The Dance of Divine Light

From empty womb to empty tomb

Day one: nothing. Nothing - but God.

And God was the nothing. And God was the everything.

And this All-or-Nothing God spoke, and He was the Voice He spoke with, the Word; And He was the breath that hovered over the waters, beyond before or after, on that Day One when nothing was or is or shall be but the One I AM.

The Father, the Imagination, Creative power unfathomable.

The Son, the Logos, fullness of life, Womb of the morning gestating all creation, Divine Mind brimming with ideas, all in order, ready to cascade into existence.

The Holy Ghost, blowing where He wills, Divine breath animating, ensouling, Inflating God’s work with the kiss of eternal life.

There was no time when God was not. There was no time when when He spoke not. There was no time when He breathed not. The Word and Spirit were ever with God And ever were God.

And what was that Word God ever spoke? St John gives the answer we know from Genesis. Light: The first Word and the last. Alpha Word and Omega Word. A kind of Word-sword Light, that cuts and divides the chaos as it illumines, marks every sinew, slicing all the subtle, sashimi-thin distinctions that make existence possible, making other, making difference, and so order: sacred order, hierarchy, the differences without which nothing could be, cut from the One-beyond-number into the infinite hues and gradations of creation. Into the beauty and splendour of the world. All that was or ever shall be, was already there, in the Divine Mind, embryonic logoi, as St Maximus the Confessor calls the thoughts of God, of all things in the Logos, the Ordering Word and Mind of God, empty, pregnant, awaiting radiant birth to burst out into creation.

All that: before any thing was! On Day One, that day as one as God is One, echad: That is, not one in number or in sequence (one-two-three: God is one and three, so you can’t count Him…). No, rather, one before and beyond number. one as in, not many. One that makes the many possible.

And that is the meaning of God’s Name, YHWH: more than HE IS, More “He who makes be”: Father unbegotten, Word ever-begotten, Holy Ghost ever coming forth, Working our creation and redemption in unity and unifying light.

Thou deckest thyself with light as it were with a garment, And spreadest out the heavens like a curtain.

Radiant dawn. Pregnant font of flowing waters. Fulness from emptiness out of time: The Divine Word, Christ, this night, is risen!

Alleluia! Christ is risen! He is risen indeed, alleluia!

He who walked with Adam in Eden and made him armour of skin, He who went to Abraham flanked by two angels, He who stayed the blade in the old man's hand, He who broke the hip of Jacob, He who met Moses in blazing tree and fiery pillar and dark cloud, who crushed Israel's oppressors and led them to the land of milk and honey, He whose glory sat enthroned in Tabernacle and in Temple, He before whose glory David danced, He who stood with Mesech, Shadrach and Abednego and spared them from the flames; This is the same Divine Word, The same guiding, warming, showing, saving Light of love. This is He, for whom no Temple was enough; yet He condescended to camp among us in a tent of human flesh, Emanuel, God with us, Incarnate.

Christ, Messiah, He was anointed with sweet oil of gladness, Fragrant with spices, sweeter than honey, brighter gold than fires of candle wax or olive oil, the chrism by which His sacred fire springs forth from shrouding cloud:

Alleluia! Christ is risen! He is risen indeed, alleluia!

He hath broken the gates of brass, And smitten the bars of iron in sunder. This holy night, He plunged into the Devil’s jaws and broke them. The old snake's fire is gone, his head snuffed out; He gnashed with his teeth and consumed away. Even the flaming tree Moses saw is outshone by the One who hung, pinned, brighter than the snake of bronze in the desert, brighter than the snakelike seraphim, on the new tree, the Tree of the Cross– whereon the fruit for which Eve lusted is ripe at last and offered for our taking, the fruit of life and wisdom, while the devices and desires of the ungodly wither away.

Everything is transfigured by the Resurrection light. Not just everything after, but everything begged as well. So now Abel's blood cries no more for justice but sings for mercy. So now Isaac's offering on the wooden pyre is complete. So now the old brawler Jacob sees God, and submits. So the dry breast of Jerusalem fills to overflowing with the milk God promised Moses, and her stones sing. So the honey that pours out from the Lion's side, is made the food of angels now –as sure and dependable in their work as the bees who made our Paschal candle– into light edible, and ever-waxing, radiant Manna that will not pass but will endure to eternal life, sweet sacrament divine, medicine of immortality, fulfilling milk and honey’s healing power:

For He hath sent His Word and healed us, And we were saved from our destruction.

Old clots burst, dead blood flows, new wine from old wineskins, revivified, restored.

Alleluia! Christ is risen! He is risen indeed, alleluia!

And what joy for the Mother of God to see her Son arise. Sarah, Rebecca, Rachel, Elizabeth's late labours yielded great men, but mortal; but what greater fruit came from Mary’s womb, still emptier than theirs, Because never known by man - yet yielding Man and God.

He maketh the barren woman to keep house And to be a joyful mother of children.

The Light who sprung from Our Lady’s empty womb, springs now from empty tomb. The one before whom David danced is dancer now. He takes her hand, She takes John's, the divine Jesus loved the most, John takes the Apostles’, They take the Fathers’, And so on right until now, So that through this gleaming and unbroken chain of human flesh —we call it “the Church”— Christ pulls us up, back into His home, the fiery Presence surrounded by dark clouds; and our empty humanity is filled with His divinity, So that He can say to us, truly, Ye are gods –

For we will behold his presence in righteousness, And when we wake up after his likeness, We shall be satisfied with it.

Alleluia! Christ is risen! He is risen indeed, alleluia!

O blessed Word and Risen Lord: this holiest of nights, we whom in the Holy Waters you have drowned to self and sin cleansed us, healed us, with whom you share your righteousness; we who, weak and wretched, faltering and failing, have tried by Lenten discipline to sever our reliance on anything but you; we, whose all is less than your nothing, who find fulness only in your emptiness, light only in your shadow, life only in your death: this holy night, we thank you, praise, adore you, welcome you, receive you, and beg you, that through the sacrament of your Resurrection we receive tonight, through your life-giving Body and cleansing Blood, you would lift us to your Light, to dwell in you with Our Lady and all the saints in earth and heaven, in true Communion: oneness through the radiant Word, in the blazing Spirit, with the Father of Lights, in whom is no shadow of change but life and joy eternal.

Alleluia! Christ is risen! He is risen indeed, alleluia!