Pope Francis sermon for the Vigil of Easter

Vatican 3 March 2013 -  Pope Francis sermon for the Vigil of Easter 

Dear Brothers and Sisters,

1. In the Gospel of this radiant night of the Easter Vigil, we first meet the women who go the tomb of Jesus with spices to anoint his body (cf. Lk 24:1-3). They go to perform an act of compassion, a traditional act of affection and love for a dear departed person, just as we would. They had followed Jesus, they had listened to his words, they had felt understood by him in their dignity and they had accompanied him to the very end, to Calvary and to the moment when he was taken down from the cross. We can imagine their feelings as they make their way to the tomb: a certain sadness, sorrow that Jesus had left them, he had died, his life had come to an end. Life would now go on as before. Yet the women continued to feel love, the love for Jesus which now led them to his tomb. But at this point, something completely new and unexpected happens, something which upsets their hearts and their plans, something which will upset their whole life: they see the stone removed from before the tomb, they draw near and they do not find the Lord’s body. It is an event which leaves them perplexed, hesitant, full of questions: “What happened?”, “What is the meaning of all this?” (cf. Lk 24:4). Doesn’t the same thing also happen to us when something completely new occurs in our everyday life? We stop short, we don’t understand, we don’t know what to do. 

Newness often makes us fearful, including the newness which God brings us, the newness which God asks of us. We are like the Apostles in the Gospel: often we would prefer to hold on to our own security, to stand in front of a tomb, to think about someone who has died,someone who ultimately lives on only as a memory, like the great historical figures from the past.  We are afraid of God’s surprises; we are afraid of God’s surprises! He always surprises us!

Dear brothers and sisters, let us not be closed to the newness that God wants to bring into our lives! Are we often weary, disheartened and sad? Do we feel weighed down by our sins? Do we think that we won’t be able to cope? Let us not close our hearts, let us not lose confidence, let us never give up: there are no situations which God cannot change, there is no sin which he cannot forgive if only we open ourselves to him.  

2. But let us return to the Gospel, to the women, and take one step further. They find the tomb empty, the body of Jesus is not there, something new has happened, but all this still doesn’t tell them anything certain: it raises questions; it leaves them confused, without offering an answer. And suddenly there are two men in dazzling clothes who say: “Why do you look for the living among the dead? He is not here; but has risen” (Lk 24:5-6). What was a simple act, done surely out of love – going to the tomb – has now turned into an event, a truly life-changing event. Nothing remains as it was before, not only in the lives of those women, but also in our own lives and in the history of mankind. Jesus is not dead, he has risen, he is alive! He does not simply return to life; rather, he is life itself, because he is the Son of God, the living God (cf. Num 14:21-28; Deut 5:26; Josh 3:10). Jesus no longer belongs to the past, but lives in the present and is projected towards the future; he is the everlasting “today” of God. This is how the newness of God appears to the women, the disciples and all of us: as victory over sin, evil and death, over everything that crushes life and makes it seem less human. And this is a message meant for me and for you, dear sister, dear brother. How often does Love have to tell us: Why do you look for the living among the dead? Our daily problems and worries can wrap us up in ourselves, in sadness and bitterness… and that is where death is. That is not the place to look for the One who is alive!

Let the risen Jesus enter your life, welcome him as a friend, with trust: he is life! If up till now you have kept him at a distance, step forward. He will receive you with open arms. If you have been indifferent, take a risk: you won’t be disappointed. If following him seems difficult, don’t be afraid, trust him, be confident that he is close to you, he is with you and he will give you the peace you are looking for and the strength to live as he would have you do.  

