Archbishop McKnight: Easter is fullest expression of hope’s light in the darkness
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The light of hope kept getting brighter as it spread through the darkened Cathedral of St. Joseph.
Much like how life once returned to a tomb near a hill called Golgotha, altering all of human history.
“Tonight, we are brought from slavery-to-sin in the shadow of death, to walking in the light of hope and mercy with our brothers and sisters,” proclaimed Archbishop Shawn McKnight at this year’s Easter Vigil in the Cathedral.
The Mass, offered in each parish after dusk on Holy Saturday, is the Church’s first celebration of Easter.
“Tonight is the holiest of all nights, the center of the Paschal Triduum — three holy days —and in fact, the apex of the entire liturgical year,” Archbishop McKnight proclaimed from the ambo.
“The entire liturgical year centers on this celebration of the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead,” he stated.
“On this night, God the Father raised his only Son from the dead,” the archbishop preached. “On this night, the light of hope shines brightly in a world shadowed by sin and death.”
The Easter Vigil is a liturgy overflowing with prayers and symbolism from the earliest days of Christianity, including the lighting of the Easter fire outside the Cathedral; the proclamation of readings and psalms encapsulating all of salvation history; the first singing of the Alleluia since the Sunday before Ash Wednesday; and the presider administering the sacraments of Baptism, Confirmation and First Holy Communion on the parish’s newest members.
The rest of the congregation joined in renewing their Baptismal promises.
Archbishop McKnight ignited and blessed the Easter fire and used it to light the Easter candle, the fire from which was passed to candles held by everyone in the congregation, dispelling the darkness in the vast Cathedral.
“Tonight is when all of this comes to fruition in the Resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead!” Archbishop McKnight proclaimed.
“The entire liturgical year centers on this celebration of the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead,” he stated. “All that has come before, beginning with Advent and Christmas, and all the flows afterward, with the Easter Season, the celebration of Pentecost, and the rest of Ordinary Time.”
This was the last Easter Vigil Archbishop McKnight would celebrate as head of the Jefferson City diocese. He will be installed as archbishop of Kansas City in Kansas on May 27.
This year’s celebration coincides with the Church-wide Jubilee Year of Hope.
In his Easter Vigil homily, Archbishop McKnight focused on a phrase from St. Paul’s Letter to the Romans: “We were indeed buried with him through Baptism into death, so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we, too, might have in newness of life.” (6:4)
The archbishop said Paul’s turn of phrase here refers not only to resurrection from physical death, but to new life, “the resurrected life that we share with Christ and his Holy Spirit in the here and now.”
“We are all baptized so that we may live in the light of hope in a world that is sometimes cold and dark, with too much death, violence, greed and hatred,” the archbishop noted.
He pointed to Paul’s own radical conversion from being a zealous persecutor of Christians to becoming one of God’s most effective preachers and eventually giving his own life for the faith.
“Our reception of the sacraments is our own moment of transformation,” the archbishop noted.
“All of us here tonight carry spiritual wounds in need of healing, self-inflicted wounds that come from our sins of commission and omission,” he stated.
Although the fullness of resurrected life will only come in the general resurrection of the dead on the last day, “even now the light of God’s hope is given to us through the preaching of Christ’s Gospel and in the celebration of the Sacraments.”
“Our lives are different because of the mercy we have experienced,” the archbishop proclaimed. “And living the resurrected life means living in Christ’s peace with God and one another.
“This Easter, I pray that you and your families may share in this Easter newness of life!” he said.
