From a Franz Mayer window in St Mary’s Cathedral, Calgary

Given at the Paschal Vigil at Saint John the Evangelist, Calgary:

Alleluia! Christ our passover is sacrificed for us!
Therefore let us keep the feast! Alleluia! Alleluia!

Over the course of the past week we have travelled with our blessed Lord to the gates of the city of Jerusalem; we have supped with him in the cenacle as he kept the Passover with his disciples; we have stood with his blessed mother at the foot of the cross as he was brutally put to death. Now we come with raw emotion and profound joy to this celebration of new life—of perfected life—in which, through the resurrection of Christ, we are invited to share. Christ has hallowed hell! He has conquered sin! He has put death to death! As we will sing in that victory hymn of the Easter sequence, ‘Death with life contended: combat strangely ended! Life’s own champion, slain, now lives to reign’.

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