Day: March 31, 2018

“Be it unto me according to thy word”

Our Easter Vigil is a greatly simplified version of the ancient liturgies and rites of “this most holy night.” Vigils are about watching and waiting. As such they are about anticipation and expectation for something more. Holy Week has immersed us in the Passion of Christ, using Mary’s fiat as our mantra to enter into the narratives of the Passion; “be it unto me according to thy word,” the word which has gathered into itself all of the madness and disorders of our words. But in so doing we have been aware that we are participating in something great and wonderful, something which belongs to the mystery of human redemption.

That mystery recalls us to the deeper meaning of God’s creation. We can only participate in the Passion through the Resurrection. For here is the great wonder. It is the Resurrection alone that makes our participation in the Passion both possible and necessary. Tonight we wait expectantly and profoundly upon the mystery of God in the fullness of redemption. We await the new creation, the Resurrection.

How do we watch and wait? First, in the quiet darkness in which the Paschal Candle is blessed and lit and the great prayer, the Paschal Praeconium or Exultet, is sung, itself a wonderful and moving set of Scriptural and theological images about the Passion and the Resurrection, sometimes attributed to St. Augustine or more likely St. Ambrose. It is really a kind of Eucharistic Prayer or Canon. It proclaims the triumph of light over darkness, of life over death, of good over evil. Then, we listen to a few of the great prophecies and readings that illumine the mystery of human redemption. That prepares us for an important feature of the Vigil.

Traditionally, the service provided the occasion for baptisms, indeed, in its fullest expression, there was baptism, confirmation and then communion. In the baptisms at the Vigil, there is the renewing of our baptismal vows. In other words, there is a constant circling back and into the mystery of our incorporation into the Body of Christ.

Our country vigil ends with the lauds or praises of Easter morn. Our vigil brings us to the Resurrection, to the Alleluia’s that resound in praise and thanksgiving to God. The Resurrection is the triumph of good over evil, the triumph of God himself in his very truth and being giving himself for us in the sacraments of Baptism and Holy Communion. Such is the word heard and seen that defines us, Word and Sacrament through which we participate in Christ.

“Be it unto me according to thy word”

Fr. David Curry
Easter Vigil, 2018

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“Be it unto me according to thy word”

Mary’s fiat, her “be it unto me according to thy word,” has provided the mantra for our Holy Week meditations on the Passion of Christ. Now all is done. All is at peace. Christ lies in the tomb, a borrowed tomb at that. It is finished. Holy Saturday recalls the sabbath rest of God in the Genesis accounts of creation. All we can do, it seems, is rest ourselves in the peace of this moment to ponder the mystery of human redemption.

The trauma and the horror of Good Friday is past and there is that sense of psychological release in us, perhaps, that gives way to a contemplative possibility in us to think about what Christ’s Passion and Death mean. Holy Saturday provides us with that possibility now become our necessity, the necessity of trying to make sense of it all. The word that we wait upon is the word of Christ in the tomb, the word in death. Holy Saturday emphasizes the reality of the death of Christ at the same time as it points to the power of the divine word. The word that defines our contemplation is perhaps, Peter’s word, drawing on Zechariah’s imagery, that “he went and preached unto the spirits in prison.”

The Epistle from 1st Peter reflects on Christ’s death in terms of the Noahic Covenant which is extended to become a simile for Christian baptism. Wonderful but what is going on here in this extended Scriptural reflection? What is the underlying insight? It is simply this. Holy Saturday reminds us of the radical meaning of human redemption accomplished by Christ’s death on the Cross. It is universal; it is for all. God seeks the reconciliation of the whole of our sinful humanity. This provides a necessary counter and check on our all-too-human judgements about one another as to who is saved and who is not. Not for us to know anything more than the Comfortable Word, that “God so loved the world that he gave his only-begotten Son, to the end that all that believe in him should not perish, but have eternal life.”

“Look to Jesus,” Calvin tells us, ”he is worth to me more than a thousand testimonies.” He is our predestination. Human redemption is about the divine love of God’s own truth and righteousness that cannot be contained or constrained to the limits of finite reasoning, to the realm of the temporal, the world of past, present, and future. No. It is all about how time is gathered into eternity and itself is nothing more than the moving image of eternity, to use a famous Platonic image taken up by the metaphysical poet, Henry Vaughan.

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