Knights of Columbus

Each Easter at the Vigil we journey from darkness to light, from ashes to flowers, from silence to shouts of joy, from death to new life. We journey through the story of the world, seeing it from God?s perspective. The journey that we are on began with creation, when God called the world into being, turned the seeming chaos into order, and brought forth a world where plants and animals, birds and fish filled the world, and God pronounced it good.

Then in time God brought forth human beings, man and woman - equal, created of the same stuff, even better, created in the image and likeness of God. Then God said that it was all very good, for now there was a creature on the earth who could freely choose to follow God, could freely choose to love in return for love. As the psalmist says, ?The earth is full of the goodness of the Lord.? Each spring we see this, we know this.

But we sometimes chose to follow ourselves, to worship the work of human hands, to turn against one another, and to sin. Thus the Egyptians enslaved the Hebrews, even tried to limit their numbers that they might be assimilated into Egypt as other peoples were assimilated. But God called Moses to lead his people to freedom. God did not forget his promises and so Moses led the people from slavery to freedom on that Passover night.

But the story does not end there, as Israel sometime strayed, and God let them be exiled that having nothing, they might return to God as their only hope. In the midst of their desperation, God says through Isaiah, ?All who are thirsty, come to the water! You who have no money, come, receive grain and eat; come without paying and without cost, drink wine and milk! Why spend your money for what is not bread, your wages for what fails to satisfy?? Don?t we do that at times, running after this or that, thinking that it will make us happy? Finally, we turn to God, and God is there. God satisfies in a way matched by no other. God through his prophets promises us that he will replace our hearts of stone with hearts of flesh. What turns our hearts to stone is un-forgiveness, anger, jealousy, greed, lust, sloth, and/or pride.

But the story does not end there, for God had an even better gift - the gift of his Son, Jesus. Even the sin that nailed Jesus to the cross could not stop the love of God. In fact, as we hear in the Exultet, that prayer sung by the Paschal Candle, God?s love for us is so great that the sin of Adam and our sins brought not a shameful death but ?so great a Redeemer!? ?This is the night when Jesus Christ broke the chains of death and rise triumphant from the grave.? This is the night which ?casts out hatred, brings us peace, and humbles earthly pride.? Not only on the night of the Easter Vigil, but because of Easter, we can with confidence ask God to cast hatred and resentment out of our hearts.

We can ask God to widen the place of peace in our hearts. If we struggle with pride we can ask God to replace it with gratitude. If we bog down with a sense of unworthiness and shame, we can ask God to fill us with the awe of knowing that we are his sons and brothers of Jesus. We can look forward to eternal life, knowing that our loved ones who have gone before us are not dead but live in Christ?s resurrection.