Year C – Easter Vigil

We Christian are convinced we are custodians of an excellent project of humanity and society. We are proud if the noble and elevated moral proposal that we preach is recognized. We are pleased to be referred to as the messengers of universal fellowship, justice, and peace. We experience a certain modesty presenting ourselves as witnesses to the resurrection, as carriers of the light that illuminates the tomb. Sometimes we get the impression that, on the same night of the Passover, preachers feel a little embarrassed to show the joy of Christ’s victory over death during their homilies.

Instead, speaking about the Risen One, they often fall back on current topics that captivate the assembly’s attention more easily. They touch on serious and important social issues that need to be illuminated by the light of the Gospel. However, at the Easter Vigil, the community is convened to hear another announcement. It is gathered to celebrate and sing praise to the Lord of life for the unheard prodigy he has created to raise his servant Jesus. Tertullian, a Christian rhetorician of the first centuries, characterized the faith and life of the communities of his time thus: ‘The Christian hope is the resurrection of the dead; all that we are, we are to the extent we believe in the resurrection.’

What distinguishes the Christian from other people is not a heroic moral life. Noble gestures of love are also made by non-believers who, without realizing it, are moved by the Spirit of Christ. The world expects from Christians a moral life consistent with the Gospel. However, it first seeks to answer the riddle of death and the testimony that Christ has risen and has transformed life on this earth from gestation and death to a new birth.

The urgency of a new life can be understood only by those who are no longer afraid of death because, with the eyes of faith, ‘he saw’ the Risen One and cultivates in the heart the expectation that soon the day dawns and the morning star rises (2 P 1:19).

To internalize the message, we repeat:
“The light of the Risen One illuminates every moment of our life.”