Easter Vigil and Easter Sunday

Easter Vigil
19 & 20 April 2025
Gospel: Luke 24:1-12

 Easter and the entire season through Pentecost is focused on celebrating the resurrection of Jesus, one of the principal doctrines of our faith.  A mystery of faith that is so central to salvation and so essential that St. Paul could say that if the dead are not raised then our faith is in vain and we are the most pitiable people of all (cf. 1 Cor. 15:16-19).  It’s all a waste, in other words.  If the resurrection is not real, if we fail to hold this essential doctrine, if we fail to live the hope of the resurrection, then there is no point in our carrying on like this.  Last one out, turn off the lights please!

Death is a consequence of sin.  It impacts almost all of us, save perhaps those rare souls like Enoch, Elijah, and Mary who may not have tasted death, but were assumed into life beyond this valley of tears.  We see death all around us.  We see signs that life tends to age and weaken and deteriorate.  We have large plots of real estate that serve as cemeteries.  Yet, we believe that the finality of death is not the finality.  We believe that the dead rise again.  As the Scriptures say, some will rise to a resurrection of life, of blessedness in heaven, and some will rise to a resurrection of condemnation.  But all will rise.  Despite all the clear effects of death, all the consequences of death, all the signs of death around us, we believe that the dead rise again.  What seems like the end is, in other words, not the end.

Throughout the living of the faith and our celebration of the mysteries of God, the mysteries of Jesus (who is God in the flesh), the mysteries of his Church, and of our salvation, we often think – and rightly so – of what God has done and still does for us.  We think of what God gives to us in our prayer.  We think of what God gives to us as we serve others in charity.  We think of what God gives to us in the sacramental life of faith.  But today, I want us to think instead about what we give to God.  By this, I mean, let’s think about what mankind gives to God; what human nature gives to God as related to what we celebrate in the resurrection.  God, who was in the beginning before all things were made, is pure spirit.  He has no beginning or end.  He is almighty, all-knowing, and present everywhere.  But as pure spirit, not made of matter, not made of stuff, He is free of the limitations that we face.  In fact, He is eternal and everlasting.  St. Augustine, the son of our parish patroness, once spoke in a sermon: God “was made flesh and dwelt among us.  He had no power of himself to die for us: he had to take from us our mortal flesh.  This was the way in which, though immortal, he was able to die…. He would first share with us, and then enable us to share with him” (Sermo Guelferbytanus 3: PLS 2, 545-546, selection printed in Liturgy of the Hours, vol. 2, p.432).

So, what have we given to God?  What does mankind or mortal nature give to God?  We give Him mortality.  We give Him what He did not possess in Himself.  Since we face the consequences of death on account of original sin, we gave Him the ability to die when God took on our human flesh in Jesus Christ.

If God weren’t God there would be some real “buyer’s remorse” in this deal.  If God thought as we think, He’d call all this off and say this is a raw deal.  But accepting from us our mortality is the plan of God.  And because of this plan, we can acknowledge a really awkward sounding idea: [As is chanted in the Easter Vigil Exsultet] “O truly necessary sin of Adam… O happy fault!”  Why would we call the sin that required redemption, a redemption brought about by the horrific torture, death, and resurrection of God Himself, a “happy fault”?  We certainly do not intend to say that the sin itself was a happy, or even a good thing.  No sin is good.  But, in light of the greater plan and the greater thing that God would do in response to sin, in retrospect we can curiously see the grace that came from God’s generous love after man had sinned.  And so, in that sense, so great is the immense love and work of God in salvation that we find a kindly light shining back even on man’s sin.  The result?  O happy fault!

As St. Augustine in his sermon went on to say, “Of ourselves we had no power to live, nor did he of himself have the power to die.  Accordingly, [Jesus] effected a wonderful exchange with us, through mutual sharing: we gave him the power to die, he will give us the power to live.”  We gave him the power to die.  This Easter I want to leave us with a different way to view the various ways we die, the ways our mortality is on display.  That is to say, I want to encourage a different way to view our weaknesses, our defects, our shame, our flaws, our failures, and our sins.  To be absolutely clear, no one should leave here thinking I am encouraging sin, diminishing its effects and eternal consequences, or going soft on the need to strive for holiness.  But the fact is that we struggle and we fail and we tend to live in shame and frustration, hiding our sins, finding in them the cause of exasperation, the sign that we will never make it.  In this, hiding our sins, dismissing the reality and its consequence, seeing it only as the sign that we will never make it, in this we are missing the way the resurrection completely upends everything.  O happy fault!

Our response to faith in the resurrection should be seen in how we live daily with greater awareness of this mystery we celebrate.  You see, we really need to live the resurrection as more than an idea about which to philosophize, or some fact about which we try to convince others.  Living the resurrection in greater awareness can come about if we recall the value of what we give to God.  How we see ourselves and how we experience frustration with ourselves and others, can be transformed in our daily living if, after the initial regret for sin, we can pick ourselves up and see our sin as an offering to God who makes of it too a “happy fault.”  Rather than seeing every failure and sin as only a defeat, we can have a renewed sense of peace about our sins if we remember that they are signs of the mortality that we give to God, by which he is able to accomplish his plan of salvation.  And in giving our deaths to God, he is victorious and gives in their place the ability to live.  Again, not celebrating or encouraging sin, we need to see in the reality of our failures the call to give something over to God.  This is also not advice to broadcast our sin as a way to prove that we do not dwell in shame.  No, we Catholics have a private place for that where absolution is given.  But this central reality of the resurrection is something that needs to mark our daily living.  In the grace and the light of Easter, ask the Lord to transform the way you respond to your own mortality, especially as on display in your defects and sins.  Yes, face the reality in truth.  Yes, repent of it.  Yes, confess it.  Yes, work to change and reform yourself so that you grow in holiness. But, get rid of the idea and the defeating voices that tell you your mortality is only a thing of shame or hopelessness.  That is not the voice of God.  And to reject such notions can help us live the resurrection as more than an item in the creed or a doctrine to study.  In faith, our sins and failings, when given to God, are part of the marvelous exchange by which we give to Him what He did not have in Himself.  In turn, we proclaim “happy fault” because He gives to us the power to live!