Angelus News | April 9, 2021 Vol 6 No 7

Then-Deacon Brian Baker from
the Archdiocese of Atlanta chants
the Exultet at the beginning of the
2014 Easter Vigil celebrated by
Pope Francis in St. Peter’s Basilica.
| CNS/PAUL HARING
and the light was so refreshing,
pushing back the wintry,
chilling, morbid darkness. It
reminds us that Jesus is the
light of the world.”
It is moments like that conversation
with Michael that
make the Resurrection more
than a conceptual truth. He
was walking the streets of Greenwich Village that Sunday
morning looking for light. He said he found light in me
not ignoring him, even though I initially did when he
made an inappropriate remark.
This man needed some good news, and especially on a
Sunday. How could I not help extend God’s invitation to
him?
So what actually is the Resurrection for us? The Catechism
of the Catholic Church calls it “the crowning truth
of our faith in Christ, a faith believed and lived as the
central truth by the first Christian community; handed on
as fundamental by Tradition; established by the documents
of the New Testament; and preached as an essential
part of the Paschal mystery along with the cross.”
This reminds me of my favorite moment of the year:
When the Exultet proclaims:
“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!”
Resurrection? Do we believe in the empty tomb? Do we
believe that Christ wants to be resurrected within us?
In a homily given March 22 last year (just days after the
entire country went into full lockdown) to an empty St.
Patrick’s Cathedral, New York’s Cardinal Timothy Dolan
preached on what it means for Jesus to be “the light of the
world who can cure the darkness that afflicts us all.”
“I’m finding myself welcoming light these days,” he
said. “Yesterday, in spite of it all, when I took a little walk
outside, it was bright. The sun was out even at six in the
evening. The first day of spring was just the other day,
“O happy fault!” I can get to a point of spiritual despondency
during Lent, seeing all my sins under a magnifying
glass. But then we get to these sung words and it all makes
sense — we have purpose and a future because God has
had mercy on us, and is the only one capable of bringing
life out of our death, from our sin.
There is nothing to fear with this being true! It is in
our weakness that God heals and strengthens us with his
merciful love.
I feel like I have been holding my breath since last
March to hear “O happy fault!” chanted in my presence,
just before being present for the consecration at the Easter
Vigil Mass.
Last Easter, I sat with my laptop and my phone and I
watched several Masses, starting with Pope Francis at St.
Peter’s, along with Archbishop José H. Gomez in Los
Angeles and Archbishop Bashar Warda in Erbil, Iraq. I
never managed to “get enough,” because it was Christ’s
eucharistic presence I was looking for, not the poor virtual
substitute. The internet just could not provide.
I keep going back to Cardinal Dolan, because he has
a new volume, “I Am with You: Lessons of Hope and
Courage in Times of Crisis” (Loyola Press, $12.99). It’s a
April 9, 2021 • ANGELUS • 11