Holy Saturday 2025: " O night, my finest invention ..."

 If we read the last pages of Charles Peguy's The Portal of the Mystery of Hope we might, at a first glance, feel that he is ending his poem about "the little girl hope" with a reflection on the death and burial of Jesus. However, if we start our reading a few pages earlier, we encounter the beginning of a reflection on the theme of night that becomes, at the end, to focus on one night alone.

He starts with night as a part of God's creation - remember that it is the voice of God who speaks through the narrator of the play that is The Portal .. :

Nights follow each other and are linked together and for the child, 

nights are continuous and form the very basis of his being.

He falls back on them. They are the very basis of his life.
They are his being itself. Night is the place, night is the being 

wherein the child bathes, wherein his is nourished, wherein he is 

created, wherein he is made....

 

Night is the place, night is the being wherein he rests, wherein he 

retires, wherein he collects himself.

Wherein he comes home. And leaves again refreshed. Night is my most 

beautiful creation...

Night is for my children and for my young

Hope what it is in reality. Children are the ones who see and who 

know. My young hope is the one who sees and who knows. 

What being is.

And a couple of pages later there is an announcement of night as the place of hope :

O night, my finest invention, my most noble creation of all.

My most beautiful creature. Creature of the greatest Hope.
You give the most substance to Hope.

You are the instrument, you are the very substance and the 

dwelling-place of Hope.

And also, (and thus), you are ultimately the creature of the greatest 

Charity.

Because it's you who gently rock the whole of Creation
Into a restoring Sleep.

 And in the last two pages, the hymn to that one night that was like no other:

But above all, Night, you remind me of that night.
And I will remember it eternally.
The ninth hour had sounded. It was in the country of my people of 

Israel.

It was all over. The enormous adventure.
From the sixth hour to the ninth hour there had been darkness 

covering the entire countryside.

Everything was finished. Let's not talk about it anymore. It hurts me to 

think about it.

My son's incredible descent among men.
Into their midst....

Those three years that he was a sort of preacher among men.
A priest.
Those three days when he fell victim to men.
Among men.
Those three nights when he was dead in the midst of men
Dead among the dead....

It was then, o night, that you arrived.

O my daughter, my most precious among them all, and it is still before 

my eyes and it will remain before my eyes for all eternity.

It was then, o Night, that you came and, in a great shroud, you buried
The Centurion and his Romans,
The Virgin and the holy women,
And that mountain, and that valley, upon which the evening was 

descending,

And my people of Israel and sinners and, with them, he who was 

dying, he who had died for them.

And the men sent by Joseph of Arimathea who were already a

approaching

Bearing the white shroud.

The Church celebrates that night which gives substance to Hope in the Easter Vigil, where the Exultet sings its praise with the repeated invocation - "This is the night" - and its praise of the "night that shall be as bright as day",  the "truly blessed night", the night that is "your night of grace".