"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.

Paschal Meditation: "The love with which you have loved me"

"Church of Christ" icon. Russian.

“…So that the love with which you have loved me may be in them, and I in them.”

— John 17:26

Before the Lord Jesus returned to his Father, he prays for all those who would believe in him through the apostolic witness.  He prays for every generation of the church; he prays for us.  Jesus prays that we would be one in him, united in love, in order that the world would believe that the Father sent the Son in love.  

When Jesus prays “that they may be one,” he asks that his church might share in the unity he has with the Father.  “As you, Father, are in me and I am in you,” he prays, “may they also be in us” (Jn. 17.21).  Where is it that we may be one?  We may be one with the Son in the Father, for the Mediator prays that those whom the Father has given him, “may be with me where I am” (v. 24), and where is the place of the Son, but in the Father?  And how are we joined to the Son, but by his gift of the Holy Spirit?  We may be one in the unity of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, for, as Augustine puts it, “they are our place.”*

Why does Jesus pray that those who believe in him may be one?  He prays to the Father that we would be one, “so that the world may know that you have sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me” (v. 23).  He prays that we might be one so that our concrete love for each other might witness to God’s love for the world.  For “God’s love was revealed among us in this way: God sent his only Son into the world so that we might live through him,” and “if we love one another, God’s love abides in us, and his love is perfected in us” (1 Jn. 4:9, 12).  Our love shows forth God’s love, because he first loved us (4:19).  Our love shows forth God’s love insofar as the love with which the Father has loved the Son is in us.  Our love shows forth God’s love insofar as “God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit which has been given to us” (Rom. 5:5).

What is the love we make known?  It is the love of God, who is trinity.  Our love makes it known that the Father has loved us even as he has loved the Son (Jn. 17:23).  As Augustine perceptively comments, 

“That is to say, in the Son the Father loves us, because in him he has chosen us before the foundation of the world. […] The love, therefore, wherewith God loves, is incomprehensible and immutable. For it was not from the time that we were reconciled unto him by the blood of his Son that he began to love us; but he did so before the foundation of the world, that we also might be his sons along with his Only-begotten, before as yet we had any existence of our own.”**

God is love, always and already loving us in himself.  And the love with which the Father eternally loves the Son is in us, because by his Gift we are made part of the totus Christus, the whole Christ:

“But how else is the love wherewith the Father loved the Son in us also, but because we are his members and are loved in him, since he is loved in the totality of his person, as both Head and members?  Therefore he added, “and I in them;” as if saying, Since I am also in them.  For in one sense he is in us as in his temple; but in another, because we are also himself, seeing that, in accordance with his becoming man, that he might be our Head, we are his body.”***

Jesus prays that we may be one to show forth the love of God, who is love.  Therefore, let us love one another.

* Augustine, Io. ev. tr. 110.3.

** Ibid. 110.5–6, my emphasis.

*** Ibid. 111.6, my emphasis.

"He Ascended into Heaven"

The Ascension, Rabula Gospels (6th c., Syriac)

“God has gone up with a shout,

the LORD with the sound of the ram's-horn.”

— Psalm 47:5

Christ our God “has gone up with a shout” (Ps. 47:5).  He went up with a shout when “the Father of glory”—his Father and our Father, his God and our God (Jn. 20:17)—raised him in the power of the Spirit and “seated him at his right hand in the heavenly places, far above all rule and authority and power and dominion” (Eph. 1:17, 20–21).  Jesus the Messiah, the King of glory, lives and reigns over the nations.  Seated at the Father’s right hand, he is destroying “every ruler and every authority and every power,” subduing all his enemies until even death is destroyed (1 Cor. 15:24–26).  His reign is not like that of the nations, for he reigns as the Lamb who was slain.    He reigns over the powers, because “all things have been created through him and for him” and because “he disarmed the rulers and authorities and made a public spectacle of them,” triumphing over them in his cross (Col. 1:16; 2:15).  His weakness is mightier than the nations, who display only an empty simulacrum of strength.  He is “mighty in battle” (Ps. 24:8), trampling down death by death.

