Fr. Roger J. Landry
Conversations with Consequences Podcast
Homily for the Easter Sunday
April 8, 2023
To listen to an audio recording of this short Sunday homily, please click below:
The following text guided the homily:
- This is Fr. Roger Landry and it’s a joy for me to wish you and your family a Happy Easter as we enter into the consequential conversation the Lord Jesus, risen from the dead, wants to have with each of us. He wants to meet us like he met Mary Magdalene in the Garden and call us by name. He wants to converse with us like he did with the disciples on the Road to Emmaus, to make our hearts burn as he explains the word of God to us and helps us to recognize him in the Breaking of the Bread. He wants to speak with us like he spoke with the fearful apostles in the Upper Room, to wish us peace, to show us his hands and his side, to impart to us the Holy Spirit, and to send us out from the Upper Room, like he sent them, as witnesses to his resurrection. Jesus ultimately wants to change our lives this Easter and help us to enter more deeply than ever before into his triumph of light over darkness, joy over sadness, love over hatred, and life over death. For this to occur, however, we can’t live Easter in a routine way, as just another important day that will expire in 24 hours. We can’t live it just as an Octave or a 50-day season. We really have to let what Easter means sink deeply within us so that it changes our thinking, our being, our doing, our loving. We have to enter into the Easter metamorphosis.
- The Easter Proclamation, popularly called the Exsultet from its first word in Latin, describes this metamorphosis. What some have called the “Gospel of Easter” or the “Easter Kerygma” is sung at the beginning of the Easter Vigil, after the blessing of the Easter fire and the blessing and lighting of the Paschal Candle. The Church has been singing it for 15 to 17 centuries at the start of her Easter celebrations to try to sum up, despite the poverty of human language, the world-changing importance of Christ’s Easter triumph. I hope that you have the chance to hear it by attending the Easter Vigil, which is the most important and beautiful liturgy of the whole year in which the Church pulls out all the stops in praise and thanksgiving to God for the gift of salvation Christ has brought us. I’d like to highlight a couple elements of it to describe the consequences of the conversation our encounter with the risen Christ is supposed to have.
- The first consequence is joy. In the Exsultet, the deacon, or if he’s not present, the priest, sings with jubilation like a trumpet of salvation the Church’s joy at Christ the King’s triumph, encouraging us to make the holy sanctuaries of the Church “shake with joy” as with “ardent love of mind and heart” we praise God for what he has done for us. We sing of how, in the Sacred Triduum of Holy Thursday, Good Friday and Easter, Jesus fulfilled the ancient Jewish Passover rites. “These, then,” we sing, “are the feasts of Passover, in which is slain the Lamb, the one true Lamb, whose Blood anoints the doorposts of believers.” We reenact, so to speak, with the procession of the Paschal Candle, symbolizing Christ and his light, how God led the children of Israel from slavery in Egypt behind the pillar of fire. And we sing of how Christ has liberated us from more than slavery to Pharoah, but has broken the “prison-bars of death and rose victorious,” leading us on an exodus from sin into the life of grace and communion with the saints. The first revolution in our life encountering the Risen Lord is meant to have abundant joy at his Resurrection, at his triumph, and at how he wants us to share in his victory.
- The second consequence is how we view our sins that led to Christ’s crucifixion. In the Exsultet the Church sings something that at first might seem borderline blasphemous. After praising God for his “humble care,” “love,” and “charity beyond all telling” that led him to give away his Son to ransom us, we sing about the “truly necessary sin of Adam,” the “happy fault that earned so great, so glorious a Redeemer!” The phrase, “O Felix Culpa,” in Latin, or “O Happy Fault,” is normally attributed to St. Augustine, but it’s a really a paraphrase of what St. Augustine said. The saintly bishop of Hippo had actually wrote, “For God judged it better to bring good out of evil than not to permit any evil to exist.” And it’s likely that he was influenced not only by his experience of the multitude of sins of his youth that eventually and happily brought him such a great Redeemer and led him to write about it in his famous “Confession,” but by the preaching of the saintly bishop who had helped him convert in Milan. St. Ambrose would often from different angles stress this theme, something that may have helped St. Augustine realize that God wanted to transform the manure of his past into fertilizer for new growth. St. Ambrose taught in one of his Biblical commentaries, “The Lord knew that Adam would fall and then be redeemed by Christ. Happy ruin, which has such a beautiful reparation!” Elsewhere he said, “We who have sinned more have gained more, because your grace [of mercy, Lord] makes us more blessed than our absence of fault does.” And in one of the Prefaces of the Ambrosian Liturgical rite, the priest sings to God, “You bent down over our wounds and healed us, giving us a medicine stronger than our afflictions, a mercy greater than our fault. In this way even sin, by virtue of your invincible love, served to elevate us to the divine life.”
