A love that conquers death 

The readings on this holiest of nights prove particularly poignant and revelatory. They disclose in the starkest of narratives and poetic verses the very nature of our God. While Abraham’s journey to sacrifice his only son, Isaac, is often heard as a testimony to this patriarch’s great faith, this story also reveals to us something about our God. This is a God who does not want human sacrifice. The Exodus story, while attesting to Moses’ faithful leadership of the Hebrew slaves amidst the impending threat of the Egyptians, likewise discloses the nature of our great God as one who oversees and rescues the oppressed from tyranny. 

The two Isaiah readings unveil the Holy One in our midst in even more unfathomable terms — as the God of the whole earth, who looks upon each one of us with compassion, and as the Supreme One, who provides water, bread and pardon, among many other human needs. Finally, Baruch urges us to walk in the way of this God, whom the prophet Ezekiel recognizes as utterly holy, and whose divine holiness will be made known through us, the people of God. Given all these characteristics of our God, how can we, like the faithful ones of God in the Old Testament, recognize the depths of God’s loving kindness in the divine care of us? 

The question of knowing God returns us to tonight’s first reading, the Genesis creation story and its radical claim that we humans are made in God’s image and likeness. Jesus, of course, is the enfleshed image of our God. Jesus’ passion and death reveal God’s very being as love, as well as disclose who we are fashioned to be, namely, creatures formed to receive and communicate God’s love. Thus, as the prophet Ezekiel writes, we reveal the holiness of God by our lives. Moreover, Paul’s message to the Romans and to us affirms that we were baptized in Christ’s likeness. Thus, we die with him to sin and are alive to God in Christ Jesus.

As we enter the darkened worship space of our churches on this Holy Saturday evening, we hear Matthew’s Gospel account of Mary Magdalene and the other Mary, armed with spices to anoint Jesus’ body, journeying to his burial place the day after the Sabbath. It is not difficult to imagine their anxiety as they anticipate the pitch-black darkness of the enclosed tomb which likely matched their own confused and dampened spirits. Like our candles, illuminated by the new light of Christ at the Easter Vigil, the women are startled at first, but also enlightened by the presence of a divine messenger who has rolled away the stone and proclaims that Jesus is risen. Moreover, they are to go tell the disciples that Jesus has been raised and go on to Galilee, where they will see him.   

What was presumed to be a death is now revealed to these first witnesses as new life. Surely their sorrow and confusion turned to joy, but also to fear. But both the angel and their later encounter with Jesus, console them with the phrase, “Do not be afraid,” as the Paschal mystery unfolds.

We, too, may anxiously admit a lack of understanding regarding this matter of Jesus being raised. As a central tenet of our faith, resurrection holds a potency and a disclosure about mystery that need not be lost in a debate about how or whether it happened. To behold the mystery of resurrection is to experience it like the two women did that third day. But how do we do this? 

Resurrection presumes a void, an emptying of oneself, perhaps even a death of sorts. But this is not the end. If we dare embark upon such a clearing in our own lives, this death can rid us of those passive attitudes that may have harmed others. It clears away those long-seated prejudices that cast someone excluded from our group as “other.” It remedies those occasions when we failed to forgive. And it begins to reverse those occasions when we failed to act justly. 

Such an emptying of oneself not only parallels Christ’s self-emptying, which culminated in his death on Calvary. It also allows for a deeper understanding of resurrection as a space where love knows no limits. To embrace Jesus’ resurrection and to partake in it through self-emptying is to engage the core of our existence where an unprecedented partnership between human and the divine becomes possible. Believer and nonbeliever alike have the capacity to allow love to have its way. Each of us is summoned to partake in this new life. Light has replaced darkness. Love has conquered death. The emptiness has been filled with new life. Jesus has risen. Alleluia! 

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