Day: March 26, 2016

“One thing is needful”

We do not just meet at the tomb of Christ on Holy Saturday to mourn and honour his death and the meaning of human redemption. We also meet expectantly, waiting upon God and his gracious acts. In a way, it is the radical meaning of our lives in faith. It is always about waiting upon God and finding the truth of our being and doing in him. Nowhere, perhaps, is that more joyously and wondrously seen than at the great Vigil of Easter.

The mystery of Easter is the triumph of good over evil, of light over darkness, of grace over sin. God’s great second act is the Resurrection, a second creation that overcomes the waywardness of our sins. Out of sin and evil, God creates a greater good. It is Christ’s Resurrection, the fruit of his Passion. It changes everything. The one thing needful is to rejoice in Christ’s Resurrection.

The great Paschal Praeconium exults in the wonder of the Resurrection. An ancient hymn and prayer, probably going back to the fifth century, sometimes attributed to Augustine, sometimes to Ambrose, it rejoices in the triumph of God’s grace and goodness over all sin and evil. It is sung in the light of the Easter Candle, itself symbolic of the Resurrection of Christ and of his life and light in us. The Paschal Praeconium is the great Easter Proclamation. What is that proclamation? “Christ is Risen, Alleluia, Alleluia!” “The Lord is Risen Indeed. Alleluia, Alleluia!” What does it mean? Joy, an unsurpassing joy borne out of our griefs and sorrows, not just for what we have suffered but for what we do and have done. We celebrate Christ’s victory over sin and death whereby we are united to God. “O night, wherein heaven and earth are joined, and mankind partaketh with the Godhead”. The love that creates now recreates. Nothing can hold back the power of the goodness of God who acts out of his own love and gathers all things into his love.

Creation and Redemption are closely joined. We forget that at our peril. And so the prophecies of the Vigil remind us of the significant moments from the story of creation through the deliverance of Israel from Egyptian bondage to the Law and the prophets that contribute to our understanding of Christ’s Passion and that compel us to contemplate the wonder of his Resurrection. Nothing signals more profoundly the true nature of our humanity. We are more than our sins and our sufferings, more than our dying and our deaths. We are made for God. Thus the Resurrection is the greatest possible affirmation of human personality and individuality, the greatest possible affirmation of our souls and bodies as belonging to our spiritual identity in Christ. We are more though not less than our physical bodies. Our whole being finds its truth in Christ and his Resurrection.

That is why the Vigil entails the renewal of our baptismal vows. We are reminded of our essential spiritual identity in Christ which is realised through his Death and Resurrection and through our being incorporated into his Death and Resurrection. Only so can we be in Christ and Christ in us. We live not for ourselves but for Christ and for Christ in one another. It is ultimately what we celebrate in the great Mass of Easter. Christ, we learn from Mary in Bethany, is the one thing needful. To attend to his grace for us in our deepest joy.

“One thing is needful”

Fr. David Curry
Easter Vigil, 2016

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“One thing is needful”

There is a certain quality of peace and quiet about Holy Saturday. All of the fuss and bother, all of the rage and spite, all of the agony and pain of the preceding days is past and gone. Christ is dead and buried. We meet at the tomb of Christ. Why? What is the one thing needful? To contemplate the meaning of Christ’s death.

The point is that his death and therefore all deaths are not meaningless. His suffering on the cross and therefore our sufferings too are not meaningless. Something has been accomplished. “It is finished”, he says, in John’s Gospel before “bow[ing] his head and [giving] up his spirit”. What has been accomplished? What is finished? All that belongs to the reconciliation between God and man. All that belongs to human redemption.

What does that mean? It means that there is something more than the reality of our separation from God that accounts for suffering and death. God has done something in and through the humanity of Christ. There is atonement. The scriptures constantly call our attention to the idea of Christ dying for us. And through the eyes of John our attention is constantly drawn to his dying for us as belonging to his living for the Father. “I have come to do the will of him who sent me”. What is that will? To achieve our peace. To overcome our sin. To open us out to more than death.

The idea of reconciliation requires the recognition of separation. Sin and suffering, sin and death are all interconnected. We suffer as a result of our own sins. We suffer because of the sins of others. We suffer because it is the condition of our humanity. In the humanity of Christ, God suffers for us to redeem us. What is that redemption? The revelation of the absolute goodness of God which is far greater than all and any form of evil. Holy Week reveals to us the absolute goodness of God which seeks our good out of the very nature of the divine goodness itself. What Holy Saturday shows us is the fullest extent of the divine will to be reconciled with his sinful creation.

As with everything about Holy Week, we are meant to learn this. The Passion of Christ is about his sufferings for us. In some sense, his sufferings are our sufferings as a result of our separation from the truth and goodness of God. All sin is about that separation. The cross is the overcoming of it. It establishes a kind of peace and harmony, a restoration of Paradise, if you will. Something of its fuller meaning is signalled in the readings at Morning Prayer that illumine the Epistle and Gospel for Holy Saturday. Together they recall us to the creedal doctrine of the Descent into Hell.

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