I think of the Easter Vigil Mass celebrated on Holy Saturday as the liturgical equivalent of a Thanksgiving meal. At Thanksgiving, we do not count calories. We indulge. At the Easter Vigil, we do not worry about time. We feast liturgically.
A part of that liturgical feasting is the proclamation of seven readings from the Old Testament and two from the New, plus eight responsorial psalm sections. The readings start with the account of creation and then highlight key moments of our salvation history. The culmination of the sequence is the proclamation of the resurrection of Christ in the Gospel reading.
As we see from the passage from Genesis, God created a good world. All that he made was good. Evil entered the world through human sin, which brought about the marring of God's creation. After this marring, the Fall, God undertakes the redemption of humanity. Over the course of centuries, he prepares the way for the Incarnation, his coming among us as one of us to take upon himself our own sins and thereby restore us to our original blessed state.
In his Gospel, John parallels the Incarnation with the act of creation, suggesting that God's coming among us is the beginning of the re-creation of the world. Through the sacrifice of Christ on the cross, humanity is given the path to be cleansed of sin and to be made spiritually whole. The resurrection of Christ begins the physical restoration of the human condition. The finality of death is defeated and we receive the promise of eternal life in a new, perfected body, united with our soul.
Then, at end of time, nature itself, the whole cosmos, will be remade, as we see in the closing chapters of The Book of Revelation. The world will be perfected and God's love will fill it completely. The sequence of events set in motion when the Virgin Mary accepted her role to become the Mother of God Incarnate reaches its culmination in the re-creation of the world.
The resurrection of Christ is a pivotal moment in God's unfolding plan for us. The empty tomb points toward our own resurrection and the reshaping of the world into paradise, the New Heaven and the New Earth, described by the Apostle John. This new paradise will be even more glorious and beautiful than the one original designed for humanity, before our fall. God, who has shared in our humanity, will now draw us into his own divine life. We will live eternally in God's infinite love, imbued with it, surrounded by it, and sharing his love with one another, world without end.
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The readings for Holy Saturday, Cycle B are:
Gn 1:1—2:2
Ps 104:1-2, 5-6, 10, 12, 13-14, 24, 35
or
Ps 33:4-5, 6-7, 12-13, 20 and 22
Gn 22:1-18
Ps 16:5, 8, 9-10, 11
Ex 14:15—15:1
Ex 15:1-2, 3-4, 5-6, 17-18
Is 54:5-14
Ps 30:2, 4, 5-6, 11-12, 13
Is 55:1-11
Is 12:2-3, 4, 5-6
Bar 3:9-15, 32--4:4
Ps 19:8, 9, 10, 11
Ez 36:16-17a, 18-28
Ps 42:3, 5; 43:3, 4 - When baptism is celebrated.
Is 12:2-3, 4bcd, 5-6 - When baptism is not celebrated.
or
Ps 51:12-13, 14-15, 18-19 - When baptism is not celebrated
Rom 6:3-11
Ps 118:1-2, 16-17, 22-23
Gospel
Mark 16:1-7
The full text can be found at the USCCB website.
Photo Credit: The Site of the Crucifixion in Jerusalem by Zoltan Abraham (c) 2016.