Day: April 19, 2014

“All the people hung upon his words”

This is the night. The night of watching and waiting upon the truth and power of God’s love, a love which is greater than the darkness of human sin and death. Holy Saturday seems to be the quietest and the most peaceful of all of the days of the year. And yet there is the wonderful action of God which marks this night. We watch and wait once again by hanging upon the words of Scripture. We watch and wait in expectancy for God’s great creative action, the Resurrection of Jesus Christ.

The point is very simple. Christ dies but love lives and triumphs over death. All of the Scripture readings at the Vigil underscore this essential insight and truth. We are reminded that the goodness of God is and must always be greater than every form of evil. The Resurrection is Creation renewed by being recalled to the truth of God in love and forgiveness.

The divine desire to be reconciled with his sinful creation means the redemption of all sinners. It requires that we hang upon his words, listening to the great Paschal Praeconium, the Easter Proclamation, listening to the Prophecies of Scripture that speak of God’s triumph over sin and evil, and then renewing our baptismal vows by which God has reconciled himself to each of us in his love for us. Then there is the simple joy of rejoicing in Christ’s redemption of our humanity. We end the vigil with the lauds, the praises of Easter morning, the resurrection alive in us.

How? By hanging upon the words of Scripture that testify to the Resurrection. Dr. Johnson once said that the prospect of hanging wonderfully concentrates the mind. Well, our hanging upon his words concentrates our minds wonderfully upon the reality of divine love. It makes us alive, restored and renewed in love. Such is the wonder and the power of the Vigil. Our hanging upon his words opens us out to the Risen Christ.

“All the people hung upon his words”

Fr. David Curry
Easter Vigil, 2014

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“All the people hung upon his words”

Christ no longer hangs upon the Cross. It might seem then that we no longer hang upon his words. He is dead and buried. That would seem to be the meaning of this day. And yet there is something more, something quite wonderful and powerful about Holy Saturday.

Holy Saturday is the day of the greatest peace and the deepest silence. It recalls us to the Jewish Sabbath, to God’s resting on the seventh day after the labours of creation, as if God needed a rest! On Holy Saturday, Christ rests in the tomb. And everything seems at peace since all that stands between God and man has been overcome on the Cross of Good Friday. We have heard Jesus’ last words, “it is finished,” and “Father, into thy hands I commit my spirit.” There is, it seems, only peace and silence. It may remind us of paradise. And yet, there is something else that makes Holy Saturday more than paradise restored and makes it more than the Sabbath rest of God.

The Scripture readings speak of an activity that underlies all of the peace and silence of this day. We gather at the tomb of Jesus. It is the aftermath of the cruel events of the Passion and yet the Scripture readings speak of something else. “He went and preached unto the spirits in prison,” Peter tells us in a passage that echoes the first lesson at Matins from Zechariah, a passage, too, that signals the prophetic basis for Christ’s Palm Sunday entrance into Jerusalem as a king “humble and riding on an ass and on a colt the foal of an ass.”  “Because of the blood of my covenant with you, I will set your captives free from the waterless pit,” an image of Sheol or Hades, of Hell, Zechariah proclaims.

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