"The Light of Christ": A Homily for the Great Vigil of Easter

Deacon Dorothy Budd carries the Paschal candle at the Great Vigil of Easter at the Church of the Incarnation, Dallas, Texas (Photo: Richard Hill)

Dear brothers and sisters, tonight is the night when Christ Jesus tramples down death by death.[1] This is the night when the light of Christ shines in the darkness; when the darkness of death is overcome by the gladdening light of the resurrection; when the dayspring from on high gives light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death.

Tonight we began in darkness. Darkness that recalls the darkness of a world devastated by sin and under the dominion of death. It's darkness like that of the “shadowed forest” in which Dante begins his journey in the Inferno. “In the middle of the journey of our life,” the poet writes, “I came to myself in a dark wood where the straight way was lost.”[2] Tonight’s initial darkness dramatizes the condition of creation damaged by sin: the inky blackness shows that we, like Dante, live beset by death and with vision obscured by the deception of sin.

And more concretely the darkness recalls the darkness of a tomb outside Jerusalem, the darkness that covered the Light of the World as he lay in the tomb until the third day. Darkness that seemed absolute.

But, dear friends, the darkness could not overcome that Light! And tonight--beyond hope, beyond apparent defeat--the Light shines in the darkness. And we sing with joy when we see the Light of Christ. We exult because "darkness has been vanquished by our eternal King."

The light of the Paschal Candle points to the resurrection of Jesus, to the dawning of the new creation. For Christ, says Pope Benedict, "is God's new day."[3]
On the first day of creation, God said, "Let light shine out of darkness." And today--the eighth day--the same God has raised Jesus from the dead. And he is "the bright morning star" who says, "Behold, I make all things new" (Rev. 22:16; 21:5). The Light of Christ shines in his decisive victory over the power of death, and heralds the coming Day when all in Christ shall be made alive and "death is swallowed up in victory" (1 Cor 15:22, 54). The light of the Paschal Candle symbolizes the hope of the Resurrection, and the good news that Christ Jesus has delivered us from death.

The God we know in Christ Jesus is in the rescue business. He specializes in delivering his people just when things seem hopeless. Unexpectedly, he provides.

Out of nothing, he calls all creation into existence. On the mountain when Isaac was bound, he provides a ram. At the Red Sea, when Pharaoh's army was marching after the people of Israel and they were terrified, the Lord leads them through the midst of the sea on dry land. When Israel was scattered in Exile and they lamented, "Our bones are dried up, and our hope is lost; we are clean cut off," then the Lord God says, "Behold, I will open your graves, and raise you from your graves, O my people, and I will bring you home into the land of Israel." When Jesus lay dead in the tomb, God raised him up. And you--when you were dead in your sins, he made you alive together with Christ Jesus (cf. Eph 2:1-6).

God is in the rescue business: he delivers from death, and gives new life.

Tonight, we have good hope that we are about to witness God's gift of new life and his work of deliverance. For some among us are about to receive "the Sacrament of new birth." As the people of Israel passed through the waters of the Red Sea into freedom, so Kathleen and Theresa and Daniel and Laura and Noah will soon pass through the water of Baptism into a new life in Christ.

Baptism is the means by which God unites us to the death and resurrection of Jesus, and so leads us into new life. "Do you not know," asks St. Paul, "that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death?" "We were buried with him by baptism into death," he says, "so that we too might walk in newness of life" (Rom 6:3-4). So in the baptismal liturgy we thank God for the water of Baptism, "in which we are buried with Christ in his death; by which we partake of his resurrection; through which we are reborn of the Holy Spirit."

God's gift in baptism is so rich that Christians have called it by many names. For example, Gregory of Nazianzus, the great fourth-century bishop/theologian calls it "gift, grace, baptism...anointing, robe of incorruption, bath of rebirth, seal, everything honorable." "It is a gift," he says, "because no offering is given for it beforehand; and grace, as given even to debtors; and baptism, as burying sin in the water; and anointing, as priestly and royal, since they were the ones anointed; [...]; and robe, as entirely covering shame; and bath, as washing clean, and seal, as a safeguard and a sign of authority."[4]
The church, though, has especially loved to call baptism "illumination." Gregory, for one, practically stumbles over himself in his rush to praise illumination, calling it "radiance of souls, transformation of life, engagement of the conscience toward God...help for our weakness...renunciation of the flesh, following of the Spirit, communion in the Word, setting right of the creature, a flood overwhelming sin, participation in light, dissolution of darkness." "Illumination," he says, "is the most beautiful and most magnificent of the gifts of God."[5]
Why illumination? Because in baptism we are immersed, submerged, drowned in the life of Jesus, plunged into the light of Christ, brought forth into God's new day. In baptism we renounce the Prince of Darkness and embrace the Light of the World; we turn from the darkness to the light; we are called into God's marvelous light. And in baptism our vision begins to be restored. We are illuminated by the One to whom the Psalmist says: "with thee is the well of life: and in thy light shall we see light" (Ps. 36:9).

On this night, when the darkness of death is overcome by the gladdening light of the resurrection, when Christ Jesus tramples down death by death, open your heart and your mind to the Light of Christ. "Look upon him and be radiant" (Ps. 34:5).

"Christ yesterday and today, the Beginning and the End. The Alpha and the Omega. May the Light of Christ, gloriously rising, dispel the darkness of our hearts and minds."[6]
Amen.


[1] The last phrase of course is from the great Orthodox troparion for Holy Pascha: “Christ is risen from the dead, trampling down death by death, and upon those in the tombs bestowing life.”

[2] Dante, Inferno, 1.1-3.

[3] Benedict XVI, Homily for Holy Saturday, 2012.

[4] Gregory of Nazianzus, Oration 40.4, in Gregory of Nazianzus, Festal Orations, trans. Sister Nonna Verna Harrison (Popular Patristics; SVS Press, 2008).

[5] Ibid., 40.3.

[6] Quoting the beginning of the liturgy of the Great Vigil of Easter.