This Little Light of Mine
Homily for Saturday, April 4, 2026: Easter Vigil
There is a line from the musical Jesus Christ Superstar:
If you’d come today you could have reached a whole nation. Israel in 4 BC had no mass communication.
It’s maybe worth noting that this line is sung by Judas, questioning everything about Christ’s mission and how he’s been going about it.
The irony, of course, is that it’s pretty clear that Jesus did in fact reach not just a whole nation, but the whole world, centuries before the internet or television or even the printing press.
So how did he do that?
At the point of our Gospel reading tonight, as Mary Magdelene and “the Other Mary” come to the tomb, it’s safe to say there is the general feeling among the followers of Jesus that his Messianic movement was over.
History tells us of a few other Messianic movements back in those days, some of which got the same kind of traction and notoriety as Jesus’s, but they all tended to fizzle out at about this same point – these Messianic movements tended to die along with their presumed Messiah.
But this Jesus movement manages to recover, and to spread itself further and wider and more effectively than before. And it all begins with these two women at the tomb.
They are told that Jesus is alive, and to go and tell his disciples! Which they do.
And the disciples go on to tell others. In coming weeks we will read from the Acts of the Apostles, recounting how this small band of twelve managed to grow their movement, little by little, person by person.
Think back to how we began this Mass tonight. The Light of Christ, this Paschal candle, enters a darkened church. A few people light their own candles from its flame. They then turn and light their neighbors’ candles, who in turn light their neighbors’ candles, on and on, a fire into many flames divided yet never dimmed by sharing of its light.
Each of us at baptism received a little candle, similar to these we use tonight, even lit by the light of the Paschal Candle. For most of us, if we were baptized as children, it was given to our parents or godparents, entrusted to them to be kept burning brightly.
Jesus came as Light to the World, as a light that shines in the darkness, and the darkness could not overcome it. As dark as our world may seem sometimes, we have that Light of Christ still burning.
Tonight we hear about two women coming to a tomb to mourn a light to the world they believed had gone out. When they left, that light shone brighter than ever. They passed it on to the Disciples, who passed it on to those around them, and down through the centuries even to us, today.
We are reminded tonight of that light we keep with us, that light received at our baptism. And we are charged with the mission – in addition to keeping that light burning brightly we must spread it around.