Homily, Easter Vigil Mass
April 4, 2026; St. Mary’s Cathedral
Introduction
“This is the night that even now, throughout the world, sets Christian believers apart from worldly vices and from the gloom of sin, leading them to grace and joining them to his holy ones.” These words we just heard sung in the solemn Easter Proclamation speak of the mystery of this night, its uniqueness in the entire history of the world. Unique it will also be in the lives of our fellow believers who will be led to grace and joined to the “holy ones,” the body of believers, in the sacraments of Christian initiation that they will receive momentarily, joining them to the communion of the Church and fullness of life in Christ.
Creation and Fall
Yes, this night, the night that Christ rose from the dead, is unique in all of history, and is the turning point for eternity for us. But it was a very long journey leading up to this night. The multiple readings we just heard proclaimed that constitute the Liturgy of the Word for this Easter Vigil service narrate some of the highlights of this long journey.
It all begins with creation: God creates the world, and then crowns His creation with the man and the woman whom He creates in His image and gives to each other for caring for each other and for the earth, and propagating the human race. But of course, as we know, the journey does not end there. There was a fall from grace, which is why there had to be a long journey leading up to this night.
The journey itself begins with God’s call of Abraham to be the father of the people He would call to be His own, whom He would rescue from the slavery of Egypt and form into His people during those forty years of wandering in the Sinai desert on their way to the Promised Land. There He would give them the Torah, the Law, through Moses, that would set them apart from all of the other nations of the world. They were to live by this higher law to be a light to the nations, but so often they failed by turning back to the worship of the false gods of their pagan neighbors. He espoused this people to Himself, and He sometimes had to bring them low in order to win them back when they wandered away.
Redemption
All of this is fulfilled in God’s Only-Begotten Son, our Lord Jesus Christ. He sent him forth into the world to fulfill the promises He made to His people of old, and incorporate all races across the face of the earth into His one people. So we see here the pattern of salvation history, the basic story of the entire Bible: creation, fall, and redemption.
Christ’s fulfillment of redemption brings into existence this people of the New Covenant, a people likewise set apart to be a light to the nations, carrying to the whole the world the Good News of salvation, that through God’s Son Jesus Christ and his sacrifice on the Cross and Resurrection from the dead we can have eternal life. This Easter season that now begins ends fifty days from now at Pentecost, which is the Great Commission that our Lord gave to the Church, to go out into all the world and make disciples of all nations, teaching them what he has taught us. This is only possible, however, if we live as a people set apart. But we must understand what that means.
“Set apart” does not mean set apart from, nor all the more so set apart over. It means what our Easter Proclamation teaches us: to be set apart “from worldly vices and from the gloom of sin.” Yes, sin is gloomy! It has a glitter to it that can lure us in, but it always ends up doing its damage to us. It makes us sad, even broken, not happy. This is the pattern of salvation repeated in the life of each one of us: creation – God brought us into existence to share His life and love and be happy with Him forever; fall – we lose God’s favor by allowing ourselves to be entrapped by the glitter and gloom of sin; but then redemption – when we turn to the light who is Jesus Christ, the only one who can lift us from that sadness and gloom into the life, love and happiness of life in God.
Personal Salvation History
In the account of the discovery of the empty tomb that we heard in the Gospel for tonight’s Mass, we are told that the angel who appeared to the women had an “appearance [that] was like lightning and clothing … white as snow.” That’s a lot of brightness! There are two senses to this brightness, one conveyed by lightening and the other by clothing white as snow. Pope St. Gregory the Great explains it well in one of his homilies: “In lightning is frightful terror but in snow is a tempered brightness, because almighty God is terrible to sinners and mild to the righteous; so the angel, who is a witness of His resurrection, is rightly shown with the countenance like lightning and with raiment like snow, that by his appearance he might terrify the wicked and comfort the good.”*
An angel is a witness, a messenger, a created spiritual being who communicates a message from heaven, a message of the greatest importance. And so it is that the end of the journey, fulfillment in Jesus Christ, is bookended by angels: angels heralded the news of his birth to shepherds in their fields, and now an angel heralds the news of his Resurrection from the dead to women at the tomb, which is the offer to us of a new birth to a new life, a life of glory that never ends.
Are we blinded by the light, or does it help us to see God’s truth more clearly? When you are in a dark room and someone turns on the light, you are at first blinded. The shock of the instantaneous light dispelling the darkness makes you unable to see. But over time the eyes adjust and allow you to see clearly. So often the journey from creation to fall to redemption is like that. Sometimes the light allows us to see our wickedness and that terrifies us; but then we can see the goodness of God’s truth and mercy and move toward it. It now becomes a source of comfort and freedom rather than a burden and something unpleasant.
Conclusion
Moreover, notice that the angels communicated this Good News to shepherds and women, those whom the society at the time would have deemed least worthy to receive news from heaven. Our brothers and sisters about to receive initiation into the Church have all had their own angels in human form to share Good News with them. Through them God touched our brothers and sisters so they know that God Himself can make them worthy of His love and set them free.
This is what Christ’s Resurrection does for us. But it doesn’t stop there: it is also our call to do the same for others, to be an angel of light announcing Good News, doing our role to fulfill the Great Commission. The long journey of salvation history now continues with each one of us. Living in a way that is set “apart from worldly vices and from the gloom of sin” is how we do so. May God grant us the grace to follow up, all the way until the day of Christ Jesus (cf. Phil 1:6). Amen.
Photo: Mark Wilson
