Apr 10., 2016   /   Homilies, Soul Food

The Light in the Darkness We Often Do Not See

This homily was given by Fr. Roger Champoux, SJ, during the Easter Vigil Mass at the Cenacle Retreat House last March 26, 2016.

We have three main themes in the readings of this Easter Vigil:
• We remember the distant past, the deliverance of Israel in the Exodus: “This is the night when you first saved our fathers”;
• We remember our own deliverance through Baptism: “This is the night when Christians everywhere are restored to grace”;
• We remember the resurrection of Christ: “This is the night when Jesus Christ broke the chains of death and sin.”
What a magnificent historical fresco this is: we are invited to open our ears and our eyes and our hearts to the whole of creation and history, from the very beginning, with the way we were wonderfully created in the image of a loving God, with this window in our minds that opens us to see fire and light in darkness and have a glimpse of the mind of God. That original goodness, “very good” indeed, is still with us today. God said it about us in the very beginning, and he says it again to us tonight: “You are very good, my beloved.”
Then we were invited to remember Abraham, our Father in Faith because he put all his trust in God. As somebody puts it very well, trust is the jump we make when we cannot understand anymore. So often in our lives, we don’t under-stand what is happening in us and around us but we are invited to trust. And then, in His own way, God “sees,” God “pro-vides,” and the lamb that suddenly appears –in the bush, in our lives–is the sign of God’s fidelity, the assurance of His presence.
The chosen people, however, (and this includes us) were not always faithful to their loving God and to his covenant, and ended up in exile, in slavery. But the name of our God is Compassion and Fidelity, and Moses was sent to lead them out of exile into the Promised Land (what St. John will call “eternal life”). We heard tonight of the Passage through the Red Sea: a powerful image of Jesus going through the waters of death and emerging triumphant, and pouring upon us, from his Open Heart, the waters of life that deliver us from all the forces of evil. God’s power in Moses opens the frightening seas into a passage to freedom, as happened to Jesus on the Cross, as happened also to us in Baptism. And we saw how their very evil turned against the Egyptian pursuers, as we can see today when evil begets evil and violence turns against the violent, when evil breeds chaos.
It was not always a straight journey for God’s people (is it ever for us too?) and this is why we were invited to hear, this very night, how the Prophets, like Isaiah, Baruch, Ezekiel, kept the Word of God alive and continued to proclaim God’s promise of faithful love in spite of our infidelities: “If you are thirsty, come to the water,” like the Samaritan woman invited to drink from the “living water” offered by Jesus. We were admonished again and again: let go of your wicked ways, seek God since He can always be found, drink again from the fountain of wisdom, as we heard again the divine promise: “I will give you a new heart, I will put a new spirit within you,” a heart that seeks love and peace instead of revenge, a spirit that seeks light instead of darkness. “You shall be my people, my children, and I will always be with you.”
All of this “history” is still true tonight: it came true in our Baptism, it remains true this very evening as we remember and celebrate the death and resurrection of Jesus. The waters of the Red Sea killed evil and set the Israelites on their journey; the waters of evil and sin killed Jesus on the Cross but the waters of new and eternal life flowed from his loving heart; the waters of our baptism did not drown us, instead they filled us with God’s love and we became His children. Paul’s reading reminded us: “Our old sinful self was crucified with Jesus, we are no longer in slavery to sin, we live with him in newness of life.”
But now, we have a little problem. We celebrate tonight the glorious victory of Jesus over death and sin. But the Gospel sounds so hesitant, so muted: the women are “terrified” and Peter is simply “amazed.” They don’t see him! This is strange, but it makes something very clear: except most probably for Mary, nobody, nobody, expected this to happen: Jesus was dead, really and totally dead, and they were filled with pain and sadness and despair. Later in the day, the two disciples of Emmaus will walk with Jesus without recognizing him, they will only recognize him when he is no longer with them! But tonight, for the women who are told “to remember” what he said and later, for the two disciples who are invited to re-visit the Word of God in the Old Testament, suddenly, the light shines in their hearts first, and then in their minds: The Living is not among the dead! Nobody can take away the life of the Living, neither sin nor death!
According to Luke, all this “had to happen.” But why did it have to happen?
What was, what IS Good Friday, God Friday? Luke refers to is as “the power or darkness.” Simply because the CROSS is part of human life. All life ends in death, and then in rebirth. Add to this the gift of freedom that goes astray and that often seeks evil over good. This is true in our lives, in the lives of all people, and our religion embraces the crosses that are so much part of our lives. So does Jesus: he embraces and carries all our crosses.
Who here has not been lonely, even betrayed? Who here has not been humiliated, laughed at? Who here has not been the victim of unfairness, of jealousy, of frustration, of illness and pain? And yet, in the midst of all our human crosses, we cling, sometimes desperately, to love, to goodness, to forgiveness, to hope–even when the world around us seems to fall apart and we go through this “hour of darkness,” until the sun rises again, but sometimes after a very long dark and Black Saturday.
What is the blessing of darkness? That we become helpless and empty, unable to understand, and yet allowing God to work silently in us, to invite us to hope and trust in Him, simply because Jesus is risen, and His new life is within us, even if it is so hidden most of the time. The spark of the Divine is in us: the fire of his love in our hearts, the light of his wisdom in our minds, even if so dim. And as we remember and ponder, like the women, like the disciples of Emmaus, like Mary our Mother, we realize that Jesus has embraced all the many contradictions of our lives, from joy to sadness, from goodness to sinfulness. We are not created to remain in the tomb of sin, of death. Yes, the power of darkness may enter our lives, as it is well present in the world of today with terrorism, injustice, poverty, corruption. But our faith in the Risen Lord is the source of our hope, and also of our efforts to make our world a better place.
Today, we celebrate the presence of the Risen Lord in our hearts, even if often hidden, and the active presence of the God of Life in our world, even when evil seems the winner. Let us pray for the grace to live with the Risen Lord and partner with him in making our world a more loving, compassionate and peaceful home.