"O truly blessed night! which alone deserved to know the time and hour when Christ rose again from hell. This is the night of which it is written: And the night shall be as light as day; and the night shineth upon me in my pleasures. Therefore the sanctification of this night blots out crimes, washes away sins, and restores innocence to the fallen, and joy to the sorrowful. It banishes enmities, produces concord, and humbles empires." The deacon then fixes in the candle, in the form of a cross, the five grains of incense which were previously blessed at the same time as the new fire, a visible image of the five wounds made in the flesh of the Crucified. Liturgists also show us in this incense the perfumes and spices which Mary Magdalene, Mary, the mother of James, and Salome bought to embalm Jesus (St. Mark xvi. 1). "Receive, O holy Father, receive on this night the evening sacrifice which Thy holy Church, by the hands of her ministers, presents to Thee, in this solemn oblation of this wax candle, made out of the labor of bees." The Passion was truly the evening sacrifice, according to David's prophetic word, _Elevatio manuum mearum sacrificium vespertinum_ (Ps. cxl. 3), because it was in the evening of the world, as at the decline of the day, that the Divine Victim expired, uttering a loud cry to heaven, after having declared that all was consummated! It was in the evening, too, _ad auram post meridiem_ (Gen. iii. 8), at the hour when a gentle wind arises, when through the earthly paradise resounded the voice of the Lord: "Adam, where art thou?" At the very hour when He found Adam guilty of disobedience, four thousand years afterwards the Father called His Son to Him and found the new Adam obedient, and obedient even to the death of the cross. "_Sed jam nunc columnæ hujus præconia novimus_," the deacon continues to sing. "And now we know the excellence of this pillar, which the sparkling fire lights for the honor of God." The sacred minister then lights the Paschal Candle. He lights it with the fire which was recently struck from the stone, that is, from Christ, the Corner-Stone who, beaten by the rods of the scourging, produced in us the divine spark of love pre-eminent of the Holy Ghost. This is the fire which the Son came to bring upon the earth with the desire to see it enkindle the world. Lighted and fed by the wood of the cross, its divine flame is fanned by the breath of the Holy Ghost. This new fire is also the new doctrine of the Saviour, the _mandatum novum_ of which St. John speaks. The candle thus lighted is thenceforth the figure of the risen Saviour, as we have said. The humanity of Christ lay, too, extinguished in the shades of death; but, behold, beneath the burning breath of the divinity, it has suddenly recovered life, and Jesus emerges from the night of the tomb all resplendent with light.