6am Easter Vigil Homily
20 April 2025
©Suzanne Grimmett
Julian of Norwich, the great 14th century anchoress once in a prayer of profound presence asked God, ‘How could all be well, in view of the great harm which has come upon your creatures through sin?’
“But Jesus, who in this vision informed me of all that is needed by me, answered with these words and said: ‘It was necessary that there should be sin; but all shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well.’
“These words,” recounts Mother Julian, “were said most tenderly, showing no manner of blame to me.”
I thought of these feelings expressed by Mother Julian as we again heard the words of the ancient and beautiful Exsultet sung this morning, “even our sin was a happy fault.” Listen to the beauty of these ancient words again;
This is the day that gave us back what we had lost;
Beyond our deepest dreams
You made even our sin a happy fault.
Crowning glory of all feasts,
evil and hatred are put to flight and sin is washed away.
lost innocence regained, and mourning turned to joy.
Feast truly blessed, when hatred is cast out,
peace and justice find a home, heaven is joined to earth,
and all creation reconciled to you.
I think we would all find beauty in these words.
I think we also know deep within us the truth that we encounter grace in our brokenness and can reach our fullest humanity through our failures.
This year where there is so much justifiable anxiety about where the world is heading and we continue to watch terrible violence across the globe, we might find ourselves relating to Mother Julian as she looked upon the great harm and pondered how all could ever be well. Even as we recognise the truth of God present powerfully in our brokenness, we cannot and should not turn away from the pain of humankind and creation nor let go of our questions and wrestling with this God who has broken into human history. ‘All shall be well’ can never be rightly heard as a platitude nor justification for the suffering in the world nor an excuse for irresponsibility and inaction. And yet these beautiful words carry truth for us.
I recently met a young UK journalist and author named Lamorna Ash whom we interviewed for the podcast. Lamorna wrote this about this famous “all shall be well” line from Mother Julian’s ‘Revelations of Divine Love’ with some beautiful imagery. She says;
“It’s the best-known line…because, like the idea of more life, it’s all any of us wants to hear, and because it sounds like something the sea would say, or the wind through the trees. It’s a refrain that seems to come from the world itself. Like the voice of the sea (which would say ‘all shall be well’ whether it was keeping you afloat or drawing you under), it’s a refrain whose DNA carries an essential tragedy too….All won’t be well. It just won’t be. It never was. Not in this world, not with this humanity. It’s right there in the Bible, the deepest truth man can find within those ancient texts, from the very beginning. It’s in every tragic narrative ever produced that attempts to describe the suffering drift we call life. No one will make it through. But I say it to myself anyway.” [1]
This morning is a moment where we glimpse something of that refrain that seems to come from the world itself. In the shock of an empty tomb there is not only the astonishing, wondrous joy that death is defeated but a resounding affirmation of the goodness of life itself and the promise that we– all of us-are made for eternity.
Lamorna Ash says elsewhere that, “Christianity is still a live wire, a lightning strike through the world.” As we walked behind the cross this week until we saw the first flames of the Easter fire this morning, we are participating in something that would make little sense in cultures of dominance and control, possession and acquisition. Indeed, the cross of Christ and the fires of persecution of the early Christians would have both seemed like abject failure and defeat of the way of Jesus.
And yet, here we are.
The lightning strike of Easter Day has shaken the world and its certainties down two millennia. The light of Christ has continued to be drawn from the fires of persecution and despair for generation after generation, shining forth with courage even amidst trials of every kind. The light of Christ shines in the darkness, and the darkness has never overcome it.
This day, we can hold together all our doubts for ourselves and our fears for the world, all our wrestling with God and our longings for freedom and aching gratitude for the mercy poured upon us.
We don’t have simple answers or easy assurances, but because of Easter Day we can say, “All shall be well and all shall be well and all manner of thing shall be well.”
Christ is Risen, Alleluia!
[1] Lamorna Ash, Don’t Forget We’re Here Forever: A New Generation’s Search for Religion, (Due to be published Sep 2025), Bloomsbury Publishing.