This Easter Vigil is a lot to take in. In sights and sounds, in words and music… it is very much the story of our faith and, let’s be honest, there’s nothing at all succinct about the way we tell it tonight. 

The Easter candle and its one singular point of light entering into the back of a darkened church and then radiating out like a slow wave is not only visually beautiful, it is also metaphorically quite powerful. 

This whole night really is… the story of our faith. 

The events of Holy Thursday, Good Friday, and tonight bring us through the full story arc, through the passion, death, and then resurrection of Christ… from the descent to the ascent, from a diminished state to one that is exalted. 

Our lives are like this, filled with descents and ascents. I was thinking of this recently when driving just a few miles south of here on Route 1A, past the stretch of land that has a maximum security prison on one side and youth athletic fields on the other. If you go by there on a warm spring day, you cut right through an incredible and stark visual contrast. On one side of the road, you have promise, optimism, community, joy, and freedom. On the other, it’s anything but. 

The line that separates these on Route 1A is quite thin, and for all of us, we could find ourselves during our lives, metaphorically speaking, more so on one side of it than the other. If not for that loving, creator God… the hand we are dealt and the side of the road we’re on is all there is to it. You get what you get. It is what it is. 

The story of our faith, however, as we have heard over and over again tonight, frequently tells of diminishment becoming exaltation, whether it’s light entering darkness in the original creation story, or Abraham’s great test, or the plight of captives escaping Pharaoh’s grasp, or Mary Magdalene preparing to anoint a body only to discover an empty tomb instead. 

A friend of mine who is a deacon told me this story recently. He has been assigned to a parish in Boston for many, many years and as he ages, he is experiencing rapidly declining health. He has significant balance issues and can’t stand steady for long times. So now, when he gives out communion at Mass, he needs to stand over to the side of the church leaning against a wall rather than in the center aisle. And then, the strangest thing started happened. He began to see, on a regular basis, people he had never really noticed there before. People who preferred being low key, staying toward the back, and near the side. 

As time went by, he came to know them and hear their stories, some of which were pretty difficult and filled with much struggle. He could relate to them and they to him. And then he told me: “It wasn’t until I was diminished myself that I finally understood how to serve.” 

I thought to myself, now that’s an Easter story. 

You see, it’s about that story arc. The one filled with light and possibilities and hope. And it doesn’t matter which side of Route 1A you find yourself on in life. 

There is an enduring song written by African American slaves in the 1800s called Were You There. It opens with “Were you there when they crucified my Lord?” but ends with “Were you there when the stone was rolled away?” 

That’s descent and then ascent.

It’s being diminished and becoming exalted.

The story of our faith, in as succinct a manner as is possible, can be summarized as follows: because of Christ, we are diminished no more.