“The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit: a broken and contrite heart, O God,
thou wilt not despise”
Our text has carried us throughout Holy Week and brings us to this moment, to the wonder and mystery of the great Vigil of Easter. The Praeconium in its words and music captures the mystery of Easter. “This is the night.” This ancient prayer and hymn gathers up the rich imagery of the Exodus and the Passover and focuses it on the meaning of Christ’s Passion. What is that meaning? It is actually Resurrection.
The new fire, the blessing of the Paschal Candle, the singing of the Praeconium, the readings of the prophecies of the Resurrection, the renewal of our baptismal vows, all of these things belong to the sense of joy and life. Christ is Risen, we proclaim. Life is all alleluia.
It is not an add-on to the dismal drudge and trudge of Holy Week. It is its underlying truth. We can only contemplate the Passion through the Resurrection. And yet the Resurrection is meaningless without our contemplation of the Passion. The Vigil service is powerfully moving even in this simplified country service, shortened yet comprehensive of all of the elements except communion that belong to the Easter Vigil in its more elaborate forms.
God is life essential. Easter is about our life with God in and through all and every trial and circumstance of human experience. The great meaning of Easter is the radical nature of God’s life made our life in its fullness. “I am come,” Jesus says, “that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly.” That more abundant life is the meaning of the Resurrection.
The great joy and wonder of the Vigil is the dynamic of that new and abundant life arising out of the forms of death and darkness. It is dramatic but the drama is the drama of dogma, the drama of redemption in the ways in which God gathers us to himself in his abundant life. The sacrifices of God turn out to be more than a broken spirit. That something more is the abundant life of God accomplished through Christ’s sacrifice and the way in which that life lives in us. Easter is about joy in the midst of sorrow even as Holy Week was about sorrow in the midst of joy. The two are interrelated and intrinsic to each other as the essential form of our participation in the endless life of God.
Christ is Risen, Alleluia, Alleluia. The Lord is risen, indeed.
Fr. David Curry
Easter Vigil, 2021