In more than 220 Catholic Churches throughout the Archdiocese, Easter Weekend services will take place. It's always interesting to reflect on how our clergy present the Triduum to their community. Below you'll find an Easter Vigil reflection from Fr. Michael McGourty, pastor of St. John the Evangelist Parish. Thanks to Fr. Michael for sharing this reflection with us and to all those clergy who have worked so hard this week to bring the death and resurrection to life in our community.
“Celebrating A Love That Cannot Wait.”
The
celebration of Easter is for all Christians the highpoint of our year of faith.
At Easter we celebrate the fact that Christ has risen from the dead and
destroyed death for all who place their hope in Him. Easter means that, because
of Christ’s resurrection, we shall not die but rather we are all invited to
spend eternity with our loving God in heaven. At Easter we think of our loved
ones who have died and we rejoice that they have been spared death because of
Christ’s resurrection and are with Him in heaven for all eternity. Ultimately,
at Easter we celebrate that God loves us so much that He destroyed death so that
He might spend eternity with each of us. Easter is the greatest celebration of
God’s unconditional and undying love for each of us; a love so strong that death
cannot destroy it.
The Good News
about Christ’s resurrection and His destruction of death is so overwhelmingly
joyful that it can sometimes overshadow another aspect of Christ’s victory.
Christ’s resurrection from the dead is so powerful that not only does it destroy
death, it also destroys all other barriers which stand in the way of our
encountering Him—even the barriers of time and space. Christ’s resurrection does
not just announce God’s desire to be with us in heaven; it also proclaims His
passion to love and live with us today. God the Father raised Jesus from the
dead not so that He could live with His disciples and apostles once they got to
heaven. The Father rose Jesus up in order that all people of all times and
places could live in communion with Himself and the other persons of the Holy
Trinity at every moment in time and history. Easter celebrates the fact that God
will not let anything stand in the way of His love for us. At Easter we
celebrate that God’s love is so strong for us that He cannot wait to be with us
in heaven. God loves us so much that He desires to be with us “today.” All that
is required for this to happen is that we open our hearts to His
presence.
The Easter Vigil
is the most powerful celebration of God’s love for us that the Church knows. In
this beautiful annual celebration, the Church celebrates Christ’s victory over
death and recounts all that the Father, Son and Holy Spirit have done to share
their love with each of us today. The Easter Vigil proclaims that our God loves
each of us so much that He cannot wait to be with us. He does not want to wait
until we are in heaven with Him. The resurrection of Christ was intended to
break down the barriers which stand in the way of us living in communion with
Christ today. Understanding how this is celebrated at the Easter Vigil can help
all of us to understand how Christ wishes to encounter us every day of our
lives. The Easter Vigil is made up of four essential parts: 1) the Liturgy of
Light; 2) the Liturgy of the Word; 3) the Liturgy of Baptism; and 4) the Liturgy
of the Eucharist. It is worth spending a little time looking at each of these in
order to appreciate how much God desires to relate to each us today. His is a
love that cannot wait to be in communion with each of
us.
1)
The Liturgy of
Light:
The Easter Vigil begins with the blessing of the Easter Fire and
the Paschal Candle and the singing of the Exultet, the great hymn of our Easter
victory. As the Easter Candle is lit, we celebrate that Christ has destroyed the
darkness of sin and death and become the light of the world. By sending the Holy
Spirit on the Church as tongues of fire, God the Father illumines the hearts of
all the Baptized. We enter the Church following the Paschal Candle, which
represents Christ, just as God once led His people through the desert out of
slavery in Egypt with a pillar of fire. The candles that are held by the
Baptized testify to the gift of the Holy Spirit that we all received in Baptism
and to the fact that God wishes to dwell within us today and lead each of us by
His Holy Spirit. The individual candles that we hold also proclaim the
responsibility that belongs to each Christian to be Christ’s witness in the
world. The Liturgy of the Light is a testimony of God’s love by which we are to
be guided today by the grace of God’s Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit reveals
Christ as the light by which we are to guide our pilgrim journeys to heaven,
testifying to our brothers and sisters and illuminating the world today by our
Christian witness. The light proclaims a God who is with us and active in the
world today. The Paschal Candle used at the Easter Vigil is also used at our
Baptismal and Funeral liturgies to proclaim the love of our God who wishes to be
with us always.
2)
The Liturgy of
the Word:
The Liturgy of the Word at the Easter Vigil recalls the history of
salvation. It proclaims God’s tireless efforts to love and live in communion
with His people. While this part of the Vigil may be shortened, when the seven
Old Testament readings are proclaimed, an account is given of the extent to
which God will go to love and relate to all of us. Since the human person first
sinned and turned away from God, He has not given up on us. Everything God has
done to reveal Himself in the Old Testament has been a preparation for that
final victory over all that divides us, which we celebrate at the Easter Vigil.