- We can examine the Scriptural foundations for this truly shocking Easter affirmation. St. Paul told us in his letter to the Romans, “All things,” and here can we think of our sins, faults and failings, “work together for the good for those who love God, for those who are called according to his purpose.” Jesus himself would say more than once, in the great chapter 15 of St. Luke’s Gospel, about the Lost Sheep, Lost Coin and Lost Son: “Heaven rejoices more for one repentant sinner than for 99 who never needed to repent!” And we see that truth played out in Simon the Pharisee’s house when Jesus defends the sinful woman who washed his feet with her tears and dried them with her hair. Against Simon’s objections Jesus affirmed that the one who has been forgiven little, loves little, but the one who has been forgiven much, loves much.” We grow to love Jesus in correspondence to how much we’ve experienced his mercy, and the more we receive his mercy, paradoxically the bigger the celestial celebration.
- This is a beautiful, life-changing truth we have to confront as we prepare for what the Exsultet calls the “sacred night on which our Lord Jesus Christ passed over from death to life.” God seeks to make all our sins happy ones, by bringing us all to experience the healing love of the Redeemer, who note only forgives them, but transforms them into a memory of mercy, an ongoing encounter with his love. In a sense, rather than cutting off dead branches and throwing them away, the experience of God’s mercy is that he raises those lifeless branches from the dead and makes them capable of bearing even greater fruit than they were prior to their demise.
- But we have to confront the question: if the one who has been forgiven more loves more, if where sin abounds grace superabounds, if the Lord’s mercy “makes us more blessed than our absence of fault does,” if heaven rejoices more over one repentant sinner than 99 Blessed Virgin Marys who never needed to repent, then why don’t we just sin boldly, and continuously, and ever more appallingly? Because if we did, we wouldn’t really have been receiving God’s mercy at the depth that it’s supposed to reach. God’s mercy, like the resurrection itself, is transformative. It helps us rise from the death of sin to a new life, from darkness to light. We sing about this transformation in the Exultet right after the proclamation of the Happy Fault. We proclaim, “This is the night that, even now, throughout the world, sets Christian believers apart from worldly vices and from the gloom of sin, leading them to grace and joining them to his holy ones.” A little later we announce, “The sanctifying power of this night dispels wickedness, washes faults away, restores innocence to the fallen, and joy to mourners, drives out hatred, fosters concord, and brings down the mighty.” God’s metamorphic mercy does all of this. That’s why St. Paul asks the Romans: “Shall we persist in sin that grace may abound? Of course not! How can we who died to sin yet live in it?,” And then he responds with words we will hear in the Epistle of the Easter Vigil, “Or are you unaware that we who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were indeed buried with him through baptism into death, so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might live in newness of life. … We know that our old self was crucified with him, so that our sinful body might be done away with, that we might no longer be in slavery to sin. … Consequently, you too must think of yourselves as dead to sin and living for God in Christ Jesus.” In other words, receiving God’s mercy is not the experience of merely having sins wiped away; it’s the experience of death and resurrection. We’re not forgiven just to return to our old way of life. We’re forgiven in order to “live in newness of life,” to “live for God,” to be “dead to sin and alive for God in Christ Jesus.” Sure, we’re going still to struggle. Sure we’re going to need God’s forgiveness anew. But God’s mercy, when we receive it as God wants us to receive it, changes us profoundly, and in a sense transubstantiates us with all our sins into the newness of Christ’s resurrection.
