THE EASTER VIGIL 2021
It’s a shambles! The Easter Vigil, I mean, and not just this Easter Vigil, with its regulations and restrictions, but the Easter Vigil per se. It was clearly designed by a committee: bits stick out at all angles.
You are probably aware of the definition of a camel as “a horse designed by a committee”. Well, the Vigil is a liturgical camel.
Notice how many times the ceremonies reach a high point, only to dive down again, before there is another leap up. We are riding a prayerful Big Dipper. The first summit comes with the third Lumen Christi, when the paschal candle is held aloft, the church lights all flash on, and the candle is placed in the stand and incensed, before a heavenly voice intones the Exsultet—“Rejoice heavenly powers…” and we ascend to heights of sublimity.
Then, in an instant, we are back down to earth, as we return to the very beginning of things, and read from the Hebrew Bible (the Old Testament). Often, as this year, we are taken right back to our origins, as we hear that beautifully poetic creation narrative, of a world which God pronounced to be “very good”; always we hear of the crossing of the Red Sea, when the Jewish people were saved by water, as we are saved by the water of baptism, the Easter sacrament.
In my younger and more radical days I used to change the order, having the Old Testament readings first, before heading out to bless the fire and the candle, giving a steady rise to the high point of the Exsultet. With the passing of the years, one becomes more conformist, more “oh blow it!” in attitude, more willing to go with the flow.
So I climbed back onto the Big Dipper, which, after the final Old Testament reading, ascends to a new summit with the Gloria. Never will I forget my first Easter Vigil in the seminary when, at this point, the organ thundered out, the kettle drums and tubular bells joined in, and, as someone pulled a string, the purple hangings covering the frescoes behind the altar all fell down at once. Glorious liturgical kitsch: I felt that I was in heaven.
Inevitably, we are back to the ground with our reading from St. Paul, drawing our attention to the link between the Resurrection and baptism, before we hit the heights again with the triple Alleluia. After this, the Mass continues as usual until the final joy of the sung dismissal, followed by a rousing Easter hymn, at Ushaw always “Thine be the glory”.
So a wonderful, wonderful, awesome celebration; a worthy high point of the year, a glorious sharing in the joy of the risen Christ—but a shambles all the same.
And perhaps it is right that our greatest celebration should be a shambles, because life is a shambles, and the world is a shambles, and the Church is a shambles, and you and I are a shambles. Yet it doesn’t matter, because into the shambles comes a dead man walking, a man with pierced hands and feet, and a pierced side, who says to us “Don’t worry. Don’t worry about the shambles, because I have seen it, and I have plunged into the heart of it, and it has killed me.
“Don’t worry about that either, because I have overcome death, and the shambles, and the wounds, and I am alive again. Look at my wounds. Put your hands into them , and recognize in them the sanctification of the shambles, and of death, and of you.
“Embrace the shambles of the world, and of the Church, and of yourself; live it to the full. And enjoy the shambles of the Vigil, because it proclaims that in the midst of every shambles, glorious like this, or dark and painful, I AM, conquering and healing. It is a shambles, but it is a superb, divine shambles. Enjoy it to the full, for I am risen.”
