Holy Saturday Night of Easter-Easter Vigil

In his Gospel, Saint Mark tells us how the disciples, coming down from the Mount of Transfiguration, discussed among themselves what it means to “rise from the dead” (cf. Mk 9:10). Just before that, the Lord predicted to them his crucifixion and Resurrection after three days. Peter protested against the prediction of death. And now they were thinking about what “rise from the dead” could mean. Isn’t the same thing happening between us? Christmas, the birth of the divine Child, is immediately comprehensible to us. We can love this Child; we can imagine the Bethlehem night, Mary’s joy, the joy of St. Joseph and the shepherds, and the joy of the angels. But Resurrection – what is it? It goes beyond the realm of our experience, and its message thus often remains, to a certain extent, misunderstood; it belongs to the past. The Church tries to bring us into its understanding and translates this mysterious event into the languages ​​of symbols, in which we can at least glimpse this revolutionary event. The Easter vigil gives us the meaning of this day with the help of three main symbols: Light, water, and a new song – hallelujah.

First, it’s light. God’s creation – which we heard about in the first reading – begins with the words: “Let there be light!” (Gen 1,3). Where there is light, Life is born, and chaos can turn into a cosmos. In the biblical message, Light is the most immediate image of God: He is all Light, Life, Truth, Light. The Church reads the creation narrative on the Easter Vigil as a prophecy. The Resurrection majestically confirms what this text describes as the beginning of everything. God says again: “Let there be light!”. The Resurrection of Jesus is an eruption of Light. Death is overcome, and the grave is open. The Risen One himself is the Light, the Light of the world. With the Resurrection, the day of God enters the night of history. The Light of God spreads to the world and history by being resurrected. It’s dawning. Only this Light – Jesus Christ – is true Light more than the physical phenomenon of Light. He is pure Light: God, who gives birth to a new creation in the midst of the old, transforms chaos into cosmos. Let’s try to understand it even better.

Why is Christ the Light? In the Old Testament, the Torah was considered a light coming from God for the world and for people. It separates Light into darkness in creation, i.e., good from evil. It shows a person the right path to an authentic life. It shows him good, shows him the truth, and leads him to love, which is its most profound content. The Torah is a “lamp” for steps and a “light” on the path (cf. Ps 119,105). Christians then knew that the Torah is present in Christ, and the Word of God is present in Him as a Person. The Word of God is the true Light that man needs. This Word is present in Him, in the Son. Psalm 19 compares the Torah to the sun, which rises and makes the glory of God visible throughout the world. Christians understood this. Yes, in the Resurrection, the Son of God appeared as Light over the world. Christ is the great Light from which all Life comes. He enables us to recognize the glory of God from one end of the earth to the other. He shows us the way. He is the day of God that is now beginning and spreading throughout the planet. If we live with him and for him, we can live in the Light.

At the Easter Vigil, the Church points to the mystery of Christ’s Light in the sign of the paschal, whose flame is light and heat simultaneously. The symbolism of Light is tied to fire: glow and heat, brightness and transforming energy contained in fire – truth and love go together. The Easter candle burns and thus is fed: the cross and the Resurrection are inseparable. From the cross, from the Son’s self-giving, Light is born, and true radiance enters the world. From Easter, we all light our candles, especially the baptized, for whom the Light of Christ descends to the depths of their hearts in this sacrament. The ancient Church marked baptism with the Greek term fortissimos, the sacrament of enlightenment and the granting of Light, and connected it with Christ’s Resurrection. God says to the baptized one in baptism: “Be light!”

The baptized person is brought into the Light of Christ. Christ separates the Light from the darkness. In it, we recognize what is true and what is false, light and darkness. The Light of truth arises with him, and we begin to understand. When Christ saw the people who had gathered to listen to him and received some guidance from him, he felt sorry for them because they were like sheep without a shepherd (cf. Mk 6:34). Amidst the conflicting currents of their time, they did not know where to turn. How much compassion must Christ feel even today in connection with great speeches, behind which great disorientation is hidden? Where should we go? What are the values ​​we can follow? What are the values ​​in which we could raise the youth without presenting them with unbearable standards or demanding things that should not be imposed on them? He is the Light. The baptismal candle is a symbol of the enlightenment that is given to us in baptism. Also, St. Paul is speaking to us directly at this moment. In the letter to the Philippians, he says that amid a perverted and evil generation, Christians should shine like stars in the universe (cf. Phil 2:15). Let us ask the Lord that the Light of the candle that he has lit in us, so that the gentle Light of his Word and his love in us amid the confusion of this time does not go out, but grows stronger and brighter. So that together with him, we can be the people of the day, the stars of our time.

