Liturgy

Notes on The Easter Vigil

Blake Billings, Ph.D.
- The Paschal Candle
  
  The Triduum
  
  The celebration of the Easter Vigil highlights the liturgical year at Portsmouth, celebrated in the beauty of the abbey’s Church of St. Gregory the Great. In focusing on the Easter Vigil, we should remember that with the Vigil we enter into a concerto in its third and final movement. For this liturgical celebration is the culmination of the Holy Triduum, the three-day mystery commemorating the Lord’s Supper, the Crucifixion, and now holding vigil to await and proclaim His Resurrection. The Vigil in the Holy Night recalls the vigil of the Israelites in their flight from Egypt. It echoes the vigil asked by Christ of his disciples in the Garden of Gethsemane. It marks the passage from death to life, bringing the liturgical life of the Church to its culmination. It is thus aptly the moment for baptism, and we are blessed to celebrate three baptisms at our Easter Vigil this year.
  
  “The Easter Triduum which will make us relive the central event of our salvation begins tomorrow. These will be days of more intense prayer and meditation in which, with the help of the moving rites of Holy Week, we will reflect on the passion, death and resurrection of Christ. The meaning and fulfilment of human history lies in the Paschal Mystery. ‘Therefore’, the Catechism of the Catholic Church emphasizes, ‘Easter is not simply one feast among others, but the "Feast of Feasts”, the "Solemnity of Solemnities”, just as the Eucharist is the "Sacrament of Sacraments” (the great Sacrament). St Athanasius calls Easter "the Great Sunday” (Easter Letter 329) and the Eastern Churches call Holy Week "the Great Week”. The mystery of the Resurrection, in which Christ crushed death, permeates with its powerful energy our old time until all is subjected to him" (n. 1169). ...During the Easter Vigil, singing the "Gloria" the splendour of our destiny will be revealed: to forge a new humanity, redeemed by Christ who died and rose for us. … In the Easter Triduum, we will fix our gaze more intensely on the face of Christ, a face of suffering and agony, that helps us understand better the drama of the events and situations that are afflicting humanity even in these days. His is a Face radiant with light that gives renewed hope to our lives.” (Pope John Paul II, General Audience of March 27, 2002)
  
  The Fire
  
  The Easter Vigil is held at night. And it begins with a flame that illuminates the darkness. The fire is lit outside the church’s signature double doors, designed by Dom Peter Sidler, O.S.B. Always contending with the winds of the Narragansett Bay, our flame nevertheless is ignited and fanned, and begins to gather the School and extended community as it draws together for the liturgy.
  
  "Let there be light!" (Gn 1:3). During the Easter Vigil, the Liturgy proclaims these words taken from the Book of Genesis. They constitute an eloquent theme running through this wonderful celebration. At the beginning the ‘new fire’ is blessed, and is used to light the Paschal candle, which is then carried in procession to the altar. The candle enters and moves forward at first in darkness, until the moment when, after the intonation of the third ‘Lumen Christi’, light returns in the whole Basilica. In this way, an interconnection has been made between the elements of darkness and light, of death and life. Against this background the biblical account of creation is retold. God says: ‘Let there be light’ (Gn 1:3). This is, in a certain sense, the first step towards life. On this night there is to take place a singular passing from death to life, and the rite of light, together with the words from the Book of Genesis, offer the first proclamation of this.” (Pope John Paul II, Easter Vigil homily, March 29, 1997)
  
  From this flame we illuminate the Paschal candle, having marked it with the tokens of Christ’s suffering, and noting the year of Our Lord which it is to represent. This occurs in the narthex of the Abbey Church: while the congregation awaits in darkness and in some suspense, the superior’s proclamation, “Christ, yesterday and today, the Beginning and the End, the Alpha and the Omega...,” which inaugurates the solemn liturgy. The mystery and intrigue is re-ignited with the individual candles held with some trepidation in the hands of each congregant.
  
  “At the Easter Vigil, the Church represents the mystery of the light of Christ in the sign of the Paschal candle, whose flame is both light and heat. The symbolism of light is connected with that of fire: radiance and heat, radiance and the transforming energy contained in the fire – truth and love go together. The Paschal candle burns, and is thereby consumed: Cross and resurrection are inseparable. From the Cross, from the Son’s self-giving, light is born, true radiance comes into the world. From the Paschal candle we all light our own candles, especially the newly baptized, for whom the light of Christ enters deeply into their hearts in this Sacrament.” (Pope Benedict XVI, Easter Vigil Homily, April 11, 2009)
  
  The Exsultet
  
  One of the most striking moments of the liturgy is the singing of the Exsultet before the Paschal candle. This dramatically recounts salvation history and places its telos, its culmination, in the paschal flame that is to represent the Light of Christ.
  
  The Procession with the Paschal Candle
  
  “...We can be tempted to think that dashed hope is the bleak law of life. Today however we see that our journey is not in vain; it does not come up against a tombstone. A single phrase astounds the woman and changes history: “Why do you seek the living among the dead?” (Lk 24:5). Why do you think that everything is hopeless, that no one can take away your own tombstones? Why do you give into resignation or failure? Easter, brothers and sisters, is the feast of tombstones taken away, rocks rolled aside. God takes away even the hardest stones against which our hopes and expectations crash: death, sin, fear, worldliness...” (Pope Francis, Homily of Easter Vigil, April 20, 2019)
  
  Baptism
  
  The vigil has witnessed a number of baptisms, typically from amongst the student body. That we are blessed this year with three baptisms is a remarkable testament to our community life and to the working of God’s grace here among us.
  
  “The second symbol of the Easter Vigil – the night of Baptism – is water. It appears in Sacred Scripture, and hence also in the inner structure of the Sacrament of Baptism, with two opposed meanings. On the one hand there is the sea, which appears as a force antagonistic to life on earth, continually threatening it; yet God has placed a limit upon it. Hence the book of Revelation says that in God’s new world, the sea will be no more (cf. 21:1). It is the element of death. And so it becomes the symbolic representation of Jesus’ death on the Cross: Christ descended into the sea, into the waters of death, as Israel did into the Red Sea. Having risen from death, he gives us life. This means that Baptism is not only a cleansing, but a new birth: with Christ we, as it were, descend into the sea of death, so as to rise up again as new creatures.” (Pope Benedict XVI, Easter Vigil Homily, April 11, 2009)
  
  The Octave
  
  And if we are to understand the Easter Vigil as the culmination of a three-movement concerto, completing the Triduum, we should not overlook that this final movement in fact resonates throughout eight days. The week of Easter is the principal octave that is still retained in our liturgical life, remnant of three great octaves: Christmas, Easter, and Pentecost. The octave – reminiscent of the eighth day assigned to circumcision, in the ancient octagonal shape of baptismal fonts, echoed in the very architecture of our eight-sided Church of St. Gregory the Great – reminds us of the fulfillment of God’s covenant with His people. The practice proliferated in the history of the church, with a hierarchy of octaves recognized for feasts of various levels of solemnity. Pope Saint Paul VI continued the gradual restriction of the practice of octaves to the two great feasts of Christmas and Easter (to the chagrin of those who favor the retention of an octave of Pentecost). Liturgically, the octave of Easter will be expressed in the monastery’s liturgical life in a variety of ways, notably in priestly vestments, in antiphons that are sung and the conclusion of each Mass of the week with the triple alleluia.