SATURDAY MARCH 31, 2024
HOLY SATURDAY VIGIL OF EASTER B
GEN 1:1-2:2
Gen 22:1-18
Exodus 14:15-15:1
Isaiah 54:5-14
Isaiah 55:1-11
Baruch 3:9-15.32-4:4
Ezekiel 36:16-17.18-25
Roman 6:3-11
Mark 16:1-7
CHRIST: OUR HOPE OF VICTORY. WHAT MORE DO YOU EXPECT?
This Holy night, the church takes us back to the beginning of the world, of creation and traces the great acts of God with the intent to reassure us that our God cares for us, and that our God designed the plan of our salvation and our God never willed that any one be lost.
The creation story details the beauty and grandeur with which the world is created. And at the end God saw that all things were good. Yet the appetite of man drives him away from God. But even at that God sought and found man and in Abraham taught us that faith, total submission and sincere acceptance of God’s designs is the only way to keep faith in God.
The deliverance from the house of Slavery from Egypt prefigures the deliverance of God’s people from the slavery of sins, evil life and eternal damnation. But man’s disobedience and obstinacy continues to drive him away from God. That notwithstanding, the mercy, love and compassion of God still follows us with the different prophets becoming the Oracle of God calling man back to him.
But the definitive revelation came when God took flesh in Jesus and incarnated to feel our humanity, to thread our world, to experience our joys, difficulties, weaknesses and glories as seen in Jesus.
Having celebrated his life, especially his agony and suffering, we ponder today his death and resurrection for our sake and our salvation. The evidence of his love and compassion over us is seen in the mysteries of his death and resurrection.
His resurrection is our hope of salvation. It is the height of the assurance of the supremacy of God’s will over us. It is the cancellation of our sentence of condemnation, resulting from our sinfulness. In this sacrifice Jesus exchanged his life with our lives. He undertook our punishment and sufferings and gave us life, peace and sanity. Jesus resets and returned our life back to its original default.
The resurrection is a certain means of establishing mankind in the love of the Father and cancelling the curse man incurred from his sinful inclinations forever. Again, the resurrection of Jesus confirms God’s faithfulness to his designs and intentions over man, that none of us will be lost in the kingdom.
Jesus stands supreme in our lives, because he is our hope of glory. He raises us up from slavery to glory, from satan’s dungeon to God’s kingdom, and from condemnation to elevated acclamation of glory.
He is our hope, our joy, our peace and our salvation. And we must key into him as such, in obedience to his commands, in sincere faith and commitment, in love and service of his will and in total self giving to him.
We stand as his mouthpiece, his ambassador and we nurse the hope of the resurrection, a sure hope of salvation and peace.
Heavenly Father, you granted us the victory of our lives in Christ’s death and resurrection. By his resurrection, may we be elevated to a sinless life, a life of glory, and a peacefully victorious life. May we gain our victory over life and life struggles and attain eternal bliss in the glory of the Father through Christ our Lord.
Fr Norbert Uchuno
