EASTER VIGIL – YEAR A
DO NOT LOOK FOR THE LIVING AMONG THE DEAD
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).
“The light of the Risen One illuminates every moment of our life.”
First Reading: Romans 6:3-11
Brothers and sisters: Are you unaware that we who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were indeed buried with him through baptism into death, so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might live in newness of life.
For if we have grown into union with him through a death like his, we shall also be united with him in the resurrection. We know that our old self was crucified with him, so that our sinful body might be done away with, that we might no longer be in slavery to sin. For a dead person has been absolved from sin. If, then, we have died with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with him. We know that Christ, raised from the dead, dies no more; death no longer has power over him. As to his death, he died to sin once and for all; as to his life, he lives for God. Consequently, you too must think of yourselves as being dead to sin and living for God in Christ Jesus.
From the earliest years of the Church’s life, Christians declared holy ‘the day after the Sabbath’ and assigned it a new name. What the Romans called the ‘day of the sun’ became the ‘Lord’s Day’ in Latin: Dominica dies. Soon they came to feel the need to dedicate a special day to celebrate the resurrection of Christ, a founding event of their faith. Thus, what the Passover considered ‘the Sunday of Sundays,’ ‘the feast of feasts,’ the queen of all festivals, of all Sundays, of all the days of the year, was born.
During the solemn vigil—at which nobody could be absent—baptisms were administered. The ritual required that the catechumens not only receive a simple ablution but be totally immersed in water and then emerge from the baptismal font, like the maternal womb, as new creatures, the children of the light. Amidst songs of joy, the community welcomed these new children, reborn into divine life from the water and the Spirit. This is the rite Paul refers to in the reading from the Letter to the Romans. To the Christians in Rome, he recalls the moment of their baptism and the catechesis they received.
He exhorts them with a rhetorical question: “Don’t you know that in baptism which unites us to Christ we are all baptized and plunged into his death?” (v. 3), an effective way to remind them of a truth that they already had in mind. They were baptized into Christ, resulting in an intimate union with him, sharing his destiny of death, to rise with him to life.
One day, Jesus, too, used the image of baptism: “But I have a baptism to undergo, and what anguish I feel until it is over” (Lk 12:50). He was referring to his ‘immersion’ in the waters of death, from which he would then resurface on Easter Day. The Christian, as Paul explains, is called to follow the same path as the Master. To be united with the Risen One’s fullness of life, he must first die to the ‘old man’ in all his evil ways. This happens in the ritual immersion in the baptismal font. Going down into this tank means to agree to die to sin, to ‘bury’ his past and start a whole new life, a life in harmony with that of Christ (vv. 4-6).
In the Letter to the Galatians, Paul explains this passage from death to life with a dramatic contrast between the ‘works of the flesh’ and ‘the fruit of the Spirit’: “You know what comes from the flesh: fornication, impurity and shamelessness, idol worship and sorcery, hatred, jealousy and violence, anger, ambition, division, factions, and envy, drunkenness, orgies, and the like. I again say to you what I have already said: those who do these things shall not inherit the Kingdom of God. But the fruit of the Spirit is charity, joy and peace, patience, understanding of others, kindness and fidelity, gentleness and self-control" (Gal 5:19-23).
The night of Easter is for each Christian—child, adolescent, or young adult—the best time to be reminded of the commitments made by those who want to behave in a manner consistent with his own baptism.
The first part of the passage focused on the negative aspect and on death to sin. In the second part (vv. 8-11), Paul introduces a positive theme, the entrance into life: “If we died with Christ, we believe we will also live with him.” We pass through death, but the ultimate destiny is life. The first-generation Christians have deeply internalized this Pauline teaching on baptism. They tried to put it into practice in their lives and gradually enriched the ritual with other symbolic and eloquent gestures.
They introduced the gesture of covering the neophytes with a white robe, a sign of the completely new and spotless life they commit themselves to living. The bishop gives them the vestment after embracing them as they come up from the baptismal font. In some communities, the bishop also puts on their lips a few drops of milk and honey, the food promised by God to those who enter the Promised Land, the land that—for the neophytes—is the Kingdom of God.
The shape of these tanks was also acquiring symbolic meanings. The oldest—two famous ones preserved in Nazareth—were square or rectangular to remind the candidate of the tomb in which they enter with Christ to bury ‘the old man’ and all his evil ways and then rise with Christ to new life. Other tanks were circular to reproduce the vault of heaven. They indicate to the neophytes the celestial kingdom into which they enter. Those of cruciform shape recall the baptism's gift of life; they were invited to join the Master and offer themselves to the brothers and sisters. Those of oval design finally had an even more apparent symbolism: as life comes out of an egg, so from the baptismal font, the new person is born.