3. There is one last little element that I would like to emphasize in the Gospel for this Easter Vigil. The women encounter the newness of God. Jesus has risen, he is alive! But faced with empty tomb and the two men in brilliant clothes, their first reaction is one of fear: “they were terrified and bowed their faced to the ground”, Saint Luke tells us – they didn’t even have courage to look. But when they hear the message of the Resurrection, they accept it in faith. And the two men in dazzling clothes tell them something of crucial importance: “Remember what he told you when he was still in Galilee… And they remembered his words” (Lk 24:6,8).  They are asked to remember their encounter with Jesus, to remember his words, his actions, his life; and it is precisely this loving remembrance of their experience with the Master that enables the women to master their fear and to bring the message of the Resurrection to the Apostles and all the others (cf. Lk 24:9). To remember what God has done and continues to do for me, for us, to remember the road we have travelled; this is what opens our hearts to hope for the future. May we learn to remember everything that God has done in our lives.

On this radiant night, let us invoke the intercession of the Virgin Mary, who treasured all these events in her heart (cf. Lk 2:19,51) and ask the Lord to give us a share in his Resurrection. May he open us to the newness that transforms, to God’s surprises… so very beautiful. May he make us men and women capable of remembering all that he has done in our own lives and in the history of our world. May he help us to feel his presence as the one who is alive and at work in our midst. And may he teach us  - dear brothers and sisters – each day not to look among the dead for the Living One. Amen.

Live good lives, and you are the day which the Lord has made...

St. Augustine of Hippo

Preached on Holy Easter Sunday

Sermon 229B, Date: uncertain

Live good lives, and you are the day which the Lord has made

In seeing the risen Christ, Saint Theresa of Avila experienced a mystical transverberation, which she described as the piercing of her heart by an angel. She called this spiritual union with God, her "mystical marriage."

The Lord has indeed made every day – and not only has made, but also continues to make; I mean, He makes every day as follows: He makes His sun rise on the good and the bad, and sends rain on the just and the unjust (Mt 5:45).  So we are not to imagine that this ordinary kind of day, which is common to good and bad alike, is meant in this place, where we heard,This is the day which the Lord has made.  A particular sort of day is being proclaimed more formally, and our attention is being drawn to a particular sort of day by its saying, This is the day which the Lord has made. What sort of day can it be, when it says Let us exult and be joyful in it (Ps 118:24)?  What sort, but a good one?  What sort but a very choice, lovable, desirable one, the sort about which Saint Jeremiah said, And the day of men I have not yearned for, you know it well (Jer 17:16)?

So what is this day which the Lord has made?  Live good lives, and you will be this day yourselves.  The apostle, you see, was not talking about the day which begins with sunrise and ends with sunset, when he said Let us walk honorably, as in the day (Rom 13:13); where he also said, For those who get drunk are drunk at night (1 Thes 5:7).  Nobody sees people getting drunk at the midday meal; but when this does happen, it is a matter of the night, not of the day which the Lord has made.  You see, just as that day is realized in those who live godly, holy, and religious lives, marked by moderation, justice, sobriety; so too on the contrary, for those who live in an ungodly, loose-living, proud, and irreligious manner – for that sort of night, the night will undoubtedly be a thief: The day of the Lord will come just like a thief in the night (1 Thes 5:2) – that’s what’s written, after all.

But after reminding us of this testimony, the apostle turned to those to whom he had elsewhere said You were once darkness, but now light in the Lord (Eph 5:8) – that is where the day was made which the Lord has made.  He turned to them, after saying, You know, brothers, that the day of the Lord will come just like a thief in the night, and he said to them, You, however, are not in darkness, that that day should catch you out like a thief.  For you are all children of the light and children of the day; we are not of the night nor of the darkness (1 Thes 5:4-5).  So this song we sing over and over again is a constant reminder to us to live good lives.  When we all say together with harmonious voices, joyful spirits, hearts beating together, This is the day which the Lord has made, let us fit ourselves to the sound we make, or else our tongues may be giving evidence against us.  You’re going to drink yourself silly today, and you still say This is the day which the Lord has made?  Aren’t you afraid He may answer you, ‘This is certainly not the day which the Lord has made’?  And can it be called a good day, when by self-indulgence and loose living it has made it into the worst possible day for itself?”

