find a hearing among them. The seventh reading is the climax of that epic struggle. God comes out in judgment upon His people and holds nothing back as He speaks through the Prophet Ezekiel:
Therefore I poured out my fury upon them because of the blood they poured out on the ground, and because they defiled it with idols. I scattered them among the nations, dispersing them over foreign lands: according to their conduct and deeds I judged them.
-Ezekiel 36:18-19
-Ezekiel 36:18-19
Ezekiel goes on to describe, with shocking detail, what happened next in the history of God’s people. Having been scattered among the nations, living in foreign lands because of their infidelity to God, even there they began to profane His holy name. Suddenly, the covenant between God and Israel has reached the breaking point. For God it has become the hour of decision. Because Israel has done this, now He will act.
It is as if all heaven grows silent in that fateful moment. What will become of God’s people now? We listen, breathless, to the judgment of almighty God:
I will take you away from among the nations, gather you from all the foreign lands, and bring you back to your own land. I will sprinkle clean water upon you to cleanse you from all your impurities, and from your idols I will cleanse you. I will give you a new heart and place a new spirit within you, taking from your bodies your stony hearts and giving you natural hearts. I will put my spirit within you and make you live by my statutes, careful to observe my decrees. You shall live in the land I gave your fathers. You shall be my people, and I will be your God.
—Ezekiel 36:24-28
These are the final words in the seventh reading, as the grace of the New Covenant comes crashing in to fulfill that promise. It is the judgment of God that will echo throughout salvation history in both directions. What Ezekiel has just prophesied is nothing less than the coming of Jesus Christ and the transformation of fallen humanity by divine grace. This is what we celebrate tonight, the culmination of everything God set out to accomplish in giving us His own divine life.
The Evangelical writer, Calvin Miller, in his book, “The Divine Symphony,” comments on the shot fired at the Battle of Lexington, beginning the American Revolutionary War. Often referred to in American history as “the shot heard round the world,” Miller disagrees. He writes, “No shot was ever heard round the world. In fact, in all of human history only two sounds have been heard around the entire world. . . The first: a newborn baby’s cry, saying, ‘It is begun.’ The second: A young man’s dying cry, saying, ‘It is finished’.”
This is the cry we listened to on Good Friday: “It is finished ... It is accomplished ... It is consummated.” The work of God and the story of our salvation has been completed. Now the doors stand wide open for us to enter fully into this new life with God.
St. Paul’s Epistle to the Romans indicates that doorway as Baptism. “We were indeed buried with him through baptism into death,” writes St. Paul, “so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the father, we too might live in newness of life” (Romans 6:4).
This is why the main protagonist in all of the resurrection accounts for Easter is not, in fact, the risen Christ but the empty tomb. Mary Magdalene and the other Mary meet the risen Christ in the Gospel this evening, but only after their encounter with the empty tomb. In the Gospel for Easter Sunday morning, Christ does not even appear at all! Mary Magdalene is confronted with the place where He was buried, instead. St. Peter and St. John will also encounter this tomb, and enter it! We are all called to enter that tomb, to die with Christ and rise anew with Him.
This is the message of Easter! This is the story of our salvation! We are called to make the prophesy of Ezekiel a reality by allowing God to transform our hearts from the inside out. We are called to let divine grace soften our hearts of stone and make them malleable and formable, totally docile to the will and pleasure of almighty God. In the words of the invitation that began the Liturgy of the Word this evening: Let us pray that our God may complete this paschal work of salvation by the fullness of redemption.
