Last weekend’s reports on massive queues and delays in the port of Dover, combined with the news on the security staff at Heathrow Airport and French airspace controllers, made me think that travel these days can be more challenging than usual. Then we remember trains going nowhere because of strikes, and the situation may soon be repeated. I don’t travel too often so my experience of such troubles is limited, but on a number of occasions when my flights were delayed by hours, I found out that killing time at the airport can be expensive and bad for your health (if you do it in a bar) or increasingly boring if you avoid such a place. As we know, the best means of killing time is entertainment in the broadest sense of the word. Nowadays we often use portable devices like smartphones and tablets that give us various ways of killing time. Before their era, I was very happy to have a library of books on my Kindle when I was stuck in Berlin Airport for hours. Before that paperbacks and newspapers were widely used. We could continue to go back gradually but let’s skip a century or so and look at the times when there was no television, no radio, no newspapers; when books were copied by hand and cost a couple of villages per copy while most couldn’t read them anyway because literacy wasn’t common. While news from the world outside their village or the city walls was often provided by travelling merchants, church gatherings were the way to learn about the past and find in it hope for the future. In fact, such traditions reach back well into the very distant past. We find them in the Old Testament, in the prescription of how to celebrate Jewish Passover; the instruction given by Moses.
That’s what we are doing tonight. The Paschal Vigil in its full form consists of seven readings from the Old Testament, each followed by a corresponding responsorial psalm. The idea is to recall the most important events in the history of salvation, such as the creation of the universe, the sacrifice of Abraham and the Passing through the Red Sea. Then the rest of the selected readings focus on the promises and prophecies foretelling the ultimate renewal of humankind. Finally, the readings from the Letter of St Paul to the Romans and from the Gospel of St Matthew show the fulfilment of those promises in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. The Church reluctantly allows us to limit the number of readings from the Old Testament to three, but one must not be omitted – the Passing of the Red Sea. Although the literal story in its details is highly questionable (that’s a matter for a separate sermon, really) the symbolic meaning of it is important. It has always been seen as the pattern of baptism. The Israelites escaped certain death at the hands of the Pharaoh’s army while the latter was buried in the closing waters. In his death, burial and rising back to life Jesus is the new Moses, the new leader leading the new Chosen People to a new life, free of slavery to sin. This new life is available to everyone in sacramental baptism. These days we pour water over the head of the baptised, but for centuries baptism was performed in a more spectacular manner that made its symbolism much more obvious. The baptised were fully immersed in the waters that closed above them, a symbolic burial of their past life. Having emerged, they came out to a new life while their past sins remained buried. In a symbolic way, each one of us passed from death to life when we were baptised.
Easter is the time when we commemorate the redeeming sacrifice made by Jesus and renew our commitment to living a new life of God’s grace. That’s the meaning of a short dialogue that will soon follow in place of the Creed when we will publicly reject whatever is contrary to God and profess our faith in a positive manner. Easter celebrated in the right way ought not to be limited to outward ceremonies – however spectacular they might be – but to move our hearts to a renewed commitment to our Christian faith, shown every day in what we say and what we do. We can face such a challenge because we don’t do it on our own. We have the Risen Lord, Jesus Christ with us and in us. If we follow Him, the Ultimate Victor, however scary the road ahead seems to be, we will safely reach what has been promised: a life that never ends.
