Today we conclude this shortest and yet most intense and sacred time in our Church’s liturgical calendar - the Paschal Triduum. And though it may seem to be an ending, it is actually a beginning of many things. This should not surprise us as we had affirmed at the start of tonight’s liturgy, that Christ is the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and end of all things. Beginnings and endings are not two realities but one in Christ. As T. S. Eliot poignantly writes: “And the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time” (The Four Quartets, “Little Gidding”).
Everything about this vigil’s liturgy, “the mother of all vigils,” speaks of beginnings and endings, which takes us on a journey from birth to rebirth, from creation to re-creation, from darkness to light, from death to life. From the blessing and procession of the Paschal candle, the singing of the Easter proclamation to our marathon set of readings, we are pulled into this journey of transformation, not as mere spectators but as participants. Our Gospel begins with these words: “on the first day of the week, at the first sign of dawn…” This is an extraordinary text – so subtle and sophisticated. But it begs the question: what does it mean? The answer is found at the beginning, in the first reading. We are, therefore, asked to contrast the first line of our Gospel passage with the first line of our first reading from Genesis, the very beginning of our story of salvation: “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.”
John’s recapitulation of the creation narrative goes on. In Genesis, God creates the first human being, the first man, but at Easter, our Lord Jesus emerges from the womb of the tomb to be the firstborn of the new creation.
God created all things, including man, and when He was finished, He looked at all He had made, and declared that it was “very good.” His original creation, however, was sullied and damaged. Once Adam chose to go against God’s Will, sin entered God’s created world, and sickness, decay, and death were introduced to humanity. God’s creation has suffered sin’s effects ever since.
Fast-forward to the time of Jesus’ life on earth. God the Son, the Word of God, entered humanity as a child born of Mary, without a human father. He was fully God and fully man. His mission was to defeat the sin and death which had entered humanity through Adam. This second Adam lived a sinless life, was condemned and executed as a criminal, and was buried in a tomb. Three days later, He rose from the dead! He was resurrected! His resurrection was the first phase of God’s new creation. God created a new kind of human existence—a human body which was raised from the dead and transformed by the power of God into a body that is no longer affected by death, decay, and corruption. Pope Emeritus Benedict described the resurrection of Christ as “something akin to a radical evolutionary leap, in which a new dimension of life emerges, a new dimension of human existence. Indeed, matter itself is remoulded into a new type of reality. The man Jesus, complete with His body, now belongs totally to the sphere of the divine and eternal.”
But then, there is the second phase in God’s plan of recreation. As Christians and as part of God’s new creation through our baptism, we can look forward to the time when, upon Christ’s return, He will raise our bodies from the dead! We will receive resurrected bodies like His. Our bodies will not have the weaknesses they have now but will have the full power the human body was meant to have. In these resurrected bodies, we will clearly see humanity as God intended it to be.
God’s new creation will not end with the resurrection of our bodies but goes beyond that. The third phase will involve all of creation being renewed as well. When Adam sinned, God cursed the ground. The world was no longer the sublime place God made it to be. Sin changed that. But because of Christ’s death and resurrection, His victory over sin and death, God will renew the entire world - He will remake it into “a new heaven and a new earth.”
The new creation which we speak of, is not just some static and unchanging reality. As part of the new creation, God’s Spirit is regularly renewing us, changing us, helping us to put on the mind of Christ. Dear Catechumens, today is not the end of your journey. It is not graduation day. It is an ending of a period of preparation, but this is only a beginning. As you allow the Holy Spirit to guide you, you will continually grow and mature in your spiritual lives in order that you may be renewed and become more Christlike.
Each year, we recapitulate this Easter story and each year it recreates us. It returns us to the ground of our being. We are asked to die to ourselves so that we may be reborn in Christ. And though we may sometimes feel as if we are caught up in a maelstrom with our world spinning out of control, remember this: the forces of chaos and death did not triumph over Jesus and His community. On the contrary, it is Christ who emerged the clear victor. And because of this, we are given the chance to start over. Every Easter, we are reminded that we can bring all that befalls us to be reintegrated, redeemed, and recreated as we bring it back to our living source: Christ yesterday and today, the Beginning and the End, the Alpha and the Omega; All time belongs to Him and all the ages, to Him be glory and power, through every age and for ever. Amen.
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