Jen's view of Saturday night

Easter Vigil: for me, words almost ruin it.  Admitting those truths which are held in the deepest part of you in words almost makes them feel less vibrant or alive.  Never less true, just duller.  We process into a dark church, a church which has been missing it’s Christ since Thursday night.  It is right to be dark; go ahead and try to imagine the anguish Mary and the Disciples felt as their Lord was arrested, tried unjustly and ultimately murdered brutally.  We are feeling deeply the loss of someone who is at the very least our best friend and at very most our… everything.  Without him what is there for me?  What good is a church?

But he started that Church and he promised that the gates of Hell could not prevail against it.  So we stand in the dark, in prayer, in vigil, in ultimate hope.  I deserve this after all, it was my sins that set him on the cross, but for days I have begged him for the Grace of forgiveness and healing.  Light from our candles fills the room so that it is dancing and dazzling.  We remember the prophets of old, the promises God has fulfilled in his son, and light continues to fill the room, has it started to creep into our heavy hearts as well? 

All of a sudden the bells peal in a rude and welcome chime and the “Gloria!” is proclaimed and we are jubilant because God is a God of love and he has not left us without a Savior.  He is risen, conquering death, conquering the power of the sin that caused him his ultimate agony.  He has never truly left us, and he never will.  Just to sit and soak it in, why can’t the Mass be longer?

I am giddy at the baptisms.  It’s almost a secret addiction to see the beautiful faces of the ones who go through that tiny, vital death and resurrection.  To see a lifetime of sins and yearning for grace finally filled with ever-sufficient grace is one of the most beautiful things I have ever witnessed.  I saw it last year in the glow of my friend Jim who would not stop glowing for months, and I saw it this year on EWTN in the close-ups of the faces of those baptized. 

Then the part I remember best: the confirmation.  I had thought that the moment I received my first Eucharist would be the defining moment of that night for me, but it was ultimately the welcome into Christ’s Church that I remember most.  After I received my name and was blessed with the oil, I had an overwhelming sense that I had been like a motherless child who finally found her way home.  I remember the priest giving me a hug and silently congratulating me and I think I thanked him too loudly.  This year I found myself wiping away tears and asking God for the grace to remember that he had pulled me from the darkness into his wonderful light as I burst with welcome for my new brothers and sisters. 

I remember my first Eucharist, too.  Of all the people who came into the church that day I had to go last.  I had contemplated this moment for well over a year and had thought about all the things I could pray for, how I would feel, the right meditations: even the way I should hold out my tongue, the right volume and tone with which to say my reverent and humble “amen.”  How do you rightly become intimate with your Creator and Redeemer?  What is the “right” thing to think, say, or do when his body, blood, soul and divinity are nourishing you, body and soul?  All I could say was, “thank you.”

Needless to say it is over before I know it.  I had a piece of heaven and just like everything on this earth it is temporary.  Fortunately for me, it is Divine and eternal in nature, and these moments I can treasure in my heart until at last I can achieve the Eternity I have set my heart for so many times during the Mass.  

--Jen