Christ has gone up with a shout, that those who believe might know “the immeasurable greatness” of God’s power for us (Eph. 1:19).  He returned to the Father that he might pour out on his church the Gift, the promised Holy Spirit.  He fills his church, which is his body, with his Spirit, “the pledge of our inheritance towards redemption as God’s own people” (1:14).  He pours out his Spirit as the pledge that we are, with Christ, children of God and joint heirs of his kingdom (Rom. 8:16–17).  The Spirit bears witness that Christ, who “ascended in the flesh to the bodiless Father,” has lifted up all our humanity and brought it to his Father.*  Christ sends the Spirit “that we, his members, might be confident of following where he, our Head and Founder, has gone before.”†

Christ has gone up with a shout, bearing our humanity in his body into the life of the Triune Lord, and giving the Spirit that his members might bear his life in their bodies.  Through the gift of the Spirit they share in his life.  He gives them to become a people capable of witnessing to his peaceful reign in the midst of the idolatrous and death-bound kingdoms of the world; they do not fear because he has won the victory.

* John of Damascus, Troparia, Canon for the Assumption.

† Missale Romanum, Preface of the Ascension I.

Paschal Meditation: Vicit agnus noster

Agnus Dei bas-relief, St. Euphrasius basilica, Croatia

Χριστὸς ἀνέστη ἐκ νεκρῶν,

θανάτῳ θάνατον πατήσας,

καὶ τοῖς ἐν τοῖς μνήμασι,

ζωὴν χαρισάμενος!

Christ is risen from the dead,

Trampling down death by death,

And upon those in the tombs

Bestowing life!

— Paschal troparion

“Death will be no more.”

— Rev. 21:4

Death will be no more, because our Lamb, “the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the Root of David, has conquered” (Rev. 5:5).  He has “trampled down death by death,” and by his blood he has “redeemed for God, from every family, language, people and nation, a kingdom of priests to serve our God.”  Jesus, “the faithful and true witness (martyr),” has conquered by his obedience unto death, from which he was raised as “the firstborn of the dead” (3:14, 1:4).  “Do not be afraid,” he says, “I am the first and the last, and the living one.  I was dead, and see, I am alive forever and ever; and I have the keys of Death and Hades” (1:17b–18); “because I live, you also will live” (Jn. 14:19b).

Christ the Lamb has conquered death, but death has not yet been swallowed up forever (Isa. 25:7, 8; cf. 1 Cor. 15:54).  Death’s shadow is still spread over all the nations, and under it, tears stream down many faces; multitudes mourn and cry and suffer.  Thus it takes courage to wait for the salvation of the Lord (cf. Isa. 25:9), to maintain hope in the midst of devastation and violence.  Walking in the way of the Lord Jesus—who was hated by all who could not bear the blazing light of the truth—requires having the courage to become hated, and yet to love.  “In the world you face persecutions,” he told his disciples, “But take courage; I have conquered the world!” (Jn. 16:33).

Christ has conquered by emptying himself, by laying down his life for the world—in short, he has conquered by love.  Those who would follow him must follow him in love, must lay down their lives for the other.  For “we know love by this, that he laid down his life for us—and we ought to lay down our lives for one another.” (1 Jn. 3:16).  

Such courageous love—the love of “patient endurance” (Rev. 1:9), love that conquers* hatred and fear and injustice, love that “overcomes evil with good” (Rom. 12:21)—is born of the gift of the conquering Lamb.  He himself pours this love “into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that was given to us,” so that “we are more than conquerors through him who loved us” (Rom. 5:5, 8:37).  Through the gift of the Spirit by which he conquered death, Christ the Lamb adorns his bride, the holy city (Rev. 21:2).  Adorned in love, she already sings to him from whom nothing can separate her, “I love you, O Lord, my strength.”†

* Cf. Rev. 21:7, 2:7, 11, 17, 26, 28, 3:5, 12, 21.

