[Propertalk] Fwd: [propertalk.topic] Fwd: Great Vigil Homily

Sat Apr 23 15:08:57 EDT 2011

 Forwarded:

-----Original Message-----
From: Annette Fricke <annette_fricke at ecunet.org>
To: propertalk.topic <propertalk.topic at ecunet.org>
Sent: Fri, Apr 22, 2011 8:03 pm
Subject: Re: [propertalk.topic] Fwd: [Propertalk] Great Vigil Homily

Ditto.  This is a wonderful meditation and summary of the Triduum---from a new Episcopalian wanting to become a priest in the USA.

On Thu, Apr 21, 2011 at 8:58 PM, Joe Parrish <joeparrish at compuserve.com> wrote:

Forwarded:

-----Original Message-----
From: robertpmorrison <robertpmorrison at charter.net>
To: Propertalk <propertalk at stsams.org>
Sent: Thu, Apr 21, 2011 12:23 am
Subject: [Propertalk] Great Vigil Homily

Tenebrae under our belt, Thursday coming up fast, dark humour building 

up! Must be Holy Week 8 - )

This hasn't been touched for about a week. Now for editing ...

THE EPISCOPAL CHURCH OF ST. ALBAN, ALBANY  			THE GREAT VIGIL OF EASTER 

- A

READINGS AND PSALMS OF THE OLD COVENANT				      23rd APRIL, 2011

ROMANS 6:3-11

MATTHEW 28:1-10

Lord,

it is night.

The night is for stillness.

Let us be still in the presence of God.

It is night after a long day.

What has been done has been done;

what has not been done has not been done;

let it be.

The night is dark;

Let our fears of the darkness of the world and our own lives rest in 

you.

The night is quiet.

Let the quietness of your peace enfold us,

all dear to us,

and all who have no peace.

The night heralds the dawn.

Let us look expectantly to a new day,

new joys,

new possibilities.

In your name we pray.

Amen.  1

This is a favourite prayer of thousands of people around the world. It’s 

part of the office called “Night Prayer”, contained in “A New Zealand 

Prayer Book”. 2 The way the lines seem to hang in the air, the care 

taken over the scansion, the word-painting – everything about it talks 

of the work an exquisite linguist who spent hours working to craft just 

the right expression.

But that’s NOT how it came to be. The story is almost as famous as the 

prayer itself.

A liturgical committee of The Anglican Church of Aotearoa, New Zealand 

and Polynesia in the South Pacific had been charged with producing a new 

Prayer Book which would reflect both the Anglican heritage which was 

theirs and the culture and flavour of these island peoples. Like all 

such committees, there was a tremendous amount of hard work to be done. 

And there was an incredible amount of tension. At the end of one 

particularly contentious and long day, people decided to call an end to 

that session and take up again in the morning, when emotions might be 

less frayed and a calmer mood might prevail. One of the committee 

members had been doodling on his note pad, as had several others. As 

they all got up to leave, he tore that top sheet off his pad, balled it 

up and dropped it in the waste basket, not without some show of 

exasperation!

A colleague, walking behind him, stooped down and surreptitiously picked 

up that crushed page, put it in his pocket and set off for his hotel 

room.

There, in the surroundings of a typical guest room, he smoothed out the 

page and discovered the prayer I just read.

Such calmness; such trust; such hopefulness – all expressed in words 

that convey a mood of generosity of spirit and love and joy; all written 

as if the author had hardly a care in the world.

That room – the work session room – must have felt like an oppressive 

cave by the evening hours. But the faith of the prayer spoke of Light, 

of confidence; of trust.

And that’s what we do here, gathering albeit it in some degree of 

brightness – which will, this year, still be there as we leave this 

building in about another forty-five minutes or so, leaving with joy 

that the meanness, and vindictiveness, and desperation of the past few 

days have been overcome. Not eradicated – that never happens, in this 

life, anyway – but overcome, with firm acknowledgement that nothing is 

so dark that God will not help us to overcome it.

We’ve listened to readings talking about the promise of creation, then 

the way in which we’ve “violated it, abused one another, and rejected 

God’s love.” 3

  We’ve heard prophets warn of poor behaviour and how that hurts all 

humanity, but the prophets have also spoken of hope and of the love of 

God.

We’ve lived through the retelling of the worst that humans can do to one 

another, as if it were a news programme

on TV, bringing the horrors of repression, and revolution, and genocide 

right into our living rooms. We saw Jesus depicted once again as being 

crucified – tortured mercilessly for the sake of making a point about 

rocking the establishment rule.

We went home on Friday night, and possibly came in this morning, to hear 

of Jesus’ beaten, bloody body placed in the stone cold tomb. Our world 

felt as if it ended in nothingness.

It’s not hard to put ourselves in the place of the disciples, and to 

despair of Love, of Justice, of Mercy, of Truth ever being the only 

guides by which government throughout the world shall be administered. 

Even those with a little faith admit that we’re made to despair as we 

see Rome’s viciousness repeated again and again.

Time and again, even at this stage of human life and faith, we’re 

tempted to feel as if darkness once again covered the face of the earth.

Until we come to the beginning of a new day – the third day, which 

arrives, officially, at sundown. On this Third Day we see where that 

tired writer found the hope to continue with his work. When the Third 

Day’s Light was enough by which to navigate narrow streets, Mary of 

Magdala found that the stone had been wrenched away from that cave and 

Light had flooded in to conquer darkness for all time.

Mary, in her great pain and despair, sought out that dark spot so that 

she could rest her head against the place where Jesus lay trapped – only 

to discover that God NEVER allows Light to be trapped.

That was the power of God – to respond to Jesus and to affirm that His 

Life would neither have an end nor be in vain.

Can we say HOW it happened? No. Faith takes a stab at an explanation, 

but we become poets in the process. We can’t even say WHEN it happened – 

simply sometime in the darkness. And maybe that’s where the key lies. 

When no one can see a way out of being crushed, when everything appears 

taken away from us, that’s when God acts to bring such energy and 

renewal that our breath is taken away and we can scarcely believe our 

eyes.

When we feel we’ve come to an impossible end, that things can never 

improve, we can never find anything which will make us laugh except out 

of fear and despair – when we think that pain, and loneliness, and 

lovelessness are all that is left to us – THAT’S when God speaks to us 

in such a gentle way that we become convinced that we too will be 

raised. No matter how long the night is, how much doubt and sorrow we 

may have, we’re shown that the dark night of the soul and mind leads to 

the dawn of the Third Day.

Inexorably, in the vision and design of God:

	The night heralds the dawn.

	Let us look expectantly to a new day,

	new joys,

	new possibilities.

	Amen.

NOTES:

1 	“A New Zealand Prayer Book”, page 184.

2	 A New Zealand Prayer Book/He Karakia Mihinare o Aotearoa, authorized 

by General Synod on 26 May 1988

3	 “Eucharistic Prayer 1: Enriching our Worship 1”. © Church Publishing 

Incorporated. January 2000.

Robert P Morrison

Interim Vicar

The Episcopal Church of St Alban

PO Box 1556

Albany OR  97321   541-921-1076 (cell)

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