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By Father Paul W. Berny
The day is empty … it must be … for our
Lent has brought us face-to-face with rock, sealed, cold … enclosing death
within. But this Lent has been our movement, our death, and in truth our
entombment. This is no mere sleep, no simple play, no caricature, but the real
thing … we have walked with Him … in Him … and have come
face-to-face with the same thing He did … but didn't He remind us of that
… unless you take up your cross …
Our church building is empty … nothing takes
place there on this day … the sacraments are not celebrated … the
Eucharist is not present … and in our emptiness we wait … as night
draws on … and in the darkness and emptiness of night we strike a flame to
enkindle hope and faith … for the tomb is also empty … and death is
empty … and fear is empty … a light that leaps to a great fire, in
candles carried, yes, but in faces more, and hearts even greater … Christ
always … the start and finish … all belongs to Him … Christ our
light.
… and in the silence that can be so empty, we
are filled with Word … Word that reminds, that enlivens, that refreshes
… that calls forth the word that has been silent and missing for forty
days … and in long phrases and many notes, from the bottom of our hearts,
the night and the silence are pierced with an Alleluia …
… and in that response, coming from a people
newly made alive, new lives come forward, after long preparation and prayer
… after scrutinizes and exorcism … and anointings and presentations
… to be touched in their emptiness with water filled with light … to
arise newly reborn from fresh and clean water … to be touched with hands
and oil and Spirit … a deeper family … a richer family … all of
us receive that water to bind us in freedom … in love …
… and in our hunger and thirst … to body
and spirit … we break our fast and make it feast … He is priest,
altar and lamb … He is life and spirit … He is bread and wine …
we have come to the tomb only to discover a table … that He has become out
paschal sacrifice and the bread of our feast is sincerity and truth …
… we return home under the light of the
paschal moon, full and beaming … with our lives full and beaming, to
return to Galilee, our home, our life, our world, where He promises He will be
seen …
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