Gospel: Matthew 28:1-10
After the sabbath, as the first day of the week was dawning, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary came to see the tomb. And behold, there was a great earthquake; for an angel of the Lord descended from heaven, approached, rolled back the stone, and sat upon it. His appearance was like lightning and his clothing was white as snow. The guards were shaken with fear of him and became like dead men. Then the angel said to the women in reply, “Do not be afraid! I know you are seeking Jesus the crucified. He is not here, for he has been raised just as he said. Come and see the place where he lay. Then go quickly and tell his disciples, ‘He has been raised from the dead, and he is going before you to Galilee; there you will see him.’ Behold, I have told you.” Then they went away quickly from the tomb, fearful yet overjoyed, and ran to announce this to his disciples. And behold, Jesus met them on their way and greeted them. They approached, embraced his feet, and did him homage. Then Jesus said to them, “Do not be afraid! Go tell my brothers to go to Galilee, and there they will see me.”
All the evangelists begin the narrative of the Easter events indicating a precise time—early in the morning, the day after the Sabbath—and with the scene of the women—Mary Magdalene and some others go to the tomb. However, they differ in their reporting of their immediate reaction to the shocking experience they have witnessed at the tomb.
While Mark, Luke and John assert that, with immense astonishment, they found the huge stone already rolled away, Matthew says that they saw a terrifying sight: “there was a violent earthquake, an angel of the Lord descending from heaven, and he came to the stone, rolled it and sat on it. His appearance was like lightning and his garment white as snow. They were all frightened and the guards trembled in fear like dead men” (vv. 2-4). If this version werethe work of a journalist, it would be difficult to harmonize it with the information given by the other evangelists.
Let us immediately clarify: this Gospel passage is not a news report. It is misleading to consider it as such because Matthew is not narrating a documented historical fact. The event referred to us—the resounding victory of the Lord of life over death—really happened, but it belongs to the divine world, not to the earthly realm. Unlike the crucifixion, the resurrection is not verifiable through the senses and cannot be told as one of the many episodes in the life of Jesus.
The sublime experience of the Risen One, which the women had before the disciples, washard to communicate. But Matthew had at his disposition a theological language that his readers understood exceedingly well, the one used by the Bible. It was a language often consisting of images, full of allegory and metaphor. It is with one of these images that Matthew begins his story of Easter: a terrifying earthquake. To illustrate the miracles performed by God on behalf of his people, the sacred authors often use impressive images: lightning, thunder, hail, thunderstorms, dark clouds and above all, earthquakes that were frequent in Palestine.
When the Lord appeared to Moses at Sinai—the author of the book of Exodus narrates— “the whole mountain shook violently. Moses spoke, and God replied in thunder” (Ex 19:18-19). The psalmist thus introduces the outrage and the intervention of God against the wickedness of the world: “Then the earth reeled and rocked, the foundation of the mountains shook; they trembled at his fury” (Ps 18:8).
To illustrate the power with which God has destroyed the power of death on Easter Sunday, Matthew had an obligatory literary choice: the use of the biblical image of the earthquake. He had already used it in the story of Jesus’ death. Unique among the evangelists,he had written: “The earth quaked, rocks were split, tombs were opened” (Mt 27:51-52). He was not referring to literal facts. He wanted his readers to understand the upheaval operating when he offered the sacrifice of his life: the ancient world, the world of sin, lies, injustice, hypocrisy, was shaken to its foundations. It had suffered a devastating blow from which it would never recover.
The other images, too—the angel of the Lord, the color white, lightning, fear—are taken from the Bible (cf. Dn 7:9; 10:6; Jdt 6:11; 13:22ff). The evangelist used them to build a theological framework to bear witness to the men and women of his time and us the disciples’ experience of the Risen One. Stripped of the literary casing in which the evangelist wrapped it, the Gospel clearly reveals the theological message. The wicked have fought the righteous and managed to prevail. They believed in having him silenced forever. A huge boulder was placed in front of the tomb, and a picket of guards watched so that no one came close (Mt 27:62-66). All celebrate the victory of death over life, impiety over righteousness, hatred over love.
Faced with this tragedy, we wonder: will the darkness and the silence of the grave extinguish forever even the memory of the righteous, while those who killed him mockingly laugh? At dawn on Easter Sunday, God responded to this anguished question. In a flash of light, he detonated his life-giving power because he could not allow the Holy and Righteous One to remain in the power of death. He pronounced his final verdict on what had happened on Good Friday: the defeat in the eyes of the world was, according to his judgment, the winner.
