Gen. 1:1 – 2:2 + Gen. 22: 1-18 + Exodus 14:15 – 15:1 + Isaiah 55:1-11
Romans 6:3-11 + Mark 16:1-7
Delivered at Holy Spirit Catholic Church in Mustang, Oklahoma
The 3 days stretching from Holy Thursday evening till Easter Sunday evening
are actually one day celebrating one mystery: the Paschal Mystery.
Throughout these 3 days we plunge deeper into the central mystery of our life,
of all life: the dying and rising of Christ the Lord.
We are not play-acting events from the past, we are not trying to reenact these most important moments in the life of the Son of God. Rather, we are entering into the present reality of the Living God acting in our midst NOW. The God of Moses and Abraham, the God of Miriam and Sarah, the God who is the great “I AM.” Not “I Was” nor “I Will be” but the great “I AM.”
At every sacred liturgy of the Church, a doorway into eternity opens, and we enter into a time beyond time, to encounter the ONE who transcends time itself. So it is that though Christ Jesus, the eternal Son of God, died once in history, we still by faith enter open a radiant doorway where he enters and we experience the power of his saving death here and now. So it is that the One who is the Way, the Truth, and the Life rose from the dead 2000 years ago in a hidden corner of the world, now we encounter him rising up in and through us in this our world at this our time.
The Paschal Mystery, the dying and rising of Christ, brings meaning to our life,
is the sacred key unlocking the answers to the greatest questions of our life.
Such as: Those who humble themselves shall be exalted, those who lose their life in loving service of others shall find their lives given back to them richer and fuller. Suffering love, to give something of oneself to another, is the way to glory—dying can never be separated from rising, only in letting go do we receive.
At the services of Holy Thursday and Good Friday we encountered
the brilliance of several facets of the shining jewel we call the Sacred Triduum,
the beautiful jewel we name the Paschal Mystery.
Now, on this holiest of nights, the Church pulls out all the stops
for a celebration of the power of Christ dying and rising in our midst.
The light of Christ shines through the darkness, and the darkness cannot overcome it. The darkness of terror and death in a Kenyan university or in the countryside of Syria or Iraq, the darkness of violence on dangerous streets,
or death from natural or man-made disasters—no darkness, no matter how great, can snuff out the light of God’s love in Christ. We share in that light, and the dark of night becomes radiant, as the glory of the Risen Christ shines forth from each baptized believer. Catechumens rise up from the tomb of the font, dripping with new life, faces shimmering with joy. We smell the Spirit’s presence in oil poured gladly upon the heads of those who are sealed by the fragrant love of God. We feast on divine life penetrating our bodies in sacred food and drink.
We sing the Alleluia’s over and over again because Christ is Risen, and he rises up in his people this night.
Tonight, and at every celebration of the Eucharist, we encounter the Living God who invites us deeper into life, to be more full of His love, a God who speaks His word to us now. For His word is not a dead word on a page but a living, active word. So that these stories of salvation history are our stories, they reveal the meaning of who God is and how God acts in Christ by the power of the Spirit NOW.
This God is our Creator, and we are his handiwork, his delight. At every moment, as some of our cells die and others regenerate, we are being re-created by Him who constantly breathes into us the breath of life. If this God, in whose image we are made, ever stopped loving us, we would cease to exist.
This God is a God who saves His people who cry out to Him in their need. Whether from a mountaintop in Moriah, or on the shores of the Red Sea, or from the wood of a tree on Calvary—these cries are heard by the God who saves. The God who we believe in never turns a deaf ear to the people He has created in His image, but does everything, even the seemingly impossible, to save us. The God of Moses, the God of the New Moses, Jesus Christ, rolls away stones which keep us sealed up in dark tombs, & invites us into Risen Life, to experience this life now. This God of ours makes a way forward for us where there was no way forward before, turns dead ends into open roads full of new possibilities and new life.
The God of life, the God who shares divine life through Jesus Christ, invites our elect to the waters of new life. For these who thirst for God, their thirst is at the same time quenched and made deeper for Him as they are buried with Christ in baptism and rise up with him to new life. (They thirst for the living God, and soon they will thirst even more!) Leaving behind their old life, they are washed clean, and re-created in our very midst.
Then we all are renewed by heavenly food and drink, as God and human beings sit down to sup at one table, the table of plenty.
This is what we stake our life on. That God is the Creator, the Creator of life, not the destroyer of life. That God loves us enough to become one with us in Christ, born like we are in a rush of water and blood only to die in the same way, with water and blood pouring forth from his pierced heart. That God in Christ loves us enough to drink deeply of our most terrible sufferings and our greatest joys in order to teach us how to live and how to live. We believe in a God who gifts us with one another in the Church in order that we might never walk this journey alone, only together. A God who surrounds us with holy people, both living and dead, whose very lives of generous love spur us to do the same. We give ourselves to the God whose burning desire is to forgive our sins and for us to share in His life forever by raising up these fragile bodies and transforming them into eternal glory.
On these truths, we stake our lives.
As we say “I DO” we are drawn deeper into union with the great “I AM.” Who speaks to us NOW and always: “I Do!” Who says to each one of us: I do believe in you, and entrust myself completely to you.
Fr. Joseph A. Jacobi
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