Requiem for the Demise of the Great Vigil of Easter

Easter Vigil   B      April 4, 2015

Ex.14:10 Canticle 8, Ez  36:24-28 Psalm 42:1-7

Rom.6:3-11         Mark 16:1-8

 Lectionary Link

  The practice of the Easter Vigil has gone the way of being like Civil War buffs who like to dress up and re-enact the old battles.  It is a very specialized crowd who like to do this sort of thing and those who do it really get into it.

  The Easter Vigil is observed similarly in contexts where people have the Easter Vigil tradition but for most modern Christians, an actual Vigil is an unbearable liturgical marathon.  The Easter Vigil has given way to Easter Sunday services which are conducted in the mid-morning time slot and can have Easter egg hunts added to them.  A Vigil that greets Easter morning at the midnight hour is not compatible with modern time sensibilities and family schedules, so in the guilt to keep alive the most important liturgy of the ancient church, many of us present the Cliff Notes version of the Vigil or just plain eliminate most of the long readings from the Hebrew Scriptures.  We use the Vigil to get the baptisms "out of the way" so as save time for the Principal Easter Service on Easter day, which is quite ironic since the ancient church regarded the Easter Vigil to be the Principal Service of Easter.

  If there are baptisms for the Vigil one can be assured of more attendance because of extended families being present to witness and support the baptismal candidates.  But if there are no baptisms, most members have to decide on whether to go to two Easter services or just to one during the Easter Day mid-morning hours.

  I am a realist about the practice of the Easter Vigil even as I am kind of sentimental because I remember the celebration of the Easter Vigil in my seminary community where everyone was completely committed to the celebratory event.  (Also attendance was mandatory). But as in many things, what has a very specialized interest in communities of theological geeks, does not have general interest in the lay populace of most parishes.

  We are who we are and the Easter Vigil practice is what it is for us as we on this Eve celebrate the founding event of our very community identity.

  So tonight we keep the skeletal remains of an Easter Vigil alive in hopes that it may one day may have a renewed general relevance to the lives of more people.  Part of the lack of interest in the Vigil has to do with modernity in the society.  We assume general literacy and we assume immediate accessibility to all Christian knowledge through books and Google.  An annual liturgy in an illiterate populace was a really big deal; it is not such a “big deal” for us since we are inundated by all kinds of word events all of the time.  Our learning and catechesis is continuous and on-going and not limited to a climactic event where the only ones who are educated in the community perform the words for a non-literate lay people.  This situation partly has driven the Vigil to be the preference of the few theological geeky specialists and re-enactors.

  But with this disclaimer let us at least seek renewal in the constituting designs of the Vigil.

  First, in darkness we light the new fire for the Paschal Candle and proclaim, “The Light of Christ.”  We admit that the learning process is the continual movement from darkness into light.  Aha! I see! Christ is witness of our Surpassing Selves; Our Surpassing Selves stand before us as the possibility of many more experiences of, “Aha, I see!”  So in the light of Christ, you and I stand hopeful for more future insights.  I can really honestly get excited about new future insights.  Can you?

  Second, we have been constituted by the words of our lives.  Words have formed our identities.  Not all words have been given to us with equal weight and authority.  The biblical words have been given a privileged weight in the formation of our identities.  In the Vigil readings we acknowledge our formation in the great words of our tradition and we join to do it again because we want to promulgate the importance and identity forming power of these words for ourselves and all into the future.

  Third, we intersperse words with the special genre of words which we call prayer.  And the prayers are topical; we seek to invoke God into every corner of our human experience and the offered prayers of the vigil is the practice of the priestliness of the entire church praying  together.

  Fourth, we baptize and we renew baptismal vows.  We acknowledge the specific time and place of our initiation into a tradition of believing that God created us, loves us, forgives us and asks us to love one another.  We gather to acknowledge that we are “recovering” hypocrites.  Why?  Our baptismal values are so high and ideal, we can’t possibility say that we have completed them.  We preach and make vows toward higher values than we have attained.  And so we profess our cheerful “recovering” in our hypocrisy.  We will not give up the difficulty of our attaining of our values even while we know that we are surely failing.

  Fifth, we welcome new members into our fellowship and we give them our best words of value about the meaning of their lives.  We celebrate that the Gospel has succeeded in each generation since the time of Jesus and so even though we are different from people in the past, we share with them the common Christ-humanity with them tonight.

  Sixth, we welcome the day of hope, the celebration of the Resurrection of Christ.  We do it with a banquet meal, called Thanksgiving.  We are Thankful tonight that hope attained such a wonderful narrative in the resurrection of Christ.  We are thankful that we don’t have to “eat” alone.  We are thankful for this banquet meal given to us by Jesus to keep us together as the family of Christ and to be our constant aspiration for the entire world to be able to sit down at a table together in fellowship, with everyone having enough to eat and with everyone celebrating friendship and mutual regard because of the hope of Christ.

   Even though our Easter Vigil seems weak and impaired in our celebration of it, let us not forget the great constituting principles expressed in the Vigil liturgy.  We may escape attending a four hour Easter Vigil liturgy, we cannot escape the wonderful meanings of the Easter Vigil, the chief one being, “Alleluia, Christ is Risen.  The Lord is Risen Indeed. Alleluia!  Amen.