Before there was anything, there was nothing, but God. Then, God spoke and there was everything, created by God and created in God. The only thing He did not create was sin and its offspring death. These came from his angelic and human creatures, Satan and Adam. So, God entered into His creation to rid it of what He had not created, of what sought to destroy creation. In Jesus, He destroyed sin and death. And just as creation came after nothing and out of nothing, so the Resurrection comes after death and out of death. The Resurrection is the new creation, the new “big bang”, only it is a silent and unseen big bang because no-one saw or heard Him rise. The new creation rings with the silence of God.

And yet, if we marvel at the beauty of creation and the poetry of the book of Genesis which describes God’s creative work, the beauty and poetry and music of the new creation surpass it eternally. We see it in lives lived in grace, in deaths died in grace; we hear it in the words and music of the praise of God and of the preaching of God’s Word. We detect and intuit it when our own hearts are filled with the love, joy and peace of God and whenever good triumphs over evil. The new creation is not the end of God’s creative work but its completion in renewal. With the resurrection of Jesus, creation is no longer condemned to be a place or a time of death. No, it is imbued and enlivened by the risen life of Jesus. As all things exist in Jesus, so the resurrection infuses the risen life of Jesus into all things, as a gentle light illuminates a whole room.

And in this is what we could call the logic of the sacrament, when created matter is taken up by the Risen Christ and made into a channel and encounter with Him and His gifts of grace. It’s not a vague or general encounter. It’s a specific and personal encounter, in the here and now of a given person. The seven sacraments of Christ show how His risen life is already at work in creation. They anticipate for us the final reality of the end of time when the Lord will cry out, “Behold, I make all things new.” It will be the final age of the new heavens and the new earth, when His Risen life will be made manifest in every facet of the first creation.

It is Baptism which gives us birth into the new creation. Because we renounce Satan and sin and profess faith in Father, Son and Holy Spirit, Christ takes our whole human reality, body and soul, and immerses it in the waters of His own death, burial and resurrection. The process of our new creation is thus begun in the silence and un-seen-ness of our deepest being. It reaches its first stage of fulfilment in our own death and its final fulfilment on the last day of resurrection from the dead.

If all things already exist in Christ, Baptism confers a new and more intimate way of belonging to the Risen Body of Christ. And yet even Baptism doesn’t complete our initiation into Christ. It is not yet the fullest communion with Him. To receive that full communion Christ first confirms and seals us as His own in the sacrament of Confirmation, strengthening us through the Holy Spirit, equipping us with multiple spiritual gifts, leading us from the childhood of God given to us in Baptism to the maturity of the sons and daughters, bold witnesses, of God.

But there can be no growth without food and drink. Here is where full communion with the whole Christ, Head and members, is reached: in Holy Communion. In the body and blood of Christ we are nourished with what Jesus calls real food and real drink, the bread of Life and the wine of Life. Here above all is where the Lord takes to Himself elements of the first creation. Here, He does not only use them as channels of His grace: He empties His Risen self into them in humility and unspeakable love so that they no longer are bread and wine except to the senses. In consuming them, we are consumed by them. In consuming them we become ever more part of His Risen reality. This has always been the intended goal of God even before He created anything: that men and women sit at table with God and become divine. This is why He took flesh of the Virgin Mary, suffered, died, rose, ascended and sent the Holy Spirit. This is why His Mystical Body, the Church, exists, to bring the Risen Christ to the world and to bring the world to Him. The human individual and the human race have no other true destiny. When He comes in glory, that will be made gloriously apparent.

So, our three candidates for reception of various sacraments for the first time on this holy night of Resurrection are opening themselves to invasion by the Risen Christ, to become part of the new creation in new and fuller ways. It is the culmination for them of a deep desire, of challenging and suffered soul-searching, of hard work and of courageous openness to the workings of the Spirit. They have responded with a sustained yes to divine grace and pledge to surrender the control of their lives to Christ as their Lord and King. For the Church, they are a great gift of God because they witness before us to the very gifts of grace we have all been given, even from the cradle. In the sometimes dark days when we think the Church in the West is fading and perhaps even doubt our own faith, they are like the Paschal Candle which lights up that darkness. Lumen Christi: the light of Christ is still on fire, is still shining and the darkness cannot overpower it. Tonight, it will shine especially in our candidates. This is not to say that they will not themselves have challenges in the future. We are all subject to these. But tonight we are invited to light the candles of our own faith, hope and love again this Easter from the fire of the Light which is most surely shining in them, the Risen Christ.

No matter what age we are, no matter what problems or sorrows weigh us down, no matter what doubts we carry about God, Church or the world today, we can surely give joyful thanks to God for the power of His Light and Love at work in our three candidates. We can surely cry out in our inmost heart: Lord, in your kindness, shine your glorious Light once more in my mind and heart! Create me anew with the splendour of your resurrection in the silence of your empty tomb. Make me a true witness of hope, a tireless pilgrim of hope, a shining candle of the light of your love. Raise me from my darkness this Easter and show me the path I must tread until in eternal silence I see You, face to face.