The Easter Vigil (April 4, 2026)

“For Christ also hath once suffered for sins, the just for the unjust, that he might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh, but quickened by the Spirit: by which also he went and preached unto the spirits in prison.

May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be alway acceptable in thy sight, O Lord, our Strength and our Redeemer. In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.

Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, and the Easter Vigil form a coherent story and the Church Kalendar invites us to live in it. On Maundy Thursday, we went with Jesus to the upper room as he instituted the Last Supper. At the end of that service, we stripped the Altar and processed the Sacrament to the Altar of Repose where we waited with him in the Garden. The Faithful waited throughout the night. At the Good Friday service, we didn’t say Mass. Instead, we plead Christ’s Cross for the world, venerated the wooden altar of the Cross, heard the reproaches which reminded us that we put him on that Cross, and then, thanks to his great mercy and love, and we received his Body and Blood from the Altar of Repose. Tonight begins a new chapter as we begin to celebrate Easter. Tonight, we are invited into the basic rhythm at the heart of the Christian Faith: death, burial, and resurrection.

But before we move ahead too quickly, stop and think for a moment about what it must have been like to be one of the disciples from the conclusion of the Last Supper in the Upper Room until Easter. Consider the despair and helplessness they would have felt. Now consider the world if there was never an Easter as if the world was an eternal Good Friday. From a pre-Easter perspective. the death of Our Lord is a tragedy; it’s the sad ending of a story that had potential. In all the Gospels, the disciples during this unsettling and haunting period were devastated. They put him in a tomb. You don’t bury someone who you know is coming back; burial is a form of closure, a way to say goodbye. If this was all there was, at best we could say Jesus was a political martyr who was ground up and spit out by the Roman imperial state but where is the hope in that? There is no hope: you get only death, domination, sheer exertion of power. But we must ask an important question: if Jesus’s body lay lifeless in the Tomb, where was his soul? The answer is in the Apostles’ Creed which draws from the 1 Peter passage we read earlier: he descended into hell, into the place of the dead. Not, of course, because he deserved to go to hell, but so that he could begin the next phase of his mission: to harrow hell, to deliver the souls who were trapped there by bringing them the Good News of the Gospel. Because Jesus knew what the disciples couldn’t comprehend: resurrection was coming; death wouldn’t get the last word.

Easter means that what Jesus did on Maundy Thursday and Good Friday isn’t a tragedy; it’s not an ending. This story isn’t one of a political martyr. The resurrection means Christ has power, but not the coercive power of domination like what you would find in the Roman imperial apparatus. The fact that Jesus rose again from the dead means he has a power greater than death; a power that isn’t subject to decay and decomposition. It means he is God. But because he unites humanity and God, his resurrection has the implication for us because he is the firstfruits; in his resurrection, we find hope that one day we will be raised too. The Gospel is Good News. And it’s that Good News we begin to celebrate now: death is not the end. We are no longer alienated from God.

God has given us a way back to himself and it requires us to follow Jesus Christ’s story. Just as he died, so we are called to die with him; the old is gone and crucified with Christ. Just as he was buried, so we are called to be buried by mortifying our flesh and removing our corrupt affections. We have to undergo the work of purgation. Just as he was raised, so we too are raised so that we can walk in newness of life. What a beautiful mystery that God has come to us, gone all the way to hell and back for us, and now invites us to be a part of his family.

Tonight we begin the celebration of the resurrection and its implication for us. We processed into the nave following the new fire which stands for the light of the Gospel and the hope of the resurrection. We heard prophecies about how God intervened in the history of Old Testament Israel, interventions that anticipated the deliverance he brings by his resurrection. We blessed the font, hallowing the womb of the Church from which we are born again. We prayed the Litany of the Saints, celebrating those who, while no longer with us here, are not dead because God is not the God of the dead, but the living. And we asked them to pray for us because we share that resurrection hope that one day, we will be reunited with the whole Body of Christ. But the goal of all this isn’t just to play act or to feel good about ourselves. The goal is that the resurrection life of Christ becomes part of us. Not just part of us, but the very core of our being. It is the power of God working in us to raise us from the death of sin and with the hope of the resurrection.

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.