Forty-five years ago, in February 1951, Pius XII began the renewal of Holy Week when he moved the Easter Vigil to the evening. And he added a prayer to the ancient rite which can be a key to an understanding of the mysteries of Christ's passion, death, and rising: "Christ yesterday and today, the beginning and the end, Alpha and Omega. All time belongs to Him and all the ages. To Him be glory and power through every age forever. Amen."

The text is a key because it highlights the role of time in our celebration. Tonight we do not merely hold a memorial service. Rather, we move out of experienced time into mystical time, God's Now, grace time. We do not simply hear the Passion sung, recall His dying, recount His rising. We are instead present. These all happen now because liturgically we are not in literal time. The implications are breath-taking.

There is a sense of this when Louisville people are told that their parish church will be closed, perhaps sold, even torn down. It is more than mere memory or sentiment, a life long association. It is rather that religion and the service of God touch eternity. A place that has known commerce with the eternal is too holy to be closed, to be sold, to be torn down. This insight in some way may color their reaction to a situation.

The Church shares this view in retaining names of dioceses long since gone, gone even physically. Bishops who do not function as Ordinaries are made titular bishops. In a way, a diocese goes on, no matter what the actual situation may be. Something holy is forever holy.

In France a diocesan bishop who fell out of favor was removed and made titular bishop of Partenia, a place long since buried in the sands of Algeria. A friend in the internet put Partenia on line on a world wide web. By it the bishop is in instant contact with uncounted numbers who can reach him at any moment from anywhere in the world. The world's first network bishop. The diocese lives on by virtue of electronic communion. In a sense.

But in the grace of God in the holy mysteries of these days of the Great Week, the curtain parts, torn from top to bottom, and reveals a glimpse of timeless eternity, the eternal now of God, wholly incomprehensible to us and yet far more real than the construct we call time that we live in, let alone some computer world.

Here is more than intimation of immortality. The life we know is not mere human life; it shares the divine. The passion, death and rising are no mere memories, but actualities we witness, share in, are part of.

This gives life a scope almost unbelievable, makes Christ's passion personal, for we have a hand in it as sinners. We witness a hideous death undergone in a cold spring rain for us. We witness under our Paschal moon a glorious rising on the first day of a new time.

All of which is a bit much for frail human nature. Hence we experience it in touches, hints and moments of light. But for real.

We venerate old ruins. We treasure relics of the past. We keep alive memories of great ones gone, not to bring back the past. Or lest we forget it. Rather: to suggest that there is more than time. And we believe that, know that, for it is the Christ of yesterday and today, the beginning and the end, Alpha and Omega. All time belongs to Him. And all ages.

The familiar Apostles' Creed used to have it so: "...born of the Virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate, died and was buried. He descended into Hell and on the third day rose again." A current text reads not "descended into Hell" but "descended to the dead." Language changes. Truth does not. The "harrowing of Hell" refers to Christ's passing this night through the realms of the dead, as the new Catechism has it: "not to descend into Hell to deliver the damned, not to destroy the Hell of damnation, but to free the just who had gone before Him." This fills the mind with questions: Where were the dead the while? Did they note the passing of time as we do? And does the harrowing of Hell continue in our day as He ransoms those who never knew Him in this life, the good departed? "Harrowing of Hell" is old English for this mystery, harrowing in the sense of despoiling, plundering, robbing Satan of the captive.

Relish the immortal dimension of your life. This is knowledge in grace, the wisdom of the heart. Here is scope to existence, neither fanciful nor imaginative. In the mysteries we celebrate these days, we reach sublimest heights and most terrifying depths. O Holy God, O Holy Immortal God. O Holy Immortal God have mercy on us.  Amen

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