3rd April 2026 –
This is the night. The night that reveals the foundation of our faith. The Paschal candle, the sign of Christ’s resurrection, burns steady, passing its flame of faith from hand to hand.
We have listened to the old stories – creation out of chaos, Abraham’s knife held back, Pharaoh’s army swallowed by the sea. Each one tells us the same thing: God doesn’t leave us in the murky depths. He parts waters, stops the hand raised to kill, speaks light into the dark void. And tonight, all that history points to one tomb. In Matthew’s forceful telling, two women come at first light – Mary Magdalene and the other Mary – carrying spices, hearts heavy. They expect a heavy stone sealing the tomb. They expect silence. But instead, an earthquake, and an angel who tells them: “Do not be afraid.”
The stone is rolled away. Not by human, but divine power. The guards shake like dead men. And the angel? He sits calmly on that stone, saying, “He is not here. He has risen, as he said.” As he said. Remember? He told us. Now it’s real.
And those women? They run – fear and great joy mixed together. Jesus meets them on the road. Not a ghost. Not a vision. Flesh and blood, saying their names. “Greetings!” He says, as if it were so ordinary, as if death was just a bad dream. They grab his feet. Worship. And he sends them: “Go tell my brothers.” That is us. We who sat in the dark tonight, renewing vows, feeling the water splashed over our heads – buried with him, raised with him, just as St Paul told us in his letter to the Romans. “We were buried with him by baptism into death… so we too might walk in newness of life.” The truth is: our old self – our fear and doubt, is buried tonight.
The candles we hold are lit from the one flame. One light, many lives. One resurrection, shared. And if fear and doubt creep back into our lives, let us remember this night. The stone rolled away, and angels greeting to the women ‘Do not be afraid.’ Christ is risen.
