The Exsultet proclaims, “Our birth would have been no gain had we not been redeemed! O truly necessary sin of Adam, destroyed completely by the death of Christ! O happy fault, that earned so great, so glorious a Redeemer,” at the beginning of the Easter Vigil. This is all that we believe as Christians summarized in a few lines, canted in tones older than Christendom itself. It is also the greatest explanation of what Chesterton labelled the true sign of Christianity: paradox.
To rationalize faith is a fool’s errand, particularly in these dark times. Certainly, faith and reason are compatible - Christianity is not a contradiction, though it appears foolishness to all modern materialists and a stumbling block to resigned fatalists. Indeed, salvation history is not static but dynamic: contingent and conditional statements greet us on every page of the Holy Bible. That is surely the deepest underlying paradox: that the Almighty invites our participation.
Adam and Eve were given conditions - when tempted, they fell. Abraham tried to make his own path at times, creating errors that continue to this day. David, supposedly a man after God’s own heart, committed adultery, giving us Psalm 51, sung as Miserere Mei Deus. Jesus’ lineage includes David’s sin, as well as prostitutes. Mary, though chosen before time, freely said “be it done unto me according to thy word.” And God incarnate suffered death and was buried.
We are not creatures of our time - rather, we are created beings who participate in the divine drama that began with “Let there be light.” Why would the all-knowing, all-powerful God bother with such an insignificant, concupiscent species? Out of pure love, that carries us out of bondage, overcomes death, and promises eternal life. It is indeed a divine comedy - there is a resolution to all time and tragedy, a final triumph where infinite goodness vanquishes finite evil.
To be clear, there is a battle, beginning in our own hearts with our own divided will, often misled by our dreary world, especially in times such as these. Believing in God’s sovereignty is never easy, but perhaps less of a struggle when the sky doesn’t appear to be falling. To confess that His plan is at work even now is quite likely the opposite of what many want to hear; but we who believe cannot say anything else, “for if they remain silent, the very stones will cry out.”
The Triduum - Holy Thursday, Good Friday, and Easter Vigil - might show us the way we are to grapple with our current catastrophe. Did we take our last gathering for granted? Have we deliberately tried to avoid coming to terms with the task ahead? Are we unjustly persecuting or insulting those who tried to help us? Are we really doing the most we can to bear one another's crosses during this climb up our global Golgotha? Will we run away when we are needed most?
As has been noted elsewhere, this plague has put the entire world on a Lenten journey - celebrations have been cancelled, places of gathering shuttered. Like the saints covered during Holy Week, we exist under a veil of uncertainty, waiting for the final victory over death. All of us are at the foot of the cross, cradling our dashed hopes, wondering how it could come to this; in a literal sense, even our burials today are perfect imitations of Christ’s own - expedient and silent.
Perhaps that is the paradox of our times - at the height of our decadence and knowledge, with all the powers mankind has taken unto himself, we are asking “deliver us from evil.” On the eve of the Triduum, the three holiest days in the Christian calendar, we are praying for a miracle, in chorus with two millennia of history and every soul who has faced such troubled times. Relief has come in ages past by such earnest supplication - hopefully the Almighty grants our petition.
“Christ...coming back from death’s domain, has shed his peaceful light on humanity, and lives and reigns forever and ever. Amen.”
May we all take up the Exultet’s ending as our refrain.
