It is so good to be with you all here on this beautiful night. It is my favorite night of the whole year, because tonight we get to once again reflect on that great love story, the story of the love of God for humanity that we see played out in the Scriptures, stretching all the way from Adam and Eve to the glorious resurrection of Jesus which we celebrate tonight. Tonight is so special because it is the opportunity for us to reflect on the ways in which we ourselves are a part of that grand love story. Colton, Lincoln, Brian and Chase, this is an especially important night for you all. Colton, Chase and Lincoln, you will share in the Sacraments for the first time tonight, coming to experience in a tangible and powerful way the love and grace of God in your life. Brian, the love of God already poured into your heart will be strengthened with the grace and gifts of the Holy Spirit tonight, strengthening you to be a powerful witness to God’s love in your life. It is a privilege for all of us to celebrate with you tonight as God moves in your life.
Tonight as we celebrate this Easter Vigil Mass, I can’t help but think of my newborn nephew, Inti. My sister, Amy, gave birth to him early on Good Friday morning, and already he is a rockstar in our family. The pictures have been flowing in on our family group chat and they are all adorable. There is an undeniable beauty to pictures of newborn children. Our hearts can’t help but be full when we see them. In those adorable little faces, with their teeny hands and feet, we recognize an enormous potential. Already, I know that Amy and her husband, Rommy, are dreaming about what is in store for little Inti. I can only imagine the overwhelming love in the hearts of Amy and Rommy which they will now do their best to pour out on Inti to help him grow and become the man he will one day be.
Tonight, in a similar way, the grace of God will be coming into your hearts in a powerful way. This grace is given for you to cooperate with throughout the rest of your life. You may not know exactly how the love of God will help you to become the best version of yourself, but the Father does. He knows what He is about in your life, and He sees all of the wonderful things He can do through you when you cooperate with Him. I pray that you sense deeply the love of the Father as His grace is poured into you tonight. I can’t wait to see how His grace will unfold and grow in you in the coming years. Like when I think of all the potential in baby Inti, I am filled with joy when I think of all the potential that comes with the grace God will give you tonight, a share in His own life!
In a way, tonight we get a glimpse into the perspective of our Heavenly Father, who from the very beginning has given the human race His abundant grace and love. The Father knew the ways we would not respond to that love, the large and small ways that we would fail, but still He gave it to us, knowing that even our failures couldn’t disrupt His amazing plan. From the very beginning, God’s love has been with us. As we heard in the first reading, we were made in His image and likeness, made to be able to share in the Love of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
Even when we failed in trusting God, He has never given up on any of us. We were banished from the garden, but not in a permanent way, God had something even better in store for humanity and knew how to prepare us for it. He knew that Jesus, by joining the human race, would allow us to participate in the life of God Himself. What greater gift of love could there be? In the end, we would not simply walk with God, but have the ability to walk in God!
In the story of Abraham, we see God continuing to prepare for the coming of Jesus. He promised Abraham that because of his faith, he would have abundant offspring. This promise was given to him when He only had one son, Isaac. But that son would provide the line of genealogy leading to Jesus Himself. In Jesus, we have the grace that has made countless billions into sons of God. Tonight, we will see three more sons be added to the list!
But even as the descendants of God’s people continued to multiply, still they struggled and eventually became enslaved in Egypt. With Moses, God saved His unfaithful people from bondage in Egypt, bringing them out of slavery by their miraculous crossing of the Red Sea. Here, God was foreshadowing Jesus’ great gift of Baptism for all of us, whereby we are saved not just from our earthly enemies, but from Satan and the power of sin through the water and the Holy Spirit.