The emphasis that is placed on God’s Word reminds us how important it is that we
pray and study the Scriptures in order to know God and understand how to relate
to Him today. Discerning God’s presence in our lives today requires that we all
study and pray the Scriptures regularly. Attending Mass every Sunday also helps
us to know God’s Word as it exposes us regularly to different aspects of God’s
revelation and weekly guides us and draws us closer to God. As at the Easter
Vigil, no Mass is ever celebrated without God’s Word being proclaimed from the
Lectionary which contains the Scriptures readings that are used at Mass. The
Word is proclaimed at the Vigil and at each Mass because Jesus does not want to
wait to speak to us only when we get to Heaven. He loves each of us so much that
He does not want to wait that long. He desires to speak to us today in His Word
and invites us to come to Mass every Sunday to hear it proclaimed in His
community, which is the Church.
3)
The Liturgy of
Baptism:
At the Easter Vigil, the Church welcomes those adults who are to be
baptized. As they are baptized they experience concretely that Jesus does not
want to wait to share His life with us. All who are baptized share in the death
and resurrection of Christ; they are freed from original sin; and receive the
grace of the Holy Spirit so that they may live in communion with God now and for
all eternity. Those who are baptized by submersion experience how close God
wishes to come to them as they are surrounded by the saving water of the
Baptismal Font. Those who are baptized also remind those of us who are already
baptized that we have already received the gift of God’s Holy Spirit and are
already called to be living our lives each and every day in communion with
Him.
The renewal of our baptismal promises at the Easter Vigil and all
of the other Easter Masses is a powerful reminder to all of us that, as we
celebrate Easter, we are already living in relationship with the God who cannot
wait to love us. While this is one of the more significant times that we renew
our baptismal promises in the course of the year, it can help us to realize that
we should and actually do remind ourselves of our baptisms quite frequently.
Every time that we cross ourselves “In the name of the Father, and of the Son,
and of the Holy Spirit,” we recall the words with which we were baptized and
established in a relationship of grace with the Blessed Trinity. The Holy Water
at the entrance to every church helps us to recall how it is that by Baptism we
were brought into the Church and called into relationship with our God who
desires to be in relationship with us today. It is through our Baptism that the
Holy Trinity wishes to share eternity with us
today.
4)
The Liturgy of
the Eucharist:
The importance of the Eucharist at the Easter Vigil as the
highlight of the celebration points to the importance of the Eucharist at each
and every Mass. Nothing speaks more powerfully of God’s desire to begin to spend
eternity with us today than the gift which Christ gives us at every Mass of His
Body and Blood. We can sometimes lose sight of the fact that every Sunday is a
celebration of the day of Christ’s resurrection. Every Sunday, Christ invites us
to celebrate His resurrection and to receive His Body and Blood so that He might
share His life with us today.
Christians in our
society are losing sight of the importance of Sunday and what it is that we
celebrate on this day. For so many people there is a mistaken notion that to be
a Christian means only to be a “nice” person. Thankfully, the word “nice” is not
used once in the Easter Vigil. To be a Christian is to recognize that God has
loved us so much that He has sent His only Son into the world to save us by
raising Him up after He died to forgive our sins. The Christian professes his or
her faith in Christ’s resurrection by attending Mass on Sunday, the day on which
He rose from the dead. Every Sunday is intended to be a little weekly
celebration of Easter. By receiving Christ’s Body and Blood on Sunday, the
Christian does what Christ has asked us to do “in memory of me.” The Eucharist
at the Easter Vigil emphasizes beautifully what we celebrate at every Sunday
Eucharist and shows us how we are to live our faith today in communion with the
same Jesus who gave us the Eucharist because He loves us so much that He desires
to be with us today. God does not wish to wait until we get to heaven to share
His life with us. He wishes to do so every Sunday at the Sunday celebration of
the Eucharist in our parish. Easter puts before us the question of how we are
going to respond to His invitation.
He loves us now and
will always love us. He invites us to be in relationship with Him now, to give
Him a place in our lives now and to open our hearts to the transforming power of
His grace now. As we celebrate this Easter that God loves each of us so much
that He cannot wait to be in relationship with us, let us also pray for the
grace to respond to His invitation today.
Because God
desires to be in relationship with us today, He also asks us to respond to Him
today. Because He does not wait to share His love, we are invited to accept His
invitation to be with Him for all eternity, not when we get to heaven, but now.
Easter is a celebration of God’s offer of salvation and an invitation to respond
to this offer. We are not to renew our baptismal promises only in word. We are
called to give God a place in our lives today. We do this as the Vigil shows us
by: 1) allowing His Holy Spirit to be the light by which we are guided on our
pilgrim journeys to heaven; 2) listening to His Word and being guided by the
Scriptures; 3) living our baptismal faith in relation to God and our brothers
and sisters in Christ; and 4) opening our hearts to Christ’s presence in our
lives today by remembering Him every Sunday at the Eucharist where He gives us
His Body and Blood so that we may love others as He has loved
us.
May God bless all
of us this Easter with an awareness of His love today so that we might spend all
eternity with Him, starting right now.
Happy
Easter!
Fr.
Michael
No comments:
Post a Comment