“What makes this night different from all other nights? Because once we were slaves and we are slaves no longer.” This line from the movie, The Passion of the Christ, taken from the Jewish Passover commemoration, is an excellent question to begin the night of Holy Saturday with. Tonight marks the celebration of the Easter Vigil around the world, the greatest Mass of the year, the great celebration of the Resurrection of Christ and our deliverance from the slavery of sin. The first thing said at the ambo tonight is a great reflection of this idea.
The Easter Vigil in the sanctuary opens with the Easter Exsultet. The Exsultet is something few people are familiar with, because it is used only at the Easter Vigil, and people tend to be a bit distracted with lighting their candles as it happens. The hymn is an ancient one. No one is actually sure who the original author is. There is a generally accepted idea that the hymn was written by the Church Father St. Ambrose, sometime around 370 AD. However, it may be even older than that. The full text of the Exsultet can be found here, but because it is a rather long hymn, I’m going to focus on one specific part.
About halfway through the Exsultet, we hear a rather unusual line. “O happy fault,” and later, “O truly necessary sin of Adam.” This is quite strange. Everybody has at least an idea of the Fall of Man. Adam and Eve were in the garden when the serpent came to them and got them to eat the fruit from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil (long name for a tree), and then they got kicked out, and because of this one act, humanity bears the stain of original sin always and forever (I know there will be some in the crowd reading this with a slight objection. Hang on to that, I’m getting there). This original sin doomed man forever. How could this fault be happy? Why would this sin ever be necessary?
The Easter Vigil in the sanctuary opens with the Easter Exsultet. The Exsultet is something few people are familiar with, because it is used only at the Easter Vigil, and people tend to be a bit distracted with lighting their candles as it happens. The hymn is an ancient one. No one is actually sure who the original author is. There is a generally accepted idea that the hymn was written by the Church Father St. Ambrose, sometime around 370 AD. However, it may be even older than that. The full text of the Exsultet can be found here, but because it is a rather long hymn, I’m going to focus on one specific part.
About halfway through the Exsultet, we hear a rather unusual line. “O happy fault,” and later, “O truly necessary sin of Adam.” This is quite strange. Everybody has at least an idea of the Fall of Man. Adam and Eve were in the garden when the serpent came to them and got them to eat the fruit from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil (long name for a tree), and then they got kicked out, and because of this one act, humanity bears the stain of original sin always and forever (I know there will be some in the crowd reading this with a slight objection. Hang on to that, I’m getting there). This original sin doomed man forever. How could this fault be happy? Why would this sin ever be necessary?
When I gave those two lines, I left a little bit out. The first line, in entirety, says “O happy fault that earned for us so great, so glorious a Redeemer!” and the second line, “O truly necessary sin of Adam, destroyed completely
by the Death of Christ!” This Fall of Man created an infinite divide between man and God, yes. But in doing so, God had a plan to save mankind. This plan is what we celebrate tonight. God sent His own son (who was also himself) into the world, “not to condemn the world, but that the world, through him, might be saved” (John 3:17). Yes, this fault was happy. It brought great damage to humankind, but in the end, it resulted in sin and death being conquered wholly and completely. Pope St. Leo the Great said that the grace we earned from Christ in his death and Resurrection was greater than what Satan had stolen from us in the Garden.In light of this, the entire Easter Vigil is also a meditation on the entirety of salvation history. There are eight readings (seven Old Testament, one letter of Paul), and each of these readings reveals something else about the story of salvation. But it all starts with the Exsultet, singing about the happy fault, which won for us so great a Redeemer.
To end, here is a video of the Exsultet being sung with some stunning visual effects.
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