Church of St. Mary at Clinton Heights

Easter Vigil in the Holy Night (2012)

Since last SundayPalm Sunday of the Passion of the Lordand flowing profoundly during these last days, each of us have been struck by very physical happenings and experiences:

• from walking and waving palm branches commemorating His entrance into that Holy City, to the oils being blessed and shared with us, that we might be anointed with His balm throughout our days;
• from the Lord washing our feet in loving service, to receiving His Body and Blood as food for eternity;
• from reposing with Him in the garden, to going out with Him to Calvary where He was offered to death on a tree;
• from His broken body taken down from the Cross to being laid in a tomb…His last breath spent, His last act completed…or so it seemed.

All of these physical happenings have had their effect on us: we moved, we walked, we heard, we sang, we saw, we prayed, we listened, we pondered and we made silence.  The experiences of these last days have haunted us, enriched us, and blessed us.  And now?  …now:

• we awake to see a glorious, holy fire roaring in the dusk;
• we watch as His Light illumines the darkness that surrounded us;
• we hear as stringed instruments and pipes announce He is Risen;
• we wash in the waters of baptism, renewed and refreshed;
• the balm of this great news anoints our hearts with the consolation and joy that, “He has been raised from the dead!”;
• our eyes see the newness of His Church;
• our nostrils smell the sweetness of our praise;
• our souls leap with every key and strum of our choir!

Yes, He is Risen!  And as powerful and strange as these last days have been, how powerfully new our future days can now be.  You see, only now do we have a hopeborne of faiththat we, too, will never die.  Christ, by His rising, has now changed forever the course of all human history: He, now, has become the gateway for our own eternal life.  He became a man so that by dying a man’s death, He would be one with us.  His nature is thus so bound up with ours.  And Hethe manrose, by His power as God, and in His nature bound with ours, He invites us to rise with Him.  How wondrous a gift…a gift that brings a final experience for each of us who believe: we experience a deep, a humbling, a most powerful gratitude for the gift of life offered eternally for each of us who believe.

Finally, recall that the first apostles heard the encouragement of the three women who visited the angel at the tomb, re-told in tonight’s gospel.  From that great news, too, we now hear Him beckoning, we now see Him alive, we now offer Him praise and thanksgiving for the dawn of eternal life has risen.

Alleluia!

A triptych is an artistic series of three panels that fold together, work together simultaneously to demonstrate a singular beauty.  They are often able to open and close, revealing even more depth of meaning.  You may have seen one before: maybe of Christ’s crucifixion in the center, with Mary his mother on one of the winged side panels, and John the Evangelist on the other winged side.

Anyway, years ago when I was in seminary, Pope John Paul II gave a stirring reflection on the Evening Mass of the Lord’s Suppera reflection replete with depth and imagery.  He spoke of the evening’s ritual and Scriptures as a kind of triptych:

with the Institution of the Eucharist in the center panel (tonight’s second reading), flanked by the Old Testament’s pre-figuration in the paschal lamb on one wing (tonight’s first reading), and brotherly love and service on the other winged side (tonight’s gospel story).

You see, what Christ is doing on this night, was pre-figured in the Old Testament Passover feast heard in our first reading.  And when He celebrates it on this very evening, He replaces the one-year old lamb and offers Himself in its stead.  Absolutely: no animal flesh or blood would be able to save us from the Passover of death, rather One like us would need to offer His flesh and His blood; God would have to offer His own Son in order to expiate sin, in order to restore the just friendship between God and Man.  And so the third part of the triptych, would then be the results of the pre-figurement and the fulfillment: that, loving service would now be His followers’ aim, purpose and mission…in order to bring His saving work to all.

So, it appears a natural question comes to mind tonight: has it worked?  Has what was pre-figured…has what was fulfilled…has what was commanded had any effect in us?  In other words, have we gained at all from Christ’s evening Supper?

John’s gospel stated, “He loved His own in the world, and He loved them to the end.”  The Eucharist now, is the permanent sign of God’s love, the love that sustains our journey to full communion with the Father, through the Son, in the Spirit.  Yes, His actions that night continued His saving work…we have the evidence of His great love, and we see that love blossom when we live out the mystery during these three days…and always.

As we pause this evening to adore the Blessed Sacrament in its repose, and as we meditate on the mystery of the Last Supper and the self-emptying gift of service offered to us by Christ Jesus, may each of us feel immersed in the ocean of Love that flows from God’s heart.

As we began our Masses outside today, and heard the gospel story of Christ’s entrance into Jerusalem, and have now recalled the dark betrayal, passion, suffering, and ultimate death of Christ in a communal narrative, one might wonder, “What are we doing, really?”, or rather “why are we doing all of this?”  Clearly, parents of younger children are most probably hearing such questions from their children this morning.  Yes, it’s good for us to consider what we’re really doing at the opening of Holy Week and throughout these next sacred days.

