Shakespeare in his drama frequently followed serious, tragic scenes with light, humorous ones. By way of contrast, the tragic seemed more tragic, the comic more humorous. So now this night, we put darkness and light together. So we come to appreciate more the density of our sinful situation, the glory of the risen light of the redeeming Christ.

Within the span of only three days we have witnessed the most wretched scene history has known when we put the Christ of God to death on the tree. And that followed so soon after by the triumph of saving love in the resurrection, the most significant event in the world.

Sin has done the worst it was capable of. The divine response was healing in a forgiving love that conquered sin, death and darkness.

But there is another contrast and that is the juxtaposition of time and eternity. Here the two are laid one against the other and so point up the transience of time, the now of eternity.

For this is no commemoration service in which we devoutly recall past events. Quite the contrary: we witness to the original event, more than witnesses — we are involved. We share in the death and share in the rising because our sins are involved.

For this is no replay of Calvary. We do not run through it again each year at this holy season. There is but one death and rising. And the events are transcendent, ignore time, are present only in God's eternal now. And in that now we briefly share when we move onto the stage of these events. We are out of time. We taste eternity. Indeed, we do so in every Eucharist. But in this holy time more profoundly, more dramatically.

And the implications are, of course, worth a note. We recall the Apostles' Creed, the prayer we used more frequently in the past than now when the Creed of this Mass is more familiar. "I believe in God the Father Almighty, maker of Heaven and earth, and in Jesus Christ, His only Son, our Lord, who was conceived of the Holy Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary, He suffered, died and was buried, descended into Hell, and on the third day rose again and ascended into Heaven."

In recent years "descended into Hell" has been changed to "descended to the dead." Not that truth changes, but that words do. Meanings shift over the years. Hell once meant Sheol, Hades, the regions of the dead. Not the Hell of eternal damnation. And Christ descended there to bring all to His glorious Kingdom — the good dead who knew not Christ, whose salvation could only come from Him, without whom entrance into Heaven was impossible. For there is no salvation but in Jesus. The Scriptures tell us that God enlightens everyone who comes into this world. When that light is heeded, when people do the best they can with what they have, their life has integrity that is completed by Christ's coming to them to rescue them from the powers of darkness fruit of the evil one. The ancients called it the "harrowing of Hell." Both words have different meanings today. But it was the despoiling Satan of his victims that was involved.

And if Christ's passion, death and rising are living experiences of today, if the contemporary world is redeemed by Christ's Cross and His grace poured out in our time, through the continued presence of His saving death, then Christ continues to descend to the regions of the dead, or in the archaic text, descended into Hell, then all the dead who have not known Christ, His Church, but have followed  [what] they had, follow Christ into His Kingdom. Something that goes on now, just as salvation goes on now. Or in the text of another day, "Salvation is applied through the ages in Mass and sacrament."

This is a beautiful truth. His passion, death, and now His rising are living realities in our day, realities reaching into the world of the dead, even the unnumbered dead who never knew Christ. And our response of course contributes to the cause, since in grace we build the Kingdom with Christ and bring His work to completion.

Here time is lost in eternity as darkness is lost in light, and sin and death in the merciful redeeming love of the savior now to rise from the dead.  Amen.
 
 

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