The Bible teaches that God made the world in seven days.  Now this doesn’t mean the world was literally created in a 7-day time period the way we measure time (it took billions of years by the way we measure time).  Creation is depicted in seven days to help us understand how our world relates to God.  No seven-day human week explains the process of creation.  It’s the other way around: the process of creation explains our seven-day work week.

    1st Reading (Gn 1) – As we listen to this first reading of the Easter vigil, the story of creation, let us focus on first Word God ever spoke: “Let there be light.”  God made the world out of the chaos and darkness of nothingness, and He did this by bringing light.  Through Christ, the Father will bring the world out of the chaos and darkness of sin, out of death a second time.  This is the night when Light overcame the darkness of death.

    This evening following the Passion Service we will show the movie The Passion of the Christ, in order to meditate on Jesus’ suffering and death.  This movie draws a lot from the visions and meditations of Blessed Anne Catherine Emmerich (1774-1824), a mystic and stigmatic.

    The three Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke all recall the key event of the Last Supper, when Jesus converted the bread and wine into his body and blood.  St. Paul also explains how Jesus instituted the Eucharist at the Last Supper (in his letter to the Corinthians): “I handed on to you what was handed on to me, that the Lord Jesus, on the night he was betrayed, took bread, and after giving thanks [according to the usual Passover thanksgiving prayer], he broke it and said, ‘This is my body that is for you.’  In the same way also the cup after supper [i.e., the third Passover cup], saying ‘this cup is the new covenant in my blood…’” 

    A few weeks ago, Jesus went up the mountain to pray with his three closest disciples, Peter, James, and John, and was transfigured in their presence.  His face and body shone with the radiance of divine glory.  Forty days later, Jesus enters the Garden of Gethsemane, once again to pray with his three closest disciples, Peter, James, and John.  But now, his body and face are transfigured in anguish, as he sweats blood.  It is a bitter cup of suffering he will have to drink, and he prays that the Father will let this cup pass him by.