If silence was the response I suggested for the Cross yesterday, this evening I suggest our response is one of amazement and awe. From start to finish this liturgy has so many beautiful and deeply significant moments: the blessing of the new fire, lighting the paschal candle, the proclaiming of the risen Jesus in the Exsultet, the renewal of our baptismal vows etc. It is, however, to the liturgy of the Word that I would like to focus our attention this evening.
As our Vigil began, I said: let us listen with quiet hearts to the Word of God. Let us meditate on how God in times past saved his people. We have been sitting at the feet of the Word of God and listened to nine passages of scripture. In many ways it has been a prolonged period of shared Lectio Divina. What, I wonder, did you hear? What stirred or touched your heart? What will you carry with you from this encounter with the Word of life?
This evening God’s Word has taken us on an amazing journey starting from the very moment of creation when God put flesh on love, for that is what you are, His love made flesh. No wonder when God looked out, he saw everything and saw that it was very good. How different would our life be if our starting point each day was to look with the lens of goodness at everyone and everything? To see life not as a problem to get through but an amazing gift to embrace. God looks at you with love and He sees beauty and goodness, because He sees himself in you. That’s our vocation. That is what Jesus came to restore.
But then what about the inevitable difficulties we all must face? What about the tough choices we need to make? Abraham discovered that God would never abandon us at such moments. How different would our problems and difficulties be if we had confidence in His supporting presence? If we waited upon Him with quiet hearts?
Faced with the impossible, the Red Sea, we can easily give up and be discouraged, but God can divide and provide a safe way through. If you and I truly built our life on trust, if we lived what we say we believed would we find a way through the obstacles in life? If in the moment of despair, I prayed and lived: Jesus I trust in you, how different would my problems be?
Would we, perhaps, find what Isaiah revealed that in all our doubt and confusion, in all our shame and weakness, if we are quiet enough, we will hear the Lord say to us? - “With an everlasting love I will have compassion on you.”? Will we hear deep within us His invitation? - “Come to me, that your soul my live, and I will make with you an everlasting covenant.”
And what about the encouragement we heard from Baruch? - “Learn where there is wisdom, where there is strength, where there is understanding” How do we learn this wisdom, strength and understanding? He gave us the answer: walk towards the shining light of the Lord. That light will shine because of what God promised through the prophet Ezekial: I will put my Spirit within you. I will give you a new heart. How eager are you for this new heart? How ready to be filled with His Spirit.
As for me, my prayer at this very moment is simple: Come Lord, come and do again in us tonight, what you have promised. Give us now, at this moment, an experience of your indwelling Spirit.
Give us a new heart tonight. Let all of us leave this place transformed. Shining with your life and radiating your light.
Brothers and sisters, I am not ashamed to say, I want more. I want what God wants. I want all of us this evening to experience what Paul has boldly proclaimed. I want us during the renewal of the baptismal promises to consider ourselves dead to sin and alive to God. I want Christ to be risen in us. I have had enough of living half a life, I yearn for life itself in all its fullness.
Hence wonder and amazement, all this comes from listening to and deciding to live in the power and presence of the Word of God. Our Triduum this year has focused on our hunger for life. But all life needs proper nourishment, it needs a stable reference point. For you and I this means daily sitting with the Word of God and feeding on His truth, the only truth that sets us free. The only truth that points us in the right direction. Make this a priority. When we open God’s Word we step into the world of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, we find ourselves changed, because we see things differently. We see them as God sees them.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a martyr for his faith once said: “Before our daily bread should be our daily Word.” Fr Christopher has led some of you into a deeper experience of living in and from this daily bread, this Word of life and Martha Byrne-Hill also spoke today of its impact. Fr Richard shared with you the great value of ‘stability’ in a world that is all too unstable. If you want to live in the promises of God that we have heard this evening, if you are hungry for life and are serious about living life better rather than bitter, then here is the challenge, start your day, by feeding on God’s Word. What if that practice becomes a stable and consistent part of your discipleship how would that change your life, the choices you make and the conversations you have? How would it change our world?
If the death of Jesus was the day the revolution began, then this evening is a clear indication that he did not die simply to leave behind a powerless, ineffective, sleeping Church. He wants us to be awake to love. In his remarkable book: The Shack, William Paul Young puts in the mouth of God this awesome truth: “The God who is – the I am who I am – cannot act apart from love.” This is the night when things of heaven are wed to those of earth. This is the night when we become a new creation through love. Are you ready to experience an infusion of new life?
Abbot Robert Igo, OSB
Ampleforth Abbey
4 April 2026
