I will never forget Easter Eve in 2020, at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. At the time, I was serving in another parish, and because of pandemic, the liturgies of Holy Week and Easter were closed to the public. Thankfully, my parish had multiple clergy on staff, as well as some young adults living in community so that at least we could gather for the Holy Week and Easter liturgies in person. They were all livestreamed to Facebook, broadcast from a locked up church, sealed like a tomb.
Things could not take place as usual that year. There was no congregation, and so we decided to observe only the first part of the Great Vigil of Easter without celebrating Mass at the end. That needed to wait for Easter Day. In the isolation and fear of the pandemic, it just didn’t seem right for us to celebrate Communion that night. Before we shared in the Lord’s Body and Blood on Easter Day, we needed to wait. We needed to spend some time in our sorrow, sitting in the darkness, in sympathy with a hurting world.
We were gathered in the shadows at the back of the large nave, near the font. It felt as if we were in a tomb. We were in a tomb, to some extent. We had all come to see the tomb. Jesus had been resting in the grave for two days, and we, like the two Mary’s in Matthew’s Gospel, had come to the tomb to see it. That year, with hospitals inundated with the sick and dying, it was spiritually necessary to look at the tomb.
Gathering around the font—its own kind of tomb—that night was filled with uncertainty. All around us people were perishing. We didn’t know how long the pandemic would last. Even the handful of us who were there in person were not immune from risk. We didn’t all share the same house. What if one of us was carrying the virus? There was a deep tinge of suffering that night as we gathered around the tomb of the font. Even after the new fire was kindled, we sat and waited in the darkness, longing for the next day’s Easter Communion, knowing that that year, Easter glory couldn’t be separated from suffering and death. It never can be.
This is the night when we have come to see the tomb like Mary Magdalene and the other Mary. We have no other purpose for being here than to see the tomb. Unlike some of the other Gospels, in Matthew’s account, the two Mary’s didn’t go to the tomb to anoint Jesus’s body. They simply went to see it. Something within them must have felt compelled to sit with death. These women had stuck with Jesus through his excruciating journey to the cross. They stayed there, watching him take his last breaths on the cross. We have done the same this week. We have waited with Jesus, trying to stay with him, just as he—Emmanuel, God with us—always stays with us.
The Easter Vigil is an exercise in patient waiting, of fumbling around in the dark, of trying to see a leaflet, of not knowing who is next to you in the pew. It’s a long marking of time, hearing, as we do each year, the story of God’s saving purposes in the history of the people of Israel. It’s our story, too. The light of the Paschal candle keeps our hope alive, but this night, we come face to face with the overwhelming reality of darkness. We ignore this darkness at our peril.
Because all around us, people are stumbling their way through the night. Light is absent for those cowering in fallout shelters as bombs scream in the air, for those innocents caught in the power games of world leaders, and for those fearing deportation and the loss of their families. Evil continually insinuates itself within our daily lives, often unnoticed but always destructive. Some of us, surely, have our own sorrows and troubles—the darkness within—that we have brought to the tomb this night. The honest path spends some time with that, not relishing it but acknowledging its existence. Like that small group of people gathered around the font during a pandemic six years ago, we can’t yet rush to Easter so quickly.
One among us this night, who is newly baptized, has waited for six months through preparation and spiritual discipline to go into the waters of the tomb of the font, to be buried with Christ in his death and to rise again with him in his resurrection. Tonight, all of us do the same. We die to self and rise to new life in Christ. Each year at this time, we experience a spiritual rebirth. It can only happen by going to the tomb to see it, to sit with it, and then to behold what happens next.
And what happens next—what has already happened this night—is something spectacular. For the two Mary’s at Jesus’s tomb, the boldness to go and confront the cold emptiness of death prompted an earthquake. An angel of the Lord descends from heaven, rolls back the stone, and announces the Easter proclamation. Do not be afraid of what you see. He is not here, for he has been raised, as he said. Come see the place where he lay.
Without the patient, sorrowful waiting of the two Mary’s, the earthquake would simply be a cheap trick. It would turn Easter into a grand spectacle rather than a miraculous entry into present time of a completely new order. Because the women have waited through the final agony of Jesus, seen the bloody execution, gone to see the tomb, and found it empty, they genuinely announce the Easter proclamation. The earthquake is not a theatrical event intended to prove the resurrection to them. These women know of their own accord what has happened by God’s mighty hand. They saw death, but now, they see life. The earthquake is simply the visible sign of a glorious parting of the veil between this world and the next.
As if to emphasize just how marvelous this seismic shift is, the story doesn’t end at the tomb. There’s no emotional letdown after the joy of Easter. This story is only beginning. It’s gaining momentum like it never has before, because these women must run from the tomb—run, not walk—and tell the other disciples what they have seen.
What they have seen over the past week is cruelty, lies, violence, torture, and death. They have seen humanity at its worst. They have seen two kingdoms in conflict. This is the night when we, too, see two kingdoms in conflict. But now, because the two Mary’s have seen the empty tomb, they know what kingdom truly reigns. And this is the night that we know what kingdom still reigns. The two Mary’s know that a love that dies without retributive violence is true love, perfect love, and this love never dies. Indeed, this man who loved them so, although he has died, yet still lives. And this must be told to the entire world. This story will go on to Galilee, for there, the women and the disciples will see Jesus again. Even though death has occurred, he, Emmanuel, is still with them. And he is with us, too.
This is the night. The light has come. Easter is here. But that doesn’t mean that the darkness has vanished. In this life, it will, in fact, never perish. And yet, although we will inevitably fumble through the darkness as long as we live, the one whom God raised from the dead will forever go before us. He is always many steps before us, preparing a new future for us, calling us to become little Christs to the world. This is the night when his message is the same for us as it was for the two Mary’s. Do not be afraid. Go and tell all you meet to go out into the world, into its darkness bearing the light of Christ. He has already gone before us. And if we run from the tomb with joyful fear, there, we will see him. Alleluia!
Sermon by Father Kyle Babin
The Great Vigil and First Mass of Easter
Sunday, April 4, 2026