Mary Immaculate Refuge Of Sinners, Rathmines, Dublin
http://www.rathminesparish.com/

Dublin- Halfpenny Bridge

Easter Vigil Homily

Dear People of God,

On Holy Thursday night, at the Mass of the Lord’s Supper, Fr Richard reminded us that the celebrations of Holy Week – from Palm Sunday to the Easter Vigil – are all of a piece – one continuous celebration of the same Mystery of Love. A seamless robe of love, woven from the brutally raw materials of the anguish, betrayal, tears, torture, piercing, bleeding and crucifixion of the Lord, blended and intertwined now, this Easter night, with His great victory over evil and death.

In this Easter Eucharist, we “sound the trumpet of salvation” – the clear announcement of humanity’s healing – and we rejoice that “darkness vanishes forever!” The seamless robe of Christ’s sufferings, death and resurrection, re-clothes our human nature in the dignity that was lost by our original wounding and shaming.

There is power in this holy night – but it is gentle and loving. It “washes guilt away and restores lost innocence”. God redresses our wounded humanity with the effective remedy that brings true healing – Christ, Who comes with His own Love – and that of the Father and the Holy Spirit.

In Scripture, the Bride, in The Song of Songs, says to her Beloved: “Your name is as oil poured out” – the Name of Jesus – Who heals and saves – a precious soothing ointment poured out upon our suffering – curing, cleansing and strengthening us.

Such unconquerable Love destroys the falsehood that blinds us to the real truth at the heart of who we are: We are baptised, which means to be immersed, soaked, saturated – with love, by love and in love – immersed totally in God.

We are baptised and named in Love. Shortly, God will call the name of Matilda Sue as a member, through her baptism, of the great communion of Love. And, in words attributed to St Patrick, we also “bind unto ourselves the Strong Name of the Trinity – the Three in One and One in Three” – not an equation – but the Reality of God Who is communal love.

This is loving interconnectedness. God the Father connects with us, through Jesus Christ – the One on Whom the Spirit, rests from the beginning of His earthly ministry, that same Spirit Who delighted the Father and the Son – in one another – from all Eternity – the Spirit of Him Who raised Jesus from the dead.

This Love and Delight, of God the Trinity in One Another, which some of the early fathers of the Church describe as a dance, has come to our rescue, in Jesus Christ. We have been named and called into the dance as partners with the Trinity, sweeping us away from the loneliness of death, sin and sorrow.

This feast – this Easter Season which we now enter – is about the dance of death and resurrection – both are equally real. They are partners – though unequal. Life is dancing with death. Life is leading death a merry dance. Death is mastered in this dance – by Christ our Life and our Light – and the conclusion will be Joy.

And yet, on this “most blessed of all nights”, when all creation exults, at the same time, we cannot shut out the cries of distress of so many of our fellow human beings: in Tibet, in Iraq, in areas of the African Continent, in Southern and Central America, in the Holy Land, in Pakistan; in so many places where the agony of Christ continues.

The resurrection of the Lord is no pretended Joy – an illusion that all is well with world. We know that all is not well. Many are suffering. In this very Church, there are hearts burdened with great sorrow. Yes, for many human beings and communities, all is not well. But, nevertheless, ultimately and eternally, (as the mystic, Julian of Norwich insists, “all shall be well…”

It is all part of the perfectly choreographed dance composed by the Trinity. After all, a Person of that Trinity was most brutally abused and murdered – executed on a Cross. But then the dance took a surprising turn. And what looked like failure and disaster was swung around by Love – because Love was leading the dance and “Love is stronger than death”.

Tonight is about death and resurrection, light and darkness. Light and darkness intermingle. But Light always wins. Death is strong. Oh, we know well how strong it is – look around our city, our country, our planet. But Love is stronger – eternally stronger!

This Great and Holy Week – culminating in the Easter Vigil – encapsulates the remedy for the world’s distress. Love is injected, transfused into death. The symptoms of death are all around the world in every part; but the cure is efficacious.

So many witnesses, who remained faithful to love, down through the ages to the present day,could be cited as perfect examples. I would like to give the example of one such hero: St Isaac Jogues.

He was a Jesuit priest who, in 1637, left the comfortable world of Renaissance France, to preach the Gospel of Christ, in the wilderness of North America to the native American Indian Iroquois nations.

He was brutally tortured by these who were, at that time, “stone-age people”. He escaped from them but yearned to go back – so much did he want them to know the Gospel of Love. They were regarded as “savages” – but he always called them his “beloved savages”.

In one of his letters he describes his suffering on account of the massacre of some members of a tribe of Indians (Hurons) who had converted to the Christian Faith by others who, as yet, had not (Mohawks).

He wrote:

“Woe is me! Wherefore was I born to see the ruin of my people.” Truly, in these and other tortures that anguished me deep in my soul, ‘my life is wasted with grief, and my years in sighs’…. For the Lord hath made my soul to waste away like a spider… He hath filled me with bitterness… because the comforter, the relief of my soul, is far from me. But in all these things we are victorious, and by the favour of God we will be victorious “because of Him Who loved us,” unto that Day when He will come “Who is to come and will not delay”.

See how, in this letter, life dances with death and sweeps death away upwards into Life. It is like the Psalm of Palm Sunday, which begins “My God, my God, why have You forsaken Me?” And which ends with a cry of confidence in God: “For God has not turned away His Face, but has heard my cry for help”.

My dear sisters and brothers, on this most blessed of all nights, God has answered our cry for help with the assurance that “Love is stronger than death” and that “death has no power over Him [or over us] any more”. He has risen from the dead and now He is going before you… DO NOT BE AFRAID – go and tell!

Fr. Paddy McCafferty


Fr. McCafferty is a priest of the Diocese of Down and Connor

www.downandconnor.org and is based in Dublin at present,

studying for a Licentiate in Theology - PhD @ Milltown Institute

Of Theology And Philosophy: www.milltown-institute.ie/