After crossing the Red Sea, the people still struggled to trust in the love of God who had brought them out of Egypt. They wandered in the desert for forty years, where God showed them His faithfulness and taught them to trust. After this, He brought them into the land He had promised them, but even there they did not stay close to Him. Israel, God’s people, abandoned Him. They became divided against each other and even went into exile from the promised land. During this time, God never forgot His plan. It continued to unfold even in the midst of our unfaithfulness. As God’s people were going into exile from the promised land, prophets like Isaiah spoke of the hope that was in store for them despite their faithlessness. Tonight we heard these beautiful words from Isaiah: “All your children shall be taught by the LORD, and great shall be the peace of your children. In justice shall you be established, far from the fear of oppression, where destruction cannot come near you.” Isaiah literally spoke these words as Israel was being violently overthrown by the Assyrians and shipped off to a foreign land. But God knew that this wasn’t the end of the story. He knew that Jesus would bring the peace, justice and indestructible life that our hearts long for!
Even while they were in foreign lands and their hope seemed lost, God spoke to His people through the prophets, reminding them to stay close to Him and listen to His wisdom and His words. God continued to work to prepare His people for what was coming. The prophet Ezekial gave them and us these beautiful words of hope:
For I will take you away from among the nations,
gather you from all the foreign lands,
and bring you back to your own land.
I will sprinkle clean water upon you
to cleanse you from all your impurities,
and from all your idols I will cleanse you.
I will give you a new heart and place a new spirit within you,
taking from your bodies your stony hearts
and giving you natural hearts.
I will put my spirit within you and make you live by my statutes,
careful to observe my decrees.
You shall live in the land I gave your fathers;
you shall be my people, and I will be your God.
God knew what he was doing. He knew that the days were coming when He would send His only begotten son to die for us all so that we might have new life, so that our hearts would be able to become temples of the holy spirit. This is what happens in Baptism! God takes away our stony hearts and gives us natural hearts. Our hearts die with Jesus by going down into the waters of Baptism, and they rise out of the waters glorious and new, filled with His life! As St. Paul reminded us in his letter tonight: “We were indeed buried with him through baptism into death, so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might live in newness of life.”
Tonight, we recognize what a gift it is to enjoy the fullness of God’s plan. All through the ages of humanity, we have been unfaithful to the God who loves us, and now – in Jesus – He has given us the definitive answer to our sin and unfaithfulness. On the Cross, Jesus paid the ultimate price for that unfaithfulness. He not only paid the price for all our sins, He was able to bring forth new life out of the death He suffered. This is what we celebrate tonight. As the Exultet we heard at the beginning of Mass reminds us:
Be glad, let earth be glad, as glory floods her,
ablaze with light from her eternal King,
let all corners of the earth be glad,
knowing an end to gloom and darkness.
Rejoice, let Mother Church also rejoice,
arrayed with the lightning of His glory,
let this holy building shake with joy,
filled with the mighty voices of the peoples.
We can be glad tonight, because God’s never-ending love led Him to become one of us, so that He might die and rise again to give us access to His life and love in the fullest way possible! What a beautiful and undeserved gift! As we stand in the glory of Jesus’ resurrection, we see in the shining light of the Easter candle the unwavering hope that is ours as Christian people. The light of Jesus’ resurrection burns brightly and banishes the darkness of sin and death! Alleluia!
We can and should be filled with the same amazement that filled the hearts of the women and the Apostles as they heard the message of the angels that the Lord was risen from the dead. As we lit our candles from the flame of the Paschal candle at the beginning of this celebration, let us allow our hearts to be set aflame with the love of Christ in a new way tonight. As a Church, we have the gift of sharing in that faithful, never-ending, death-defeating love of Jesus Christ. He invites each of us to let His love shine through us, so that more and more people might come to know the glory of new life in Him. Like the potential I recognize in my little newborn nephew, I see great potential in the work of God’s grace in all of us. God’s grace is ever fresh, always able to help us grow into better versions of ourselves through Jesus dwelling within. What an awesome gift this is and what a great responsibility as well. Let us pray that by His grace, Jesus will help us to remain faithful to His love poured out in us so that we might always know the joy of living in Him.
+ Heavenly Father, thank you for your plan, for sending us your Son to save us by His death and resurrection. Jesus, thank you for the new life that you give us in yourself. Please help us to continuously grow in your life. Holy Spirit, open our hearts more fully to You tonight so that we might experience the joy of the resurrection in a new way. We ask this through Christ, our risen Lord. Amen. +