Easter Sunday—Easter Vigil Readings

My favorite liturgy of the entire liturgical year is the Easter Vigil. This very long Mass is the most involved and dramatic liturgy you will experience. The second part of this beautiful liturgy is an extended Liturgy of the Word that includes nine Scripture readings, seven from the Old Testament, one Epistle, and one Gospel. We’ll look quickly at the first seven readings to prepare us to consider in slightly more detail the Epistle. As the opening prayer invites us, “let us meditate on how God in times past saved his people and I these, the last days, has sent us his Son as our Redeemer.”

Genesis 1:1-2:2 reminds us of the orderly way in which God created the world, with purpose, with humanity as its crowning achievement. Genesis 22:1-18 the Lord reminds us of his covenant with Abraham and draws our attention to the numerous parallels between Abraham’s sacrifice of his only beloved son, Isaac, and God’s sacrifice of his only beloved Son, Jesus. In the third reading, from Exodus 14:15-15:1, God retells how he freed his people from human slavery during the Exodus from Egypt; we should recall that Jesus referred to the departure (literally, the exodus) he would fulfill in Jerusalem (see Luke 9:31).

The fourth reading brings us to the prophets. Isaiah 54:5-14 tells us that God used to be hidden from us, but now his everlasting love, like the love of an adoring husband, is made clear. Next, Isaiah 55:1-11 tells us that God is merciful, he calls us to repentance, and he wishes to make an everlasting covenant with us. Baruch 3:9-15 and 3:32-4:4 then tell us to walk in the ways of God and t learn prudence, wisdom, and understanding. Then we will have everlasting peace. The seventh and final Old Testament reading, from Ezekiel 36:16-28, recounts God’s punishment of his people’s sins and his promises of renewal. He speaks specifically of cleansing us with water, renewing our hearts, putting his Spirit within us, and making us his people again.

We have finally arrived at the Epistle, wedged between the summary of salvation history from the Old Testament and the proclamation of Jesus’ Resurrection in the Gospel. So what is the Lord saying to us in Romans 6:3-11? He is reminding us of our own Baptism and what really happened in that sacrament. We may see it is as a ritualized entry into the Church, which it is. But God sees more. He sees it as the way we participate in Jesus’ death on the Cross. Baptism is a mystical death in union with the God-man. Each of us has died with Christ. We have been buried in the baptismal waters. And we have risen out of those waters to a new life, a life lived in union with Jesus Christ as a member of his Mystical Body.

God created the world with us in mind, and he swore a series of covenants with humanity to bring us close to him. He saved us from human slavery, from human hunger and thirst, from human armies. When we rejected him, he still called us to himself, to be close to him. Finally, in Jesus, God saved us from sin and made a way for us to be intimately united to him, to be one body with him, forever. He offers us life that survives bodily death because Jesus is alive! The one to whom we are united lives never to die again! Alleluia! Christ is risen!