- As we prepare for the Easter Vigil and Easter Sunday, as we get ready to help our parish Churches shake with joy, as we rev up the engines of our hearts to praise, thank, adore, love, celebrate and preach our great Redeemer who came to make even our sins happy faults and transform even crucifixion into an eternal victory, we grasp that he doesn’t want to allow this mystery to remain outside of us. He left the tomb risen from the dead ultimately to be able to enter into us in Holy Communion, as we receive his risen Body and Blood, so that we might share intimately in his resurrection. O happy and necessary sins that have brought us such nourishment, so that we who eat his flesh and drink his blood will live forever! That’s why the Church will rock with joy singing “Alleluia!” in anticipation of heaven, where, with the angels and saints, we one day hope to celebrate our great King’s triumph without ceasing! Happy Easter!
The text of the Easter Proclamation, the Exsultet, on which the homily was based is:
Exult, let them exult, the hosts of heaven,
exult, let Angel ministers of God exult,
let the trumpet of salvation
sound aloud our mighty King’s triumph!
Be glad, let earth be glad, as glory floods her,
ablaze with light from her eternal King,
let all corners of the earth be glad,
knowing an end to gloom and darkness.
Rejoice, let Mother Church also rejoice,
arrayed with the lightning of his glory,
let this holy building shake with joy,
filled with the mighty voices of the peoples.
(Therefore, dearest friends,
standing in the awesome glory of this holy light,
invoke with me, I ask you,
the mercy of God almighty,
that he, who has been pleased to number me,
though unworthy, among the Levites,
may pour into me his light unshadowed,
that I may sing this candle’s perfect praises.)
(V. The Lord be with you.
R. And with your spirit.)
V. Lift up your hearts.
R. We lift them up to the Lord.
V. Let us give thanks to the Lord our God.
R. It is right and just.
It is truly right and just, with ardent love of mind and heart
and with devoted service of our voice,
to acclaim our God invisible, the almighty Father,
and Jesus Christ, our Lord, his Son, his Only Begotten.
Who for our sake paid Adam’s debt to the eternal Father,
and, pouring out his own dear Blood,
wiped clean the record of our ancient sinfulness.
These, then, are the feasts of Passover,
in which is slain the Lamb, the one true Lamb,
whose Blood anoints the doorposts of believers.
This is the night,
when once you led our forebears, Israel’s children,
from slavery in Egypt
and made them pass dry-shod through the Red Sea.
This is the night
that with a pillar of fire
banished the darkness of sin.
This is the night
that even now, throughout the world,
sets Christian believers apart from worldly vices
and from the gloom of sin,
leading them to grace
and joining them to his holy ones.
This is the night,
when Christ broke the prison-bars of death
and rose victorious from the underworld.
Our birth would have been no gain,
had we not been redeemed.
O wonder of your humble care for us!
O love, O charity beyond all telling,
to ransom a slave you gave away your Son!
O truly necessary sin of Adam,
destroyed completely by the Death of Christ!
O happy fault
that earned so great, so glorious a Redeemer!
O truly blessed night,
worthy alone to know the time and hour
when Christ rose from the underworld!
This is the night
of which it is written:
The night shall be as bright as day,
dazzling is the night for me,
and full of gladness.
The sanctifying power of this night
dispels wickedness, washes faults away,
restores innocence to the fallen, and joy to mourners,
drives out hatred, fosters concord, and brings down the mighty.
On this, your night of grace, O holy Father,
accept this candle, a solemn offering,
the work of bees and of your servants’ hands,
an evening sacrifice of praise,
this gift from your most holy Church.
But now we know the praises of this pillar,
which glowing fire ignites for God’s honor,
a fire into many flames divided,
yet never dimmed by sharing of its light,
for it is fed by melting wax,
drawn out by mother bees
to build a torch so precious.
O truly blessed night,
when things of heaven are wed to those of earth,
and divine to the human.
Therefore, O Lord,
we pray you that this candle,
hallowed to the honor of your name,
may persevere undimmed,
to overcome the darkness of this night.
Receive it as a pleasing fragrance,
and let it mingle with the lights of heaven.
May this flame be found still burning
by the Morning Star:
the one Morning Star who never sets,
Christ your Son,
who, coming back from death’s domain,
has shed his peaceful light on humanity,
and lives and reigns for ever and ever.
R. Amen.
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