Easter Vigil – Homily (2025)

Easter Vigil Year C
Genesis 1:1-2:2
Genesis 22:1-18
Exodus 14:15-15:1
Isaiah 55:1-11
Romans 6:3-11
Luke 24:1-12
April 19, 2025

“The earth was a formless wasteland and darkness covered the abyss.

So it began.

There was no order.  There was no form to any material thing. 

God existed at the beginning.  There was nothing else.  All was dark.

That is, until God created. 

Today we have the Big Bang Theory as science’s explanation of how the universe came to be.  People who reject God claim the Big Bang Theory explains everything.  It does not.

It tells us how the material things found in the universe came to be.  Well, there is one thing left unexplained.  What caused the big bang?

For that matter, what directed the development of the universe to become what we know it to be today?  If we leave it to the Big Bang Theory, it seems that the universe as we know it is a product of chance.

It is not.  How do we know this?

There is order in the universe.  What brought order to the universe?  Actually, the question is who brought order to the universe. 

God did.

God brought divine order to the universe.  The Creation story we read in Genesis is not meant to provide a scientific explanation to creation. 

What the creation stories do provide is meaning to creation.  We are not random products of nature.  The existence of everything in the universe, including our own existence is not by chance.  It is the divine will of our heavenly Father.

We exist because God made a deliberate choice to create us.   

God brought light to the darkness.  Even today, Jesus brings light to the darkness of sin.

When God created humanity, He created us in his own image and gave us dominion over the rest of creation. 

What does it mean to be created in God’s image?  God is love (1 John 4:16).   We are created in love.  God loves us and we are given free will so that we may choose to love him in return. 

We reject God’s love when we reject what He created us as.

Tonight we hear the Exsultet and several readings from the Bible.  They tell of portions of the story of Salvation History.  It would take 70-80 hours to read the entire Bible.  The stories we hear tonight are key points.

Abraham is key as an example of faith.  He had faith in God.  Abraham had one son, Isaac.  He loved Isaac as a father should. 

When God told Abraham to sacrifice Isaac, Abraham was willing to do it because he trusted God.  He did as God directed.

It took Abraham three days to travel to the place where God told him to sacrifice Isaac.  Already, thousands of years before the birth of Jesus, the Bible begins to foreshadow the three days Jesus will spend in the tomb.

Isaac carries the wood for his sacrifice on his shoulders as Jesus would one day carry the wood of the Cross on his shoulders.

Abraham would carry the fire and the knife as his participation in the sacrifice.  What do you offer as your participation in Jesus’ sacrifice.

Isaac was tied up and put “on top of the wood on the altar” as Jesus would one day be nailed to the Cross.

At the moment when Abraham was about to sacrifice Isaac, God stopped him.  We are all called to make sacrifices for the glory of God in our lives.  Abraham was not called to make this particular sacrifice. 

No, but the day would come when God himself would provide his own Son Jesus as “the sheep for the holocaust.”

Abraham held nothing back from God and God blessed him abundantly.  Is there something in your life that you hold back from God?  Hand it over to God and you will prosper as his servant.

Centuries later the Israelites became slaves in Egypt.  God set them free in the Passover, the Passover that would become the Eucharist for us.

The angel of God will lead us as He led the Israelites through the desert if we let him.  It is our choice.  If we allow God to lead us, He will fight for us as He fought for the Israelites against the Egyptians.  The battle is not ours alone.  Jesus brings victory over sin on the Cross.

The Israelites passed through the waters of the Red Sea, prefiguring our entry into the waters of Baptism.

Freed from slavery in Egypt, the Israelites sang a song of praise to God.  I’m sure you cry out to God for help when you need it.  Do you sing God praise when He answers your prayers?

All are invited.  God invites everyone to “come to the water…come, without paying and without cost.”  Our salvation is a free gift from God.

How much time to you spend on worldly things that fail to satisfy?  Jesus offers us so much more.

“Seek the Lord while he may be found, call him while he is near.”

We are the ones who need to change, not God.  Sometimes we pray as if we can change God’s mind.  The better thing to do is to realize what God says to us through Isaiah, “So high are my ways above your ways and my thoughts above your thoughts.”

God has a plan.  It is our plan for our salvation.  We do our best when we set aside our human plans in favor of God’s plan.  We have been working for over a year to discern what God’s plan is for our parishes.  In the bulletin you will find an insert tonight that identifies the goals we have developed to lead us to fulfilling God’s plan.  We need to outreach to people in our community with corporal and spiritual works of mercy.  We need to grow in our understanding of what we celebrate at Mass.  We need to call forth more volunteers so that we can do this. 

Baptized in Christ, we need to die to the things of this world, to allow “our old self” to be “crucified with him” for if we have died with Christ, “we should also live with him.”

Jesus was crucified.  He freely handed his life over for us.  Crucified, He was laid in the tomb.  At that moment, all may have seemed lost to his disciples.  It was not.

“Remember what he said…that the Son of Man must be handed over to sinners and be crucified, and rise on the third day.”

When the third day came, the women when to the tomb and found it empty.  When they said “seemed like nonsense” but it was not.

Jesus Christ is Risen Today!

We are saved!  Let us give our lives to him.