Commentary on the Exsultet, Part 3 :: Monastery of the Holy Cross

Haec nox est, in qua primum patres nostros filios Israel eductos de Aegytpo, mare Rubrum sicco vestigio transpire fecisti.

This is the night, when once you led our forebears, Israel?s children, from slavery in Egypt and made them pass dry-shod through the Red Sea.

(previous translation: This is the night when first you saved our father: you freed the people of Israel from their slavery and led the dry-shod through the sea.)

Comment: The theme of Passover continues, moving from the sparing blood of the Passover lamb which prefigures Christ?s blood which consecrates believers.? Next, we recount the Exodus from Egypt and crossing of the Red Sea.? To what extent does our understanding depend precisely upon the ?spiritual? reading of the Exodus?? We will probably not be able to determine that in this life, since the New Testament witness is already deeply structured by an understanding of the Paschal Mystery as the fulfillment of Passover, as its very name suggests.

There is a sense that our being marked with Christ?s Blood marks us for a ?death like His?, and that departure from this life for Christians is akin to the departure from Egypt.? As the Israelites regularly wondered if it was worth it, we might suffer from similar suspicions.? But we only have one bodily death: how will we prepare for it?? As something against which we will struggle, or as the movement with Christ from this place of slavery toward our true homeland.? Much will depend on the extent to which we have already died to ourselves by leaving behind the bondage of vice and embracing the freedom of virtue in imitation of the sinless Christ.

Haec igitur nox est quae peccatorum tenebras, columnae illuminatione purgavit.

This is the night that with a pillar of fire banished the darkness of sin.

(This is the night when the pillar of fire destroyed the darkness of sin.)

Comment: The moral theme that I sounded in the previous comment is vindicated by the next line of the Exsultet which makes the connection between the column of fire and the Easter candle which led us into the dark church.? Interesting that both translations use the word ?fire? to translate ?illuminatio?. This perhaps connects us more obviously with the pillar that led Israel through the desert, but more literally, we should read this as ?the light of the pillar?.? The word ?illumination? is significant because it is an ancient name for the sacrament of baptism, thus drawing the connection between the Exodus, Christ?s triumph in the Paschal Mystery and our own triumph as His members through baptism.? The light of Christ should allow us to see, with ever greater clarity, the ways in which our former lives were stunted by sinful behavior which in turned darkened our understanding of God and of the human person.? The candles that we carry this night signify the need to shine this illumination on the dark parts within us, that we might better undergo conversion.

Haec nox est, quae hodie per universum mundum, in Christo credentes, a vitiis saeculi, et caligine peccatorum segregatos, reddit gratiae, sociat sanctitati.

This is the night that even now, throughout the world, sets Christian believers apart from worldly vices and from the gloom of sin, leading them to grace and joining them to his holy ones.

(This is the night when Christians everywhere, washed clean of sin and freed from all defilement, are restored to grace and grow together in holiness.)

Comment: Once more the moral implications of our ?exodus? in Christ are put forward.? Notice how the assertiveness of the present translation versus ?the world? is missing from the previous translation.?? Note also how this sentence suggests a ?translation?, or a conversion from one association to another.? We leave ?the world? and join the society of holy ones.

It is important to understand the nuance of ?world? whenever we speak of our Christian belief.? In this line, the word ?world?, or a derivative of it, appear twice, translating two separate terms. ?Mundum? indicates the special expanse of earth, the place where the Church militant sojourns.? This world is not itself evil, and indeed God loved the world so much that He sent His Son into the world and not to condemn it.? On the other hand ?worldly vices? translates vitiis saeculi, and this word saeculum indicates more of the cultural sense of an ?age? or ?worldview? perhaps.? This is the wordliness that has been generated by sinful structures of behavior, and it is from complicity, in this sense of ?world?, that we are called to be apart.? And being set apart we become ?holy?.

Haec nox est, in qua destructis vinculis mortis, Chrisus ab inferis victor ascendit.

This is the night, when Christ broke the prison-bars of death and rose victorious from the underworld.

(This is the night when Jesus Christ broke the chains of death and rose triumphant from the grave.)

Comment: ?Prison-bars? is an interesting rendering of vinculis, which more literally should be ?prison-chains?.? However, in the larger context of this sentence, I think that this choice is justifiable. ?The previous translation mistranslated inferis as ?grave?, when it truly is the ?underworld?, even ?hell? or ?Hades?.? The harrowing of hell is a topic that has received a lot of attention in recent years, mainly thanks to the speculative theology of Hans Urs von Batlthasar.? Here we see implied a traditional understanding of Christ entering into hell and destroying its gates of bronze and shattering its iron bars (see Psalm? 106 [107]: 16).? The underworld is understood as a kind of prison where the souls of those who had died were kept in bondage.? I will say more about this in my homily tomorrow?

Nihil enim nobis nasci profuit, nisi redimi profuisset!

Our birth would have been no gain, had we not been redeemed.

(What good would life had been to us, had Christ not come as our Redeemer?)

Comment: Now the text begins to unpack the effects of these various ?Passovers?.? This first is that it makes sense of life itself; the enigma of death as the mysterious end of everyone is revealed as a mistake in our perception.? And the apparent futility of a life that could be cut short at any moment is revealed as well as contrary to the life-giving might of God.

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