† Rom. 8:39, Ps. 18:1.  Cf. Augustine, De civitate Dei 14.28.

Paschal Meditation: Christ and Peter

Detail of miniature of Christ speaking to Peter,
"Arnstein Passional" (12th c.)

“I am the good shepherd. I know my own and my own know me, just as the Father knows me and I know the Father. And I lay down my life for the sheep.” — John 10:14–15

That bright morning by the Sea of Tiberias after the risen Lord had breakfasted with his disciples, he strengthened Simon son of John to be what he was called.  When Jesus had first looked at Simon son of John, he said to him, “‘You are to be called Cephas’ (Petros, Peter)” (Jn. 1:42).  He called him the rock (petra) who would prove unstable, who would be prostrated by denying “the stumbling stone” (Rom. 9:32).  Now again he calls Simon to come to him, the Living Stone, and to be built upon the Cornerstone, becoming, like him, a living stone (cf. 1 Pt. 2:4–5).  Jesus strengthened Simon son of John to become Peter.

That bright morning the Shepherd removed the shame of his sheep who had scattered; the one who was deserted comforted (com-fortis) the one who vainly promised never to desert him, “though all become deserters” (Mt. 26:33).  When Peter told Jesus, “I will lay down my life for you” (Jn. 13:37), he presumed to possess the strength of love necessary “to lay down one’s life for one’s friends” (15:13).  But his denials revealed the hollowness of his words, and he was deflated.  Now his Lord comes to build him up with love.  Three times Jesus gives Peter to declare his love for him, and three times he calls him to love “in truth and action” (1 Jn. 3:18) by feeding his flock.  In so doing, Jesus casts out the fear in which Peter had denied him, and leads him to the perfection of love.*  The Shepherd, who laid down his life for the sheep (10:15), strengthens Peter to follow him.

Because Jesus first loved him, Peter will lay down his life for him, glorifying God in his death.  As Augustine puts it, 

“Such was the end reached by that denier and lover (ille negator, et amator); elated by his presumption, prostrated by his denial, cleansed by his weeping, approved by his confession, crowned by his suffering, this was the end he reached, to die with a perfected love for the name of him with whom, by a perverted forwardness, he had promised to die. He would do, when strengthened by his resurrection, what in his weakness he promised prematurely. For the needful order was that Christ should first die for Peter’s salvation, and then that Peter should die for the preaching of Christ.”†

* 1 Jn. 4:18.  Cf. Augustine: “Let it be the office of love to feed the Lord’s flock, if it was the signal of fear to deny the Shepherd” (Io. ev. tr. 123.5).

† Augustine, Io. ev. tr. 123.4.

Detail of Apse Mosaic, Basilica San Clemente, Rome

Paschal Meditation: By the Sea of Tiberias

Detail of miniature, S. Netherlands, 15th c.

I

“Just after daybreak, Jesus stood on the beach” (Jn. 21:4).  As the day dawns, “the bright morning star” (Rev. 22:16, cf. 2 Pt. 1:19), the light who is not overcome by darkness, the risen Lord, stands on the shore.  He stood by the Sea of Tiberias, and they saw his glory, but they did not yet “see him as he is” (1 Jn. 3:2), as he will be revealed on that other shore of “the end of the age” (cf. Mt. 13:47–50).  It is not yet that Day when “there will be no more night,” but very early in the morning they glimpse the one who “will be their light” (Rev. 22:5).

II

By the Sea of Tiberias, Jesus says to the seven disciples, “Come and have breakfast” (Jn. 21:12).  They saw “a charcoal fire” with “fish on it, and bread,” provided by the Lord himself; to these he asks them to add some of the one hundred and fifty-three fish they had just caught at his word (21:9–10).  And as he did by the same sea before his resurrection (6:1–13), the risen Lord “took the bread and gave it to them, and did the same with the fish” (21:13).  He who said, “Whoever eats me will live because of me” (6:57), feeds the seven by the sea.  

