[00:00] My dear brothers and sisters in Christ, today, this evening, this night, this glorious night, we celebrate the entire salvation history through the readings and the liturgical action which bring out all these themes that tell of God's great work in bringing us

[00:42] back to life from death, exemplified in our Lord's own example. In the readings that we've just heard, in the entrance with the Paschal candle, and you know, entering in darkness and then having all the lights come up. There's the theme of light dispelling darkness, which is exactly what Christ does. He is the light. We had also the theme of the Passover from death to life, God's covenantal faithfulness,

[01:20] and new birth through baptism. These are the central themes of tonight's celebration, which shed light on God's saving grace. It's not just a beautiful nighttime ceremony. It's really the Church's, what I'll call, eschatological training. This passage from darkness, from sin to new life,

[01:52] from present trouble to hope of Christ's final victory. And it's that lesson that we have to take to heart. It's not, you know, a nice story. It's not a great epic like Lord of the Rings, which actually says a lot about our faith, incidentally, but it's actually a school. And the spiritual logic which God has

[02:27] manifested in the history of salvation can help us be formed to face the moral crises and social crises that our times are so rife with without losing our soul. So how does this vigil help us understand the solution to our problems?

[02:58] Well, for one thing, the Church calls us to watch, to be on watch. You know, technically, we're still on Holy Saturday at this moment, but we're celebrating in anticipation what takes place during the night, tonight, when Christ rises from His tomb and escapes death. He frees Himself. He rises up on His own power.

[03:32] So the Church gives us light as we walked in, processed in with lit candles to symbolize the light of Christ. And we will renew our baptismal vows, our promises, our promises. And we will take part in the Eucharistic feast, which we will continue

[04:05] to celebrate until He comes again. This isn't escapism. This is preparation. So this night, this vigil, this liturgical celebration teaches us virtue, this virtue of not going the way of the world, but following the Paschal mystery of Christ,

[04:37] that His death and resurrection dispel the darkness. We move with the Scriptures through salvation history. It started out in Genesis with the story of creation, and then with Abraham, the establishment of the covenant with Moses and Exodus, the deliverance from slavery into freedom, and then the resurrection of the world.

[05:08] So we go through the deliverance from slavery into freedom, against practically impossible odds, through great signs and wonders and power, and then we arrive at resurrection. The resurrection comes with the promise of our own resurrection. And the eternal truth, well, eternity means outside of time, but the temporal truth

[05:46] of salvation history offers us then a moral compass to make it through this world in a world that's turned its back on God. And in this darkness, the Church proclaims the light of Christ and proclaims the truth of our sinfulness and our need for repentance and our need for salvation.

[06:17] God separated light from darkness in creation, and this is a truth that helps us understand the deception of the dualism of certain ideologies or religious philosophies, or even, you know, the wicked deception of Gnosticism, Freemasonry, which wants to proclaim the necessity of evil,

[06:55] which is not true. God is pure light, pure goodness, pure love. We have to, when we see the evil that we're up against, we have to be like Abraham and trust and obey God. He was willing to give up his next best love. Of course, we have to love God above all, but we have to love God above all.

[07:27] Best love. Of course, we have to love God above all, but he loved his son, Isaac. But at the command of God, trusting Him, he was willing to obey and even sacrifice his own son, which God did not require of him, but he would have done it. Instead, God sacrificed His Son for us. Another moral lesson is the power in God that we can

[08:03] become mobile when most of the world is in a state of paralysis with regard to doing the right thing. God's command to go forward through the sea, as impossible as that seems, it was what the entire people of Israel did, and God delivered them and swallowed up Pharaoh and his army. Their trust was not betrayed.

[08:39] Through the prophets, He promised mercy, and Christ promises us mercy. In fact, we're in the middle now, or not in the middle, but we have begun the novena of Divine Mercy, which has come to the fore in our day and age, the promise of mercy, and it's a time that perhaps is growing short, because when man turns his back on God's mercy, what is left but His wrath?

[09:12] But Christ then, by being baptized, Christ brings us into a sacrifice, a sacrifice of mercy, Christ brings us into a sacramental life that gives us spiritual endurance and spiritual vitality to live in this world that is dead. It's a culture of death that humanity has largely

[09:42] embraced, and it's a world of death because of sin, because of its godlessness. So, what is symbolized and enacted and told and celebrated in this Vigil Mass of Easter gives us an alternative to what the world presents and calls us to the virtues that the world doesn't understand, repentance, hope,

[10:15] and a conviction and commitment to moral behavior based on Christ's victory and true promise of life. So, brothers and sisters, let us ponder these lessons that we are presented with in the liturgy of this evening's Mass,

[10:48] the truth that all of this is centered on Christ's resurrection, His power over death, His power over sin, of which we are called to participate, in which we're called to participate and live. You know, the cross is not an easy thing, but with Christ it is a possible; it's a possibility.

[11:20] Without the cross, there's just death, but Christ took up the cross for our sake that we could live, and He'll give us the power to live, to emerge from the culture of death and build a culture of life, which is based only in the truth of His resurrection, in the gift of His Church and the Church and the sacraments, and the gift of His Mother who helps us

[11:53] to be like her Son, not of this world. We ask her to intercede for us and help us accept the gift of life that Christ won for us. Praise be Jesus and Mary.