“I want to make history” is something heard at least from the ambitious. Yet it seems those who succeed are few and far between. Go check out an encyclopedia and pick any “historical” figure at random. I’ll bet that, with very few exceptions, if their life gets to fill half a printed page, they’re lucky. History seems to be chary about those who get to be “part” of it.

Yet Easter is everyone’s chance to be “part of history.”

The readings of the Easter Vigil include a maximum of seven from the Old Testament. Those readings all testify to just how much Easter night had been prepared for by God, from the very beginning of the world.

It all begins in the act of love called creation. God did not have to create. Nothing would be lacking to Him if He had not. But the Easter Vigil begins with the first account of creation, with God’s loving design for reality that included the inestimable dignity of making man and woman in His image and likeness. And while the Easter Vigil does not feature the account of the fall, it is clear from the “Protoevangelium” in Genesis 3:15 that God already intended sin not to have the last word in human history.

On Easter, we remember the first firstborn son who carried wood up a hill to be sacrificed — and who is saved: Isaac, who prefigures Jesus.

The Easter Vigil requires that the third reading — the account of the crossing of the Red Sea — must be read during the Vigil. The Exodus from Egypt was not just a political statement of God’s love for Israel but a theological statement of freedom from sin and slavery given not by human hand but God’s.

The last four readings are from various prophets, who drop hints all over the place of God’s redemptive design.

They all lead to the Gospel, which always features the account of the empty tomb. He is risen!

But God did not raise His Son from the dead as a personal reward or just for Adam, Eve, Abraham, Isaac, Moses, Aaron, or Ezekiel. God raised Jesus for me. The whole purpose of Easter is that sin will not have the final word in history, which means every sinner (i.e., everyman but Jesus and Mary) must have the chance to escape it.

That is what Easter is about. And that is how we become “part of history,” part of the most important event in human history: salvation. And that human history is not for “some” but for “all.”

At the Last Judgment, every event in human history will be put into one single perspective: Did it contribute to or detract from the triumph of God in Christ, the triumph of life over death, the triumph of good over evil? Regardless of whatever other transitory significance discrete events might have had in the course of human history, their true meaning and value is one thing: Did they or did they not advance the fullest coming of the Kingdom of God?

That mission is not limited to what history calls its “movers and shakers.” That history is moved not just by the great and glorious but by the parent that raises a child, the teacher that conveys truth, the employer and employee who treat each other justly, the man who gives another a glass of cold water in His Name (Mt 10:42).

2026 will be a year of historical focus for Americans as they celebrate their country’s independence. It is good that we celebrate while remembering that, in human history, nations and empires have come and gone, but only one Kingdom will endure. The message of Easter is that each and every one can be part — indeed, God wants us to be part — of that Kingdom. Easter is your time to make history.