Holy Saturday: Easter Vigil

Then God said: “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness”….  

God created man in his image; in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them…. 

And so it happened. God looked at everything he had made; and he found it very good.

 Genesis 1: 26,27, 31

Thus says the Lord: 

This is for me like the days of Noah, 

when I swore that the waters of Noah 

should never again deluge the earth; 

so I have sworn not to be angry with you, 

or to rebuke you. 

Though the mountains leave their place 

and the hills be shaken, 

my love shall never leave you 

nor my covenant of peace be shaken, 

says the Lord who has mercy on you.

Isaiah 54: 9-10

Thus says the Lord: All you who are thirsty, come to the water!

Come to me heedfully, listen, that you may have life…. 

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

Isaiah 55: 1, 3, 9

I will give you a new heart and place a new spirit within you, taking from your bodies your stony hearts and giving you natural hearts…. You shall be my people, and I will be your God.

Ezekiel 36:26-28

If then, we have died with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with him.

Romans 6: 8

Why do you seek the living one among the dead?
He is not here, but he has been raised.

 Luke 24: 5-6

There are constant reminders of ugliness, pain, injustice, and cruelty in our world. Disasters of nature and illness are hard to take. Atrocities resulting from human behavior are the worst. Across the globe there are many reminders of the need for peace, justice, beauty, and love.

Our Easter celebration is a much needed and essential reminder of what we are called and graced to be. Created as the image of God and baptized to be another Christ, each Christian person is called and graced to be light shining through the darkness, an instrument of peace in situations of animosity, a source of beauty rising from the ugliness and muck of life. May the Easter greeting of each of our parish family be less action and words and more a clear sense of who we are and a deepening desire to be, by God’s call and grace, what we are intended to be.

In the Love of Jesus,

Father Lenny Zamborsky
April 4, 1999

For Reflection:

Throughout Salvation History, God has gifted his people with immeasurable love and boundless mercy. Just brief snippets of the beautiful Scriptures shared at the Easter Vigil fill my heart with thanks for our Faith. What a journey this life of ours is! How graced we are to be called the friends of Christ Jesus, his sisters and brothers. I pray that I can answer God’s call to be light to a world of darkness and peace to those who may be suffering around me from violence or despair.  I am not always even pretty sure of what God intends me to be, but Easter makes me confident that his plan will unfold – no, make that enfold me – if I allow the grace of Jesus work in my heart. Alleluia! He is risen!