In celebrating the Easter Vigil on Saturday evening, it is interesting to compare how scripture describes God creating the new light of the resurrection with how God created the original light at the origins of creation. The Gospel of John has a wonderfully revealing passage that describes Jesus’ first appearance to the whole community after his resurrection. It tells us that on the evening of Easter Sunday the disciples (representing here the church) were gathered in a room with the doors locked because of fear. Jesus comes to them, passing right through their locked doors, and stands in the middle of their huddled fearful circle and says to them, “Peace be with you!” And after saying this, he breathes on them and says: “Receive the Holy Spirit.”
Note the parallels to the original creation story. For the writer of John’s Gospel, this huddling in fear behind locked doors is the darkness of Good Friday, a moral “formless void”. And Jesus brings light to that darkness in the same way light was brought to the original creation, through God’s word and God’s breath. Jesus’ words, “Peace be with you!” are the resurrected Jesus’ way of saying, “Let there be light!” Then, just as at the original creation God’s breath begins to order the physical chaos, Jesus’ breath, the Holy Spirit, begins to order the moral chaos, continually turning darkness into light – hatred into love, bitterness into graciousness, fear into trust, false religion into true worship, ideology into truth, and vengeance into forgiveness.
Good Friday was bad long before it was good. We crucified God and plunged the world into darkness at midday. But God created light a second time, a light that cannot be extinguished even if we crucify God – and we have never really stopped doing that! Good Friday still happens every day. But, beyond wishful thinking and natural optimism, we live in hope because we now know God’s response to any moral darkness, God can generate, resurrection, the creation of new light, life beyond death. [Excerpt from Ron Rolheiser’s “Easter Light,” April 2023]