Easter Vigil 2009

Haec nox est... This is the night! 5 times our deacon sang that phrase, 12 times in the Exsultet in all there is mention of this “night”. And by the ministry of the Church and the power of the Holy Spirit, it’s true. This is the night! It is that “most holy night, when our Lord Jesus Christ passed from death to life” and throughout the world thousands, in baptism, pass to new life in him.

Really, there’s only one thing to say, and perhaps understatement is the best way of saying it. It’s simply this: that what happens tonight is no small thing. It’s no small thing the Church recalls and relives in Holy Week and Easter. It’s no small thing when the Son of man goes as it is written (cf. Mk 14:21), goes to death and on to resurrection in obedience to the Father. It’s no small thing when Jesus makes his passage from this world to the Father (cf. Jn 13:1). It’s no small thing when our great High Priest passes through the heavens (cf. Heb 4:14). Neither for him, nor for us, nor for any particle of the universe is it a small thing.

It’s no small thing, already indeed, that God should posit outside himself another realm of being: heaven and earth, as we heard, and do so simply to share his Joy. It’s no small thing, already, that when humanity prefers its own project to its Creator’s, he should begin a hidden work of reclamation, should make, as we heard, obedient Abraham the father of a people and a new beginning, and later lead that people out of slavery to a land of their own. It’s no small thing already, as we heard, that that people should in their prophets carry hope for all mankind.
But the night of creation, when there was darkness over the deep and God’s spirit hovered over the water; the night of the exodus when Israel went forth from Egypt: those nights are only faint images, foreshadowings of this one.

Haec nox est... It is no small thing that happens tonight. It is no small thing that after having sent his servants to his vineyard, God should send his beloved Son (cf. Mk 12:1-11). It is not a small thing: the birth and the life, the death and the resurrection of the God-man, Son of God and son of Mary. It is no small thing that Someone, with a humanity of unique sensitivity, should have exposed himself to Sin and Death, to the full force of human evil and the Satanic power behind it. It’s no small thing that Someone wholly good should have, in St. Paul’s astonishing phrases, been “made sin” and “become a curse for us” (Gal 3:13). It’s no little thing that Someone who could call himself the Resurrection and the Life (Jn 11:25) should have “tasted death for every one” (Heb 2:9). It isn’t nothing that Someone freely, out of compassionate love, should have gone further than anyone into the night of human suffering, into and beyond the sufferings of the psalmists or Job or Isaiah’s Servant or all the tortured and abused of history. It’s no small thing that Someone whose whole being was for the Father and for others should have accepted such rejection, such loneliness as he.
Haec nox est... It isn’t a trifle we celebrate tonight. Rather, anything else is measured by it.
O vere beata nox, “O truly blessed night, which alone deserved to know the time and the hour when Christ arose from the realm of the dead!” Resurrexit ab inferis...regressus ab inferis! Do we grasp these phrases? Do we grasp what it means to say that This One rose, came back, from the world of the dead? It means that everything expressed in the literature and art of the Harrowing of Hell or in the Eastern icon of the Anastasis is actually true. It is no small thing we celebrate this night. It is no small thing that Someone, This One, the God-man, Son of God and son of Mary, one of the Trinity and one of us should, after the Cross, after shattering the gates of the underworld, be raised by his Father to a new and immortal life, become a life-giving Spirit, and pour the Spirit out. It’s no small thing if by his rising from the dead, the whole world is already secretly raised, if death is already, in principle, dead, and humankind’s horizon suddenly the hope of resurrection and life everlasting. It’s no small thing if this One, raised from the dead, is standing even now behind the gates of Time to come as Judge and Transfigurer. And all of this is in tonight.

It isn’t anything small that if we put our faith in this One, we too can pass already from death to life. We too, in baptism, can go into the tomb with him and join him in death, and therefore join him in his victory over death. We can have the Spirit rest on us, eat his Body and drink his Blood, and become living members of his ever-dying but ever-rising Body the Church. We too, like Peter and the disciples, can go to Galilee and see him risen, that is find our freedom again, the freedom to give our lives in love. None of this is small, and all of it in this night.
Haec nox est, “this most holy night, when our Lord Jesus Christ passed from death to life,” and thanks to Mother Church and the overshadowing Spirit, we pass too.
It’s no small thing our Lord, by his death and resurrection, has done and does. It is unsurpassable and inexpressible. It is that than which nothing greater can be conceived.

It is no small thing - let me bring it home to each of us - it’s no small thing that each of us tonight, when Christ comes back from the dead, never to die again, gains a Friend. It’s no small thing that Someone, This One, Son of God and son of Mary, chivalrous and homely, patient and kind, should enter my life - even before I was conscious, when I was baptised as a baby - and live within me more intimately than anyone. It’s no small thing that he should carry, bear with, secretly sustain, pick up again, put right, shepherd, shower kindnesses on, stand by in trials and walk with through the valley of the shadow of death this poor wayward unappreciative self-preoccupied self, “this Jack, joke, poor potsherd,” and do this over a life, twenty years, forty years, seventy years. It’s no trifle there’s Someone who will answer every unanswered question and heal every secret pain. It’s no little thing he should even share the thoughts of his heart, his prayer, his prophetic, priestly, kingly work in the world, with this poor self. It’s no little thing that this “unhappy creature, storm-tossed, disconsolate” (Is 54:11), he should want to give the radiant strength of precious stones, have the angels honour, and share his throne with. It’s no small thing he should have made my everlasting destiny a fullness of bodily well-being and physical delight, a fullness of human friendship and love, a fullness of God himself. It’s no small thing that, at the cost of his life and his blood, he should raise from the dead, transfigured too, those I love, my mother, my father, and all the rest; that he should lavish on brethren and friends good things I can long for for them but never give myself.
Haec nox est. Praised be Jesus Christ! If we take away anything from this night, from Holy Week and Easter, let it be this: that it’s no small thing we are involved with, no small thing that Someone, This One, has died and risen for us, no small thing to believe and be baptised.

Abbot Hugh Gilbert OSB