2. Here we have such joy, my brothers and sisters, joy in your coming together, joy in the psalms and hymns, joy in the memory of Christ’s passion and resurrection, joy in the hope of future life.  If what we are still hoping for fills us with such tremendous joy, what will it be like when we actually posses it?  Just look how these days, when ‘Alleluia’ is ringing in our ears, our spirits soar!  Isn’t it as though we were getting I don’t know what little taste of that city beyond the stars?  If these days fill us with such tremendous joy, what will that day be like when we are told, Come, you blessed of my Father, receive the kingdom (Mt25:34); when all the saints are gathered together there in unity; where in that great reunion those who hadn’t met before now see each other; where those who had known each other now recognize one another; where they will all be together in such a way that a friend is never lost, an enemy never to be feared?

I mean, here we are, saying Alleluia; it’s good, it’s enjoyable, it’s full of happiness, delight, pleasure. And yet, if we said it all the time, we would get bored.  But when it recurs at a fixed season of the year, with what delight its return is greeted, with what wistfulness its departure!  Will enjoyment be like that there, and will there be boredom then?  There won’t be.

Someone says, perhaps, ‘And how can it happen that this goes on all the time, and never gets boring?’  If I can show you something in this life that can never get boring, will you believe that there everything will be like that?  Yes, food can get boring, drink can get boring, entertainment can get boring, this, that and the other can get boring; good health, though, has never been found boring.  So just as in this time of the mortality of the flesh, this time of frailty, this time of the weariness of the burden of the body, it has never been possible to get bored with good health; so there, in the same way, there will never be any boredom with charity, with immortality, with eternity.

Christ is Risen: The world below lies desolate
Christ is Risen: The spirits of evil are fallen
Christ is Risen: The angels of God are rejoicing
Christ is Risen: The tombs of the dead are empty
Christ is Risen indeed from the dead,
the first of the sleepers,
Glory and power are his forever and ever

St. Hippolytus (AD 190-236)

source: http://blog.augustineinstitute.org/

The passion of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ

St. Augustine of Hippo

On the Lord’s Passion

Sermon 218C, Date: about 412

The passion of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ constitutes a guarantee of glory and a lesson in patience.  What, after all, can the hearts of the faithful not promise themselves from God’s grace, seeing that it was not enough for the only Son of God, co-eternal with the Father, to be born for them as human being from a human being, without His also dying at the hands of the human beings He created?  It’s a great thing that the Lord promises us for the future; but it’s a much greater thing which we recall He has already done for us.  When Christ died for the ungodly, where were they, or what were they?  Who can doubt that He is going to endow His holy ones with His life, when He has already endowed them, while they were still ungodly, with His death?  Why should human frailty hesitate to believe that it is going to happen sometime or other that human beings will live with God?  Something much more incredible has happened, that God has died for the sake of human beings.

Who, after all, is Christ, but that Word which was in the beginning, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God (Jn 1:1)?  This Word of God became flesh, and dwelt among us (Jn 1:14).  You see, He would not have in Himself the wherewithal to die for us, unless He had taken mortal flesh from us.  That was how the immortal one was able to die, that was how He wished to bestow life on mortals; aiming later on to give us shares in Himself, having first of all Himself taken shares in us.  I mean, we had nothing of our very own by which we could really live, and He had nothing of His very own by which He could really die.  Accordingly, He struck a wonderful bargain with us, a mutual give and take: ours was what He died by; His was what we might live by.

All the same, He too gave even the flesh which He took from us in order to die in it, because He is its creator; while on the other hand He in no way received from us the life by which we are going to live in Him and with Him.  And thus, as regards our nature, by which we are human beings, He died from what is ours, not His, since in His own nature by which He is God, He is quite unable to die.  But insofar as it is His creation, which He made as God, then He did die from what is His; since He Himself also made the flesh in which He died.

“A new commandment I give unto you, that ye love one another;

as I have loved you, that ye also love one another.”