Collects for Easter Even

Prayer book

GRANT, O Lord, that as we are baptized into the death of thy blessed Son our Saviour Jesus Christ, so by continual mortifying our corrupt affections we may be buried with him : and that through the grave, and gate of death, we may pass to our joyful resurrection ; for his merits, who died, and was buried, and rose again for us, thy Son Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

Breviary

Pour forth upon us, O Lord, the spirit of Thy love, that, by Thy loving kindness, Thou mayest make to be of one mind those whom Thou hast satisfied with the Paschal Sacraments. Through Jesus Christ, thy Son our Lord, Who liveth and reigneth with thee, in the unity of the same Holy Ghost, ever one God, world without end. Amen

Reflection
Baptism seems to be relegated in the folk memory to a celebration of the life of a newborn baby. A simple splash of water and then the beer and wine can be opened. How many times do we fail to look beyond the outward sign and seek the invisible grace?

When we are baptised, we die. As our Lord sanctified the waters of Baptism by being baptised Himself even though He was without sin, he also sanctified the oil of Holy Unction when St Mary Magdalene anointed Him for His death. It is in His death that we die to sin, that our tendency to sin ceases to draw us inexorably to death, and that in the midst of death we are in life with the water of life welling up within us.

We lie with God in the tomb, waiting for that moment of Resurrection, for the first breath to return to His lifeless body, for the death of death itself as an enemy to be feared but rather the passage to everlasting joy in the punctured hands of the One Who was dead but is no longer so.