We have spent these last six weeks of Lent in a spirit of repentance, sorrow, and lament for our many sins and failings. Indeed, these final days have focused especially on the great price that Christ lovingly paid for our sins and our salvation. Somewhat suddenly, then, on this holy night of the Lord’s rising, we are exhorted to joy, jubilation, and celebration. Some may wonder whether this abrupt shift in mood is appropriate, since although Christ died for our sins and rose that we might live, we still remain sinners constantly in need of God’s mercy and forgiveness. It might thus seem more fitting if our joy at Christ’s rising coincided with our total transformation in him and our complete freedom from sin.
Instead, most—if not all—of us continue to struggle against sin, sinful habits, and the various limitations on our freedom to choose lovingly and in accordance with our true human nature, created in God’s image and likeness. Indeed, the deeper our self‑knowledge and the clearer our awareness of our sinfulness and unlikeness to God, the more prone we may be to feel sorrow, shame, and guilt when hearing of the great sufferings Christ so lovingly endured because of our sins and evil deeds. In the light of these painful feelings, can our joy be real and not merely a pretense? Or does rejoicing on this holy night require us to forget or suppress our awareness of still being sinners not yet fully redeemed?
In fact, though, the one thing that truly stands in the way of our rejoicing on this Day of Resurrection is that pernicious sin which resists forgiveness and most readily generates shame and obstructs joy—namely, pride. For stubbornly prideful persons, Christ’s dying for us is an unwelcome reminder of their failure and incapacity for self‑perfection, while his resurrection is yet another reminder of human frailty and our utter dependence on God for the gift of life—both earthly and eternal. In contrast, the precious virtue of humility opens the heart to gratitude, rejoicing, and gladness without attempting to forget or suppress the awareness of sin. On the contrary, it is precisely repentant awareness of sin that gives rise to deep joy in the light of God’s ineffable love for us and his promise of final deliverance from sin’s enslavement.
The truly humble person can thus take to heart Saint Augustine’s insistence that the death of the Lord our God should not be a cause of shame for us; rather, it should be our greatest hope and our greatest glory. And so the humble heart resonates deeply with those poignant words of the Exultet we heard earlier: O happy fault that earned so great, so glorious a Redeemer! In the humble person, awareness of personal sin—while a cause of repenting sadness—is simultaneously suffused with joy, gratitude, and trusting hope in God’s saving promises. For Christ’s resurrection was not merely a manifestation of divine power over death, but an unshakeable pledge to save us from sin and eternal death and grant us eternal life—a life we have neither earned nor deserved, but humbly and lovingly receive from our bountiful God. And so we can rejoice and be glad on this awesome night and join Saint Augustine in proclaiming: Let us then fearlessly acknowledge, and even openly proclaim, that Christ was crucified for us; let us confess it, not in fear but in joy, not in shame but in glory. For it is humility—born of honest repentance and sustained by God’s boundless mercy—that allows our sorrow to blossom into joy and our awareness of sin to become the very doorway into the radiant hope of the Resurrection.