Paschal Vigil 2025
On the seventh day of the creation, God “rested from all his work which he had done”. God is always resting because His work is over and His being is perfect. He rests in His perfect and infinite bounty, beauty and love. He is certainly very active: always giving life, always caring for life, always loving and, out of loving mercy, always reconciling and recreating. But He does all this with neither concern nor agitation. His works do not disturb His rest; rather they proceed from it, and they confirm it.
Jesus, too, is always resting. He rests in the arms of Our Lady as a child. He rests in the faith of those who believe that the Father sent Him. He rests in the hearts of those who love Him. These have learnt to rest in Him and to let Him rest in them. St Thérèse of Lisieux was fascinated by the image of Jesus resting in the boat in the midst of a tempest. She associated the spiritual night she was going through with the freedom taken by Jesus to sleep in her heart. He knew she would understand, trust him and not be afraid.
Jerusalem was meant to be from the start the resting place of God in the world. The name of the holy city means “vision of peace”. It expresses God’s vision, which we heard in the prophecy of Isaiah: “O afflicted, storm-tossed, and not comforted, behold, I will set your stones in antimony and lay your foundations with sapphires. You shall not fear.”
Now in this very city, the Son of God made flesh has been resting in the tomb. Jesus has finished his work, the task the Father had entrusted him. The week was coming to a close when, on the sixth day, He was crucified and died on the Cross out of love for us. He spent the seventh day, the great Sabbath of Easter, in the quiet solitude of the tomb. His body was granted to rest after all the sufferings He had endured for our sake.
When the women came to the tomb, however, on the morning of the first day of a new week, “they did not find the body”. Instead, “two men in dazzling apparel”, two creatures of light, two angels, said to them: “Remember how he told you that the Son of man must rise on the third day.” The tomb could not be a lasting resting place for the Son of God. His soul and His body needed a better place of rest. Jesus deserved to rest not in a tomb but in the bosom of His Father, not in death but in life.
Perceive how restful His resurrection was! He rose from the place and the day of rest and entered the divine rest of the New Jerusalem, the Holy City whose temple is “the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb” (Ap 21:22). And now He is peacefully and powerfully drawing us to His rest. The believer is a child of God who learns to rest in the bosom of His Father in heaven.
One could describe our faith, the Easter faith, as an awakening to God’s truth and love, but precisely an awakening for a rest. In our present life, we awaken for a day of labour at the end of which we need to rest – as some of us are certainly very much feeling right now! We go to rest in order to get up refreshed and make a new start. In spiritual life, it is different. We awaken to enter God’s rest, to partake in His perfectly peaceful love. Maybe it is one of the secrets of Easter Joy: this is not caused by the prospect of an exciting day with many lovely things to do and interesting people to meet, but by the unshakable rest that Jesus gives to us once for all.
We, who are redeemed by Jesus’ death and born anew in His resurrection, we have a Father: let us enter His rest. Let us do all that we have to do from this rest and towards this rest, that is to say, with peace, gentleness, bounty and unshakable trust for “Christ is risen from the dead, He is risen indeed, Alleluia!”