Water is the second symbol of the Easter Vigil – the night of baptism -. It occurs in the Holy Scriptures and the internal structure of the sacrament of baptism but in two opposite meanings. After all, there is a sea that appears as a hostile power that opposes Life on earth as a permanent threat, but to which God has set limits. That is why it is said in the book of Revelation that there will be no more sea in God’s new world (cf. Revelation 21:1). It is the element of death. And so it becomes a symbolic representation of Jesus’ death on the cross: Christ descended into the sea, into the waters of death like Israel into the Red Sea. He rose from the dead; he gave us Life. This means that baptism is not only washing itself but a new birth: with Christ, we descend into the sea of ​​death, as it were, to emerge as new creatures. The second way we encounter water is a fresh spring that gives Life or a great river from which Life comes.

According to the Church’s original stipulation, baptism was to be given with fresh spring water. Without water, there is no life. It is incredible how essential wells are in the Holy Scriptures. They are the places where Life comes from. At Jacob’s well, Christ announces to the Samaritan woman a new well, the water of true Life. He appears to her as a new, definitive Jacob, who opens the well they long for to humanity: the water that gives Life, which never runs out (cf. Jn 4:5-15). Saint John tells us how a soldier pierced Jesus’ side with a spear, from which blood and water gushed out (cf. John 19:34). The ancient Church saw it as a symbol of baptism and the Eucharist, coming from the pierced heart of Jesus. In death, Jesus himself became the source.

In one vision, the prophet Ezekiel saw a new Temple, from which a spring came out, which became a great river, giving Life (cf. Ezekiel 47:1-12). It was a powerful vision of hope in a country that has always suffered from drought and lack of water. In its beginnings, Christianity understood that it was realized in Christ. In Christ, He is the true, living temple of God. And He is the fountain of living water. From him gushes a great river, which in baptism begets and renews the world; the great river of living water, his gospel, which makes the earth fertile. In one speech during the Feast of Tabernacles, Jesus prophesied something more significant: “If … anyone … believes in me … streams of living water will flow from within him” (Jn 7:38).

In baptism, the Lord makes us not only people of Light but also springs from which living water flows. We all know such people who have refreshed and renewed us in a certain way, who are the source of fresh spring water. We don’t necessarily think of great men like St. Augustine, Francis of Assisi, Teresa of Avila, Mother Teresa of Calcutta, etc., persons through whom streams of living water flowed into history. Thanks to God, we find such people constantly in our everyday Life: people who are a source. Of course, we also know the opposite cases: people who create an atmosphere like a pool of stagnant or poisoned water. Let us ask the Lord, who gave us the grace of baptism, so that we can always be a source of clear, fresh water, gushing from the source of his truth and love!

The third great symbol of the Easter Vigil is unique: it concerns the man himself. It is the singing of a new song – hallelujah. When a person experiences great joy, he cannot keep it to himself. He has to express it and pass it on. But what happens when the Light of Resurrection touches a person and comes into contact with Life, Truth, and Love? He can’t just talk about it. Speaking alone is no longer enough. He has to sing. The first mention of singing in the Bible is found just after the crossing of the Red Sea when Israel was freed from slavery. He emerged from the terrifying depths of the sea. He is like reborn. He lives and is free. The Bible describes the people’s reaction to this great event of liberation with the sentence: “The people trusted the Lord and his servant Moses” (cf. Ex 14:31). This is followed by the second reaction, which flows from the first one out of some inner necessity: “Then Moses and the Israelites sang this song to the Lord” (Ex 15:1). In the Easter Vigil, we Christians sing this song every year after the third reading as our song because we too were rescued from the waters by God’s power and were freed to true Life.

The story of Moses’ song after the liberation of Israel from Egypt and after the crossing of the Red Sea has a surprising parallel in the book of the Revelation of St. John. Before the arrival of the last seven plagues, which will fall on the earth, there will appear to the visionary something “like a sea of ​​glass mixed with fire, and those who have overcome the beast, over his image, and over the number of his name, standing on the sea of ​​glass; they had God’s harps and sang the song of Moses, God’s servant, and the song of the Lamb” (Revelation 15:2-3a). This image describes the situation of Jesus’ disciples of all times and the problem of the Church in the history of this world. Humanly speaking, this situation is contradictory in itself.

On the one hand, the community is in a state of departure in the middle of the Red Sea. A sea in which, paradoxically, fire and ice mix. But shouldn’t the Church still walk on the sea through fire and ice? Humanly speaking, she should drown. But while still wandering amid this Red Sea, he sings. He sings the praise of the righteous: the song of Moses and the Lamb, in which the Old and New Covenants coincide. Instead of drowning, the Church sings a song of thanksgiving for the saved. It stands on the historical waters of death yet has already been resurrected. She sings and grabs the hand of the Lord, who holds her above the waters.

And she knows this puts her beyond the reach of the attraction of death and evil – a force from which there would otherwise be no escape. It is uplifted and attracted by the new attraction of God, truth, and love. Now, it is still between two gravitational fields. However, since Christ rose from the dead, love’s gravity is more vital than hate’s. Isn’t this situation the actual situation of the Church of all times? It always feels like she’s about to drown, and she’s always already saved. Saint Paul illustrated this situation with the words: “We are as dying – and behold, we live” (2 Cor 6,9). The saving hand of the Lord carries us, and we can now sing the song of the saved, the new song of the resurrected: Alleluia!