Don’t get me wrong, I love the Great Vigil of Easter. I am just glad these are rare, but how can we make them safe?
As a disclaimer, when I was a young priest, an eternity ago, I insisted that we do all the long forms of every thing and all the readings, Responsorial prayers, collects, etc.
As I have entered senior citizen status, which seems like over night, I have grown weary of a liturgy that seems never to end.
This year I filled in at Holy Family Church for the Easter Triduum including the Great Vigil of Easter.
I did the short form of everything (although I did pray the Roman Canon with the proper inserts).
We did three short form Old Testament readings.
I chanted, and marvelously I might add, the short form of the Exultet.
I think I did the short form of the Consecration of the Easter Water.
I did not catch myself on fire, my greatest Easter Vigil anxiety, at the blessing of the fire, despite hurricane force ocean winds.
What I failed to do as I have failed to do every year is to tell the music director to only chant one verse of any Responsorial Psalm. For example, chant the refrain, allow the congregation to repeat, chant one verse and repeat again the refrain (technically that is four verses!).
However, most of the dang psalms have five and six verses! Yes you read the correctly and if there are five verses, with the refrains that’s 11 verses. These are interminable! Interminable! I say!
Do only one verse or better yet usethe Gradual in place of the Responsorial Psalm.
3 comments:
Why would anyone who properly understands eternity want to shorten it?
Why not just not do the Vigil at all? Skipping it seems to me preferable to turning it into more or less an anticipated Mass of Easter Sunday with two extra readings and a bit of faffing around with a candle and chant at the beginning. I mean, if you really try (and manage to make sure there's no one to be baptized), you could probably get it down to about and hour and fifteen minutes. But what's the point?
Ours was two hours and 45 minutes (with eight baptisms and four receptions and--gasp--all seven OT readings) and I'm pretty sure that few of the 300 people there would have wanted it any shorter. And for those who desire something shorter, there's always Sunday morning.
Father, your comments demonstrate how a modern(ist) mind set erodes the Faith over just a few short decades. the children and young people that attended Easter vigil with the young Fr McDonald would have gotten more of a sense of keeping vigil for the resurrection of the Lord.
If there were any children/youth at your minimalist version this year they could conclude that "this isn't really that important since we are skipping half the stuff".
I was in Lalibela, Ethiopia a few years ago in October. They have a feast commemorating the Holy Families flight to Egypt. It begins at dusk with chanting, incense, procession around the court yard and into the Church ( all much more elaborate than I can describe). this is repeated until dawn; being an American I baled out and went to bed about 11:30 pm. The local people and pilgrims hang in there all night, some have walked many miles to participate in this feast.
I am a convert and have been attending Easter Vigil for about 25 years. IMHO should be longer with more ritual, perhaps begin a bit later but continue until at least 2:00 or 3:00 AM with the Mass definitely not beginning before Midnight(as in the 55' instructions). The people should be allowed to come and go until the high point of the Mass which would be followed by watching in prayer as after the Holy Thursday Mass.
This is our highest holiest day of the year, Let's make it seem that way. Sacrifice is good for the soul!!
Saint Michael the Arch Angel defend us in battle.
Father, same as the gift bearing comments above, the contents of the Vigil Mass are not what bogs it down and drags it out, but instead, all the faux stately and grave audience participation parts as assorted actors exit stage left and new ones plod in stage right to take their places, and all the waiting in between, as well as readings done in excruciatingly graduate of the Evelyn Woodhead Speed Redding Method manner....the contents are not the problem, but the false gravitas on what is supposed to be joyous rather than funereal occasion.
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