A Homily for the Easter Vigil

On this truly Holy Night, as we contemplate the implications of the fact of the Resurrection of Our Lord Jesus Christ ever more deeply, it behoves me not only to wish each and every one here present a most blessed and holy feast of Easter, but to express my profound gratitude, and the gratitude of our entire monastic community, to all—here present and elsewhere in the world tonight—for all that they have contributed to the worthy and dignified celebration of the  Holy Week ceremonies and most particularly of those of the Sacred Triduum, so that we might celebrate this ‘feast of feasts’ having been truly edified by the immense riches of the traditional rites of the Church’s liturgy celebrated as fully and as beautifully as we can.
 
We are a small monastic community, but we are ambitions for the things of God and Almighty God, in His Providence, has blessed us with a large extended family of oblates, associates and friends who, out of the their love for Him and in their generosity, contributed of their time and energy and resources to embrace the disciplines necessary to sing and to serve at the altar, to clean, to sew, to paint, to erect an outdoor Way of the Cross, to arrange flowers unto His glory, etc.
 
This evening we a privileged to inaugurate a splendid new set of solemn Mass vestments—a rich, visible manifestation both of the generosity of which we are truly blessed and of the glory we seek to give to Almighty God in each and all of our endeavours. From the bottom of our hearts: thank you. May God reward you richly!
 
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+ Tonight we find ourselves here, in rural Provencal thousand-year-old church, indulging in ancient rites and chant that take hours to accomplish. We have lit a fire and taken its light to a candle, which we have serenaded as a sacramental of the salvific power of this night. We have listened to the solemn and ornate chanting of the history of God’s relations with the Jewish people, we have acclaimed the mystery of Christmas with bells and organ, and just now we have heard the solemn proclamation “He has risen.”
 
All of this we have experienced as the world increasingly fragments and divides; in a world where where war seems to be spreading as rapidly as a virus, and where any belief or ideology or political programme is regarded as being as good as one another, regardless of its origin, intent, content or effects.
 
To some we are curious enthusiasts for liturgical antiquities—people to be given that respect one gives to a rare species in a zoo. To others (indeed to some who should be our closest relatives, as it were) we are peculiar if not dangerous retrogrades to be ignored at all, costs and certainly not to be allowed to propagate. And to many, we are simply irrelevant: they can see absolutely no reason for anything that we do here—we are of no use or value to the world. They are literally ‘in the dark’ in respect of why we should be here, hour upon hour in the cold early mornings and late at night singing and processing and kneeling and adoring in the manner known within these very walls for over a millennium. And yet, for those of us who have been able to even glimpse that which the light that the Easter candle reveals, all that we have done makes utter sense—indeed, would that we could do more!
 
For that light reveals the truth that this world so desperately tries to conceal: that Jesus of Nazareth is the Christ of God who reveals to us the fact that, if we are faithful to Him and to his teachings, we shall share in his resurrection; we shall share in that unending life which no suffering or persecution or war or virus can take away. We too shall rise again, body and soul, to everlasting life with He who is risen on this holy night.
 
But let us be clear: the light of the Paschal candle does not reveal the panacea of universal salvation. It does not for one moment suggest that everything will be all-right for everyone. That is not the truth revealed by Christ; rather, it is an insidious obfuscation of the devil. No: we must be faithful. We must convert our lives and be prepared to walk with Our Lord and allow Him to instruct us and lead us in ways and to places which, at times, we may not expect. We must even go with him to Calvary. Only then can we hope to share in His glorious resurrection.
 
My brothers and sisters, as we go now to His altar to partake in the Eucharistic consummation of this great feast, let us give profound thanks for the ability to see by the light of Easter, and let us pray earnestly, as we did in the solemn prayers of Good Friday, that those who currently do not shall come so to do. For Jesus Christ is the definitive revelation of God in human history. He is the Way, the Truth and the Life—not only for peculiar liturgical enthusiasts, but for all men and women who have, or who shall, ever live on this earth. Amen. Alleluia! +