The angel of the Lord was none other than the Lord Himself, revealing all his power. The act of sitting on the stone recalls the gesture of the warrior who celebrates his victory by sitting proudly rampant in the city he conquered. Matthew uses this bellicose image to vividly depict the triumph of the Lord over death, the terrible enemy that has always terrified humanity. The heavenly messenger urges the women not to seek the Crucified but the living and to move away from the place where he was buried (v. 6).
After the defeat of death, those who have concluded their earthly life are not found in a grave. They are not to be found and encountered there, but in the Father’s house, where all the living gather to sing the praises of the Lord. Those who have made this discovery must announce it to everyone. The angel of the Lord sends the women: “Go at once and tell the disciples that he is risen from the dead ... This is my message for you” (v. 7). It is not an easy mission because anyone who announces the Living One risks not being believed or laughed at.
We have no difficulty talking about the Crucified One and his courage in giving his life for love. The Crucified One belongs to the verifiable reality of this world. It is a historical fact that no one doubts. Instead, we are reluctant to announce the Living One because the senses cannot recognize him: he lives in a heavenly dimension. He can be contemplated only by the believer’s gaze. Only those who have had the intimate experience of a personal encounter with the Risen One dare to announce to all—as did the women—that the Lord was not merely revived but alive and present in our midst.
Next to the empty tomb, two groups of people appear: the women and the guards (vv. 4-8). They represent two opposite ways of placing themselves before the revelation of God’s power. The reaction of the picket of soldiers is fear: “The guards trembled with fear and became like dead men” (v. 4). They had to guard the kingdom of death, but faced with God’s power, they panicked, fled, terrified by the light of Easter (Mt 28:4). The angel did not reassure them: they represent all the forces against life and are at the service of death. They are in disarray and need to continue in fear because they have no way out.
Instead, the women—a symbol of the community—are reassured: “Do not be afraid!” (v. 5). Those who love life need not fear the upsetting interventions of God. He comes to remove all the rocks that sin has put in place to protect the domains of death.
The heavenly message directed to the women is directed to all people. It is an invitation to grow in the certainty of the victory of life: never will a righteous person be abandoned; each tomb, like that of Jesus, will be empty. The forces of death (injustice, oppression, slander, hatred, deceit, cunning ... will not prevail even if, apparently, for a time, they will appear to have the upper hand. Faced with the great scene of Easter, all the losses and all the tears of the righteous of all times make sense.
The women hastily abandoned the place of death and rushed to announce to the brothers that Christ was alive. They represent all those who believe in the victory of life and race to witness their faith to the brothers and sisters. Faced with the same event, the guards make the opposite choice: as Judas did, they let themselves be corrupted by money. They are the symbol of those who, even today, resign themselves to compromise for the sake of some material advantage. They prefer the lie to the truth. They take sides with the powers-that-be and cooperate with them in an attempt to perpetuate the reign of injustice.
The Gospel passage ends with the manifestation of the Risen Christ to the women (vv. 9-10). “Rejoice!”—he tells them. Joy always shines on the face of a person who has ‘seen’ the Living One and realizes that, after Easter, the issues of this world, even the most dramatic and absurd, do have meaning. It is true that after Easter, people continue to die as before. However, now they know that they will not remain in death. They know that life has a goal—not in the night of the grave, but the heavenly light—and that humanity has a destiny: the endless celebration.
Here is the reason for Christian joy. Joy is not joy if it is not shared. Even the Risen Christ—as the angel at the tomb—sends the women to proclaim to all the experience they had. That has changed the perspective of their lives. From the material point of view, nothing has changed for them. Their difficulties and problems remain the same. They are the ones who are no longer the same: they have been transformed by the encounter with the Living One.
READ: The drama continues. Matthew likes drama: the earthquake, an angel in dazzling white, the faithful women performing their duty with fear and joy. The tomb is empty.
REFLECT: Do you like the way Matthew describes the empty tomb? Does anyone witness the actual resurrection? Belief in the risen Christ requires an act of faith that women and men give witness as disciples. What lesson does this teach us?
PRAY: Easter is Alleluia, ‘God be praised.’ It is not said during Lent. At Easter, we sing it with great enthusiasm: ‘Jesus is raised! God be praised!’
ACT: Easter is a springtime feast. The earth comes alive, and the Lord is raised. Make it a happy time for yourself and others.
