An ancient homily for this night begins, “Something strange is happening.”
You can feel it, can’t you?
The darkness. The fire. The ancient rituals. The incense. A solemnity to our actions. Something you perhaps cannot name.
The homily continues, “there is a great silence on earth today, a great silence and stillness.”
On Thursday, the King prepared his feast. Yesterday, he mounted his throne. In the depths of this night, we keep vigilant watch.
Why? Why do we watch? Why do we keep vigil on this night?
This night begins where everything begins: “In the beginning, when God created the heavens and the earth.” It was all so good. We heard that tonight. God said, “Let there be light,” and he saw how good it was. Then the earth, the seas, the plants, and the animals were all created, and he saw how good they were.
Then he made us in his image and likeness. He blessed us. God looked upon his creation and said that now it is very good.
But then something happened. We don’t hear about it in our readings, because tonight we hear only of God’s work. We chose ourselves over God. Every one of us has, at some point, joined in that tragic choice. This choice cut us off from God, from life itself. This choice to turn from God is what we call sin. Sin leads to only one thing, and it’s something God did not create: death. Death comes from sin, because when we sin, we turn away from the source of life.
After humanity’s first sin, we fell into a pit from which we could not free ourselves. Sadly, we kept falling more and more. We know this. We have experienced it. How many of us have thought “If only I do X, then I’ll be free of sin Y?”
What we heard tonight was God’s plan to save us. It is the same plan he has had since the first fall of humanity. We heard it in the story of Abraham, Isaac, and, thanks be to God, a ram caught in the thicket. We heard it when the Red Sea opened for the children of Israel. We heard it from Isaiah: “Listen, that you may have life.” We heard God speak through Ezekiel, “I will […] cleanse you from all your impurities, […] I will give you a new heart and place a new spirit within you.” Just as God speaks into the darkness and creates light, when he speaks into sin and death he brings new life: He re-creates us.
This is what God does tonight: he is recreating humanity. That same ancient homily I began with continues, “God has died in the flesh and hell trembles with fear.” Hell trembles because Christ, when he dies, descends. He goes lower than any failure, regret, sin, or suffering we might experience. He goes in silence. The homily continues: “He has gone to search for our first parent, as for a lost sheep.” He goes to find Adam so that he might heal humanity at the source of its pain. “The Lord approached them bearing the cross, the weapon that had won him the victory.” And what does he say? “I am your God, who for your sake have become your son. […] I order you, O sleeper, to awake. I did not create you to be held a prisoner in hell. Rise from the dead, for I am the life of the dead. Rise up, work of my hands, you who were created in my image. Rise, let us leave this place.”
He doesn’t merely restore what Adam lost, though. He says, “you are in me and I am in you; together we form only one person and we cannot be separated.” Christ intends to enthrone Adam with him, in Heaven. Only God can take something so tragic, the fall of humanity into sin and death, and bring out of it so great a gift. The Church sings of this great mystery, “O happy fault that earned so great, so glorious a Redeemer!”
Hell took what looked like a man, and it found God. The Lord of Light conquered the darkness and said, “Rise, let us leave this place.”
Back in Jerusalem, as Christ plunders hell for its riches–for us–an angel descends in the midst of a great earthquake, just as the Marys approach the tomb. The guards are shaken with fear; they become like dead men. The Marys hear the message, “Do not be afraid! […] Go quickly and tell his disciples.”
They leave quickly, fearful yet joyful. And they encounter the one person they longed to see: Jesus. They embrace his feet, perhaps like a child begging his mom or dad not to leave. He tells them again, “Do not be afraid. Go tell my brothers to go to Galilee, and there they will see me.”
God created us, and after we were captured by evil, he rescued us. Some of us respond to this news like the guards, overwhelmed by the earthquake and the angels. Some of us respond like the Marys, with fear and joy at first, but then with the courage to proclaim the Resurrection to the apostles themselves.
Who are we? The guards or the Marys? Or perhaps the apostles, not even present?
Tonight, Christ says the same thing to us as he did to Adam and to the Marys: “I did not create you to be held a prisoner. […] Rise up, work of my hands. […] Rise, let us leave this place.”