Most Blessed of All Nights
Exultet
Most blessed of all nights,
chosen by God to see Christ rising from the dead...
Night truly blessed
when heaven is wedded to earth and
all are reconciled with God.
Reflection
These solemn liturgical actions that we have been participating in during this vigil seem to touch and enliven all our senses. Wasn’t the kindling of the New Fire marvelous! And standing around that wonderful fire under the starry sky, listening to the story-telling of our ancestors in faith, and singing those familiar canticles and psalms, these have all created within us a deep sense of the sacredness of this holy night. Who of us will not remember the dancing of those flames with the night breezes … and now that fire burns in our own hearts! We are led now to the doorway of that garden tomb and we are invited to abandon our senses, be transported beyond them…for we are entering a moment of such profound mystery. In this night watch vigil we open our whole being into the contemplation of this great mystical moment in history: the resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth from the grave.
The essential core of the mystery of Resurrection needs to be celebrated in a spirit of deep and profound silence and solitude. It is a mystical moment, observed by no one. Jesus alone is in deep intimate communion with His Father. In that ‘most blessed of all nights”, God’s Love broke open the grave, rolled back the stone. Divine Love exploded in the caverns of that dark tomb as Death and Life met and embraced. Physical death and Eternal life became one! This is the power of God that broke open the grave. A power mightier than any human strength released him from the chains of death. The grave could no longer hold him! God’s eternal everlasting Love conquered the night of sin and darkness and despair for all time! Glory filled that place. Light flooded the darkness. A light no one can quench!
What was their intimate communion? Jesus had been speaking during his “last days” of his returning to His Father and here the Father returns, coming to him, in an eternal embrace of homecoming. There is a co-mingling celebration of all the “Yes’s” shared in this resurrecting moment. Jesus’ mission is fulfilled. Jesus’ destiny is accomplished. The mighty salvific action has broken the limits of death forever. The victory is won. Forevermore, death holds no sting. On this “most blessed of all nights” Love conquered once and for all the night of sin, the night of darkness, the night of despair. Out from that grave, Jesus comes, into freedom, light and joy. This mystery surely causes us to tremble in awe. Jesus, our brother, risen, victorious. A Divine Plan obeyed, trusted. All done in love.
A second great work is announced in Jesus’ Resurrection. It is “O night truly blessed when heaven is wedded to earth and all peoples are reconciled with God.” The Resurrection mystery celebrates God’s dream for all creation becoming fully realized in this action of Jesus’ death and resurrection. This ‘most blessed of all nights” marks the climax of God’s great love story begun at creation when God first proclaimed over all of it. “It is good. It is very good.” Now, God’s dream for all creation to be one with God, “to be alive with God”, is set in motion. Because of Jesus’ resurrection, we are all being drawn upwards into a cosmic oneness with God! As St. Paul says in the Epistle tonight, “If we have been united with him in a death like his, we will certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his.” Something about this night stirs up a trembling throughout all of humanity. For it announces a transformation of such magnitude that is now possible for all peoples, for all creation. Jesus’ resurrection forever marks and points the way for the journey of all believers. “This is the Way. Walk in it.”
But we, like the women in Mark’s gospel, who were the first to discover that Resurrection had happened, know something of the same terror and amazement that seizes our beings. “He is not here, He is risen,” a messenger tells them. It takes time for the reality, depth and impact of Jesus’ resurrection to settle into our humanity. The mystical moment of God’s resurrecting power within us evokes an awesome fear before the unknown. Resurrection breaks into our awareness in that most intimate of moments when God rolls away the stone from the door of our entombment in selfishness, or in some woundedness or addiction. Our senses tremble in fearful awe. But as we undergo our own paschal deaths and paschal resurrections we can be assured of God’s power working within us with the same hope. When resurrection happens to us interiorly we too are radically changed. Something shifts and we are lighter, freer. We experience a new life coming into our beings! A new life of recovery, a new life of hope like we never understood before. Life has changed not ended! When resurrection happens to us, we find ourselves, like the women, transformed in the moment, set into motion with a new mission for the world.
The miracle of Resurrection keeps breaking into our world. Tonight we recall with Christians everywhere, our own places and memories of those silent, solitary early morning resurrections. The Easter mission started that day with the women at the tomb: “Go and tell the others.” May we go back to our homes, families and communities, go on with our lives, ‘changed’, ‘transformed’ and ‘renewed’ by these mysteries remembered and celebrated here these days.
“How blessed of all nights.”
How blessed we are to be here in this sacred place at this sacred time where ‘heaven truly is wedded to earth.” How blessed are we to share life within a natural earth and a human community, that is awake to God, exploding in beauty, in praise. The glory of God revealed everywhere! And tonight we hold our earth that is still groaning, awaiting its rebirth. In the power of our Resurrection grace may we hold together the tension of these opposites and carefully choose to live every moment “alive in God” as an Easter people moving always towards the more. Yes, there is more… we are moving always towards the more. We can confidently step away from our empty tombs. “He is not here. He is risen.” We can seek out the infinitely more…more than we can ask or imagine. There is a “length, breadth, height and depth” of God awaiting to be further revealed to us in this most blessed of all nights. So let us reach for those Alleluias, stretch ourselves to some new depths of faith and behold the Risen Jesus, already here, in our midst, speaking our name, calling us to “Come alive… walk with Me into the future… singing your joy!
Comments
.... Come and be with Jesus. It is time. It is now.
Thanks be to God! Alleluia!!