Homily by the Rt Rev and Rt Hon Lord Chartres for the Great Vigil of Easter, April 4, 2026

Father, all those words and thoughts that come from thee, wilt thou bless them and make them fruitful?

And all those words and thoughts that come not from thee, but from our own vanity, wilt thou forgive.

Amen.

Welcome to Alexander Friedrich and to William Lawrence.

Beloved in the springtime of the church, this night was the only night in which new Christians could be fully initiated into the body of Christ the community of believers only on this night.

And Lent, of course, is derived from the period of preparation for this most holy night.

This night we have brightness, brightness in the darkness, just as on Good Friday we had gloom at midday.

In the early church, it all began in the darkness, and the candidates for baptism were led tremblingly to the waters, very often a river or a deep baptismal pool.

They removed their clothes, discarded their old life, and came to the waters of baptism to the font.

The font which is both a tomb and a womb.

A tomb and a womb full of the deep waters of death and the waters of new life.

First, as we contemplate the water, there is the cleansing.

This must happen.

It's the pattern of the whole of the Christian life.

Again and again we have to turn our backs on the old life.

And in the early church, of course, very often, because they were uh they had a very visceral face.

You turned west at this point, and you spat at the devil.

But this is the advent.

Turning the back on the old life and then descending into the water assisted by the deacons.

Know ye not, and we heard this in our epistle, know ye not that so many of us as were baptized into Jesus Christ were baptized into his death.

The death which we undergo is death to sin.

Sin is a word which in English certainly has somewhat come down in the world and is restricted to various kinds of peccadillos, but actually it is a very radical word, and it is something that afflicts every single one of us, no matter how respectable we might be.

Because sin is living turned in upon yourself.

The opposite to faith is not doubt.

Actually, a mature faith needs doubt continually to overcome something that's immature and unformed and needs to be left behind.

The opposite to faith is sin.

Living life turned it in upon yourself.

Luther had that little Latin phrase which is even if you don't uh don't know much Latin, it's very, very vivid.

Life incurvatus in say.

That is what sin is.

Living life, turned it upon yourself.

We enter into that deep water of death so that we can be free to walk in the light and in newness of life.

And that symbolized in the early church by the gift of a new white robe.

And it is wonderful to see that our newest members of the body of Christ tonight have their white robe.

The waters are cleansing, but they are perilous.

This is something else as we contemplate the water.

They are cleansing and perilous.

They stand for dying to that life which is turned in upon ourselves, but they symbolize above all, as Saint John says in the last day, that great day of the feast, Jesus stood and cried.

Now there is an invitation for us all, no matter how old we are, no matter what a wreckage we've made of our lives, no matter about our many failures to love, the only ones excluded from this invitation of Jesus Christ are the self satisfied who are excluded themselves.

And Jesus goes on, after crying with a loud voice, he goes on, he that believeth on me, out of his belly shall flow streams of living water, and this spate be of the spirit.

So the Christian life on which Alexander Friedrich and William Lawrence are beginning.

The Christian life involves again and again turning your back on what is past and pressing on to the promise of new life.

Leaving behind that old life to embrace the gift which flows from the wounded side of Jesus Christ, from which we drink the water and the blood.

St.

Bernard has a marvelously simple way of summing up the drama of this Christian life on which Alexander Friedrich and William Lawrence are embarked.

He says in four very simple phrases, he sums up the Christian life.

He says we all begin loving self for self-sate.

That's how we survive.

That's how babies survive.

Loving self for self-sake.

Then says Bernard, we come unto the next stage.

Loving God for self-sake.

Treating God as our essay, as our remedy, as our supporter.

Not wrong, but it's the way in which most people come to a fuller and fuller faith.

Loving self for self-safe, loving God for self-safe.

And then there is the great Copernican shift in life, the great conversion, which is to love God for God's sake, to actually embrace all that God, the beyond all, stands for.

But the wonderful thing is that as St.

Bernard points out, it doesn't stop there.

This is no Christian faith that demands obliteration of ourselves.

Because the very last stage, after love of self for self's sake, love of God for self-safe, love of God for God's sake, the last stage is love of self for God's sake.

For we are fearfully and wonderfully made.

And he invites all of us who are athirst to drink of the water and the blood that flows from his wounded side.

And this is the path on which Alexander Friedrich and William Lawrence are embarked tonight.

And it is the path for us all.

Whatever our Galilee, Galilee stands for where we started from, our home place.

This is the drama which we are part of and which stretches out before us in the years to come.

And now to Jesus Christ be the glory in this church, now and forever.

Amen.