Homily for the Easter Vigil

April 4, 2026
St. Patrick Cathedral
Fort Worth, Texas

Genesis 1:1-2:2
Exodus 14:15-15:1
Isaiah 55:1-11
Romans 6:3-11
Matthew 18:1-10

The element of water is present in each of the readings from the Old Testament that we have proclaimed during this Vigil. In Genesis, we hear of how God created the waters and separated them, forming the sky and the sea, and declaring them to be good. We hear how the waters of the sea were created to sustain the life of other creatures, including human beings. There is a mixed relationship between water and human beings that exists since the fall of our first parents in the Garden of Eden.

In our reading from Exodus, we hear proclaimed that God delivers Israel from slavery through Moses’ leading them out of Egypt across the Red Sea whose waters have been parted at God’s command so that Israel might be liberated. We also hear how He then ordered the waters to come together and drown the Egyptians to deliver the Israelites from slavery.

In our reading from the Book of Isaiah, we hear the Prophet beckon all who are thirsty to come to the water to be satisfied. He speaks of how water in the form of rain and snow fall from the sky to bring fruitfulness and fertility to the soil which brings life.

In each of these readings we see the goodness of water as a source of life and deliverance, but we also see how sin has alienated humanity from God’s act of creation and has made such elements as water, which is good, into an adversary that can also drown and bring death.

Moses is pulled from the Nile and saved from the waters of death that he might as God’s hand deliver the Israelites through the treacherous waters of the Red Sea, which also bring death to their adversaries. We see how Noah built an ark to carry his faithful family to the new creation as the waters of the flood swallowed up sinful humanity. Water gives life and it brings death.

On Good Friday we read in Saint John’s Gospel that after Jesus died upon the cross, a “soldier thrust his lance into” Christ’s “side, and immediately blood and water flowed out.” As Eve was formed from the side of the sleeping Adam, so Christ’s bride, the Church, was formed from his side as He slept upon the Cross and as water and blood flowed out.

Saint Paul proclaims to the Romans and to us who hear his words tonight, “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 the newness of life.” In the waters of Baptism, death is definitively drowned and put to death that in these waters, we might enter into eternal life with Christ as members of His Church. We belong to Him and to each other as His Church.

The Church is formed by Baptism and the Eucharist, the two sacraments symbolized by the water and blood which flowed from Christ’s lanced side. Lifted high on the Cross, Jesus Christ gave His life for us, so much does He love us, and to His open heart the Savior invites all people, to draw water in joy from the springs of salvation offered in Baptism.

And so, we are here tonight to rejoice in the Resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead and in the promise of eternal life extended to us in the New and Everlasting Covenant. The death of the Lord Jesus is our ransom from death, and His Resurrection is our rising to life. Christ is the victim who dies no more, the Lamb once slain who lives forever. In the Lord Jesus, a new age has dawned, the long reign of sin is ended, a broken world has been renewed, and man is once again made whole.