III

The seven are fed by the risen Lord, “the Fish, which was raised from the deep to be the food” of the faithful.*  Jesus, “the bread that came down from heaven” (6:58), feeds them.  To what he himself provides, he adds the fish received as his gift.  He feeds them that they might “abide in him” and he in them (6:56).  As Augustine puts it, “The fish roasted is Christ having suffered; he himself also is the bread that comes down from heaven.  With him is incorporated the Church to participate in everlasting blessedness.”†  The breakfast on the beach is a foretaste of “the marriage supper of the Lamb” (Rev. 19:9).

* Augustine, Conf. 13.23.34.

† Augustine, Io. ev. tr. 123.2: “Piscis assus, Christus est passus. Ipse est et panis qui de coelo descendit. Huic incorporatur Ecclesia ad participandam beatitudinem sempiternam.”

Paschal Meditation: Mary and Thomas

"Do not hold on to me.” | “Reach out your hand and put it in my side." — John 20:17, 27

In the house, the risen Jesus came and stood among the disciples, spoke a word of peace, and told Thomas, “Reach out your hand and put it in my side” (Jn 20:27).  In the garden, Mary Magdalene saw the risen Jesus when she turned around, away from the tomb.  He spoke her name, drying her tears with his voice, and told her, “Do not hold on to me” (20:17).  Why does Jesus say, in effect, to Thomas, “Touch me,” but to Mary, “Touch me not”?

Noli me tangere, "The Queen Mary Psalter" (early 14th c.)

To Mary, Jesus explains, “Do not hold on to me, because I have not yet ascended to the Father.”  He tells her not to cling to him, because he must be “taken away” (cf. 20:2, 13, 15) again.  (He had already been taken from her twice: once at his death, and again by being taken away from his tomb.)  She, who was standing near his cross and came weeping to his tomb, must not hold on to her Master, because he is going away.  He is going away, but she will hold on to him in faith.*  He is going away to prepare a place for her, and will come again and take her to himself, that where he is, there she may be also (14:2–3). 

But not her alone.  She will not take away for herself (20:15) “the faithful martyr” (Rev. 1:4), but she will be taken by him with all his own.  And not yet, not yet, because now Jesus sends her to bear witness to him (20:17).

Like her Lord, she is a faithful witness, telling the disciples what he told her (20:18). But they do not believe, until the Lord reveals himself to them (v. 20).  Likewise, Thomas, who still has not seen the risen Lord for himself, refuses to believe their testimony until he sees what they have seen—and going further—can even put his finger in the mark of the nails and his hand in the pierced side (v. 25).  (Is this a characteristic hyperbole from the disciple who brashly declared to the others, “Let us also go [with Jesus to Jerusalem], that we may die with him” (11:16), but was not with Jesus at his death?)

Doubting Thomas, Breviary, France (early 14th c.)

Jesus reveals himself to Thomas in the same way as to the other disciples: speaking peace (20:19, 26) and showing his wounds (vv. 20, 27).  The risen Lord even commands Thomas to do what he (Thomas) had demanded:  “Put your finger here...put [your hand] in my side” (v. 27).  And adds, “Do not be unbelieving, but believing.”  Does the Lord, in humbly granting what Thomas asks, lead Thomas to the humility of faith?  For we do not read that Thomas put his hand in the Lord’s side; rather, amazed, he responds with a cry of faith, “My Lord and my God!” (v. 28)  Thomas’ answer is like that of Job after the Lord answered his demands out of the whirlwind (Job 40:60), and Job responded, “I had heard of you by the hearing of the ear, but not my eye sees you; therefore I despise myself, and repent in dust and ashes” (42:5–6).

“Touch me,” Jesus tells Thomas; “Touch me not,” he tells Mary.  But he speaks one word to both:  "You did not choose me but I chose you. And I appointed you to go and bear fruit (Jn. 15:16).  Do what I command you (15:14).  Love one another as I have loved you (15:12).  Follow me (21:22)!"

* Cf. Augustine, Tractates on the Gospel of John, 121.3.