Summary: “The first words from the Sacred Scriptures spoken earlier tonight in the darkness were: “In the beginning.” Beginnings are hard. Ask any business owner about their first year. I can tell you from my own exerience in preparing homilies that getting the beginning right and those first words on paper is always the hardest part. Beginnings are hard. What makes them hard is that you have to let go of what was, and for a brief time, there is nothing to take its place, and that is frightening. There is so much loss in every beginning: the loss of childhood to become an adult, the loss of college and all its adventure and friends to move on with a job, the loss of dependency to gain independancy, the loss of an uncommitted life to gain a partner and purpose, the loss of middle age to gain, one hopes, wisdom. The Gospel tonight begins with these words: “After the sabbath, as the first day of the week was dawning....” Think of those words in the context of beginning. The day of rest is over and must be left behind = “loss” now it is time for the work. It is the first day of the week. It is creation day - the “day of beginning.” It was dawn. Night is over the darkness is lost, but the day begins. Creation begins. Life begins. Light comes, and suddenly this night makes sense to us all, but never more so than to these neophytes, these newly baptized and confirmed. In just a few moments we shall wrap them into the arms of our savior, feed them with the bread of life, incorporate them into the mystery of the church. My brothers and sisters brought into the Body of Christ this night, you have been brought from darkness into light. Like the Israelites, you have followed that pillar of fire into this holy place, God’s dwelling among us. This is a night of beginnings for you, and your first ministry as disciples of Jesus Christ has been fulfilled by your willingness to listen to God’s call and respond. Your very courageous presence here through the Rites of Initiation has been a work of evangelization. You are spreading the faitih. Standing before us week after week since Ash Wednesday, you have reminded us that we are all beginners, converts, leaving behind old ways, old sin, old thinking, old behavior, and we are being lifted up from the dust of the earth by a Creator God who has called us His own in a mysterious and wonderful new creation. There is no going back. The Israelites had spells when they lost courage and gave up hope. They complained and imagined that slavery in Egypt was easier than life in a desert. They whined and longed for the past; but after crossing the Sea witih Moses, there was no going back. They kept going to the end. Instead of a miserable end as slaves of Egyptians their lives had a better and new ending. Slaves no more, they were free, they were faithful, they were holy, they were God’s chosen. Someone very wise in the ways of this world once said: Nobody can go back and start a new beginning, but anyone can start today and make a new ending. The mystery and wonder of this night is then about a new ending that starts today. Creation Day, the First Day of the Week. At dawn. Imagine that ending. Imagine what God has planned and promised. If you can and if you will, the ending will be one of glory, of peace, and of joy that knows no end. This is what we wish for you, my dear newly baptized and confirmed. Come now to receive the food for your journey, the Bread of Life and the Cup of Salvation. It promises a new ending you could never have imagined before you stepped into this church months ago. Who would ever have thought that you would be here robed in white? Who could ever have imagined what God has in store for you? Yet because you are here, robed in white, anointed with fragrant oil, there is a new ending for you full of promise and full of peace. This is the day the Lord has made. Let us rejoice and be glad.