But, in order to answer questions such as these, it’s good for us to recall what Jesus Christ does during Holy Week and why He does them.  The Lord enters into Jerusalem and endures the events of Holy Week in order to celebrate Passover.  Not merely the Passover of His ancestors, but His own Passover.

Jesus is commemorating the Israelites’ bondage in Egyptian slavery, and their Passover to freedom; their hopeless darkness and their Passover to light and new-found hope in Yahweh; their suffering and Passover into healing; their sin and Passover into God’s mercy; their death, and Passover into new life found in God alone.

And as Jesus commemorates that ancient, holy history, He Himself also enters into all those realities of Passover: He takes upon Himself darkness, hopelessness and sin, suffering despair and death…all so that He might Passover such things and enter into the light, the freedom, the hope and the new life of His Resurrection at Easter.

So, returning to our children’s question, “what are we really doing?’, we are entering into our own Passover with Christ.  We bring our lives and we enter into Passover: from our particular sinfulness, we then Passover into God’s mercy; from our bondage and slavery to so many things, we then Passover to freedom as God’s daughters and sons; from our despair, we Passover into renewed faith; from our selfishness, we Passover into faithful generosity; from our darkness, we Passover into God’s gift of Light; and from our death, we Passover into the New Life of the Risen Christ.

Let us ‘Passover’ well this week: take advantage of all of the glorious and loving works of the Lord Jesus this passion-tide, that our Holy Week might be fruitful and we might all receive the blessings of the Risen Lord who is coming.

God love you.

What Jeremiah anticipates in our first reading (“the days are coming”), Jesus fulfills (“Now is the time”).  What is it that is anticipated and fulfilled? A new covenant with all people, a new people…now drawn to Jesus himself.

In the Gospel, some Greeks ask to see Jesus.  Jesus responds by saying that anyone who loves his life will lose it; to gain your life you have to be like a grain of wheat which brings forth much fruit, but only by falling to the earth & dying.

The Greeks must have been baffled.  What has this speech of Jesus’ got to do with their request to see him?

Jesus’ response helps those Greeks to see himthe true Lord, the One who did not come to get status and power, but who came to lose his life, to fall and die, like a grain of wheat.  The point is made emphatically at the end of Jesus’ response to the Greeks.  He ends with a prayer: “Father,” he prays, “glorify your name.”  The true Lord came to seek God’s glory, not his own.

The final part of the lesson for the Greeks, and for us, comes in God’s response to Jesus’ prayer.  God honors Jesus by answering his prayer out loud: “I have glorified my name, and I will glorify it again!”  Yes, God’s voice came to finish the lesson: God honors those who seek to honor him.

In our society people often strive to gain glory for themselves, even if it means hurting others.  Yet, as followers of Jesus, we strive to gain glory too. But our glory is a free gift of God granted to those who serve others by dying to self.

True glory lies not in status or power or name or authority, then, but, on the contrary, in being willing to fall and die like a grain of wheat.  It lies in being willing to let go, to lose one’s life in this world for the glory of God’s name.

And so the Greeks do get what they asked for.  In the response of Jesus to them, they, and we, see the true Lord, and with the true Lord, the pattern for glory in our lives, too.

Now is the time…stay near Him to see the glory He offers us, the new life He gives us, as He draws all people to Himself!

God bless you during these final weeks of Lent.

The enemies of the Jews smash Jerusalem, as the First Reading describes it:

• the walls of the city are torn down;
• the Temple of God is burned down, and all its holy things are smashed;
• the people are taken captive to Babylon.

Their country, their customs, their language, their cult, their Templeit’s all lost.

In the Psalm, there is a poignant picture of the people’s heartbreak over this destruction of their home. The people who wrecked Jerusalem want the Jews to sing Hebrew songs for them. That request is the final blow. “How can we sing the Lord’s songs in a strange land?”, the captive people say to themselves in their grief.

The Second Reading says that God is rich in mercy and great in love. Why then doesn’t God protect his people from heartbreak like this?

One piece of the solution is in the Gospel Reading. God doesn’t want to destroy people; he doesn’t allow suffering for the sake of hurting them. Rather, God is looking for a remedy, as the First Reading puts it. God is willing to use desperate measures, even the heartbreak of his people, to save them.

And not only that, but God is willing to use his own suffering too. As the Gospel says, God gave his beloved Son to save the world. Christ was betrayed by his friend, put to public shame, officially condemned, tortured, and put to death. Any one of these things is enough for sorrow, isn’t it? And so, in the incarnate Christ, God uses his own great suffering as the final remedy to bring people from death into life, when all other remedies have been tried and failed.

Heartbreak by us, by Christ, is for life, not for death.

And here is what else we need to see. Jerusalem was rebuilt, and the Temple was restored, as the First Reading explains. Christ’s death was followed by his resurrection. In each of these cases, heartbreak was turned into joy.

And so heartbreak is not the last word.  Finding our heart’s desirein God aloneis!