Is the Easter Vigil too long?
March 27, 2008 by Amy
Fr. James Martin poses the question at the America blog
A good discussion at Deacon Greg Kandra’s blog
My brief (hah) answer: No.
Done correctly, with appropriate settings, even with a lot of baptisms, the Vigil really shouldn’t last over three hours. If it does (as was the case w/what Fr. Martin reports) - the problems are probably not with the structure of the liturgy or even with the number of initiations, but with other elements.
There’s a lot of extra “stuff” in the Vigil - all of it rich and evocative. There are nine Scripture readings, and I’m a firm believer in doing all of them, every time.
But there are two factors that have the power to unnecessarily extend the length of the Vigil:
1) The settings of the Responsorial Psalms
2) The homily
Think about #1. If there are 7 Responsorial Psalms and each takes five minutes, that’s 35 minutes right there, and one commentor at one of the blogs noted above mentioned hearing a Responsorial Psalm of 10 minutes in length. I am not sure about the rubrics related to the Psalms - if you must have them, if silence can ever be substituted. What you don’t have to have are elaborate, performance-driven Psalms after each reading.
And #2 - On a night like this, the priest or deacon needs to understand that a lengthy homily distracts from, rather than emphasizes the power of the evening. What he says should be powerful, focused and point to the richness of the rest of the ritual. In about five minutes. He should understand that at the Easter Vigil, the most powerful homilists are the catechumens and candidates. There’s really not much a homilist can add to what they are “saying.”
But in the end, I think the question of length, so bluntly put, is the wrong question and actually sort of …embarrassing, maybe? Especially when you consider, say, the normal length of many Orthodox or Eastern Rite liturgies - every Sunday. And also because of course, historically, the Easter Vigil has always been long - as in all night long, if you go back far enough. In some monasteries, it is still all night long. Michael went to the Vigil in the Extraordinary Form, and it was three hours long (from 11pm-2am) and that was with no baptisms or initiations.
No, the better question is, as Fr. Martin elaborates in his post, is what elements of the Vigil, as lived out in our parishes, are reflective of artistic and homiletic excesses rather than truly at the service of God through the liturgy?
Which is, of course, always a good question to ask.
33 Responses to “Is the Easter Vigil too long?”
Dear Amy,
You are exactly correct on your point #1: it is a great mistake to think that psalmody needs to be elaborate, melismatic, some kind of performance piece. Nonsense. The point of psalmody is the psalm, and the deliverance of the text. A quite simple chant tone does very nicely.
We (in the Byzantine Church) chant most of our psalms antiphonally with the following tone
G — for the first line
A —– for the second, with the cadence of F#, G on the last two syllables.
Works well for us.
I think the Easter Vigil is the most beautiful liturgical event of the year. Last year, in an otherwise beautiful service, the priest gave an almost 50 minute homily, which seems to me entirely unnecessary, for the reasons you suggest.
This year our service was lovely, although I was disappointed that our church did not do all of the readings. One high point for me is the renewal of our baptism promises and sprinkling with holy water. My reflections on that are on my blog here: http://susanjoan.wordpress.com/2008/03/23/alleluia/.
I would have to ask if there is something wrong with us - meaning modern, twitchy Americans with an attention span best exemplified by production values of TV shows like Sesame Street -that we can’t tolerate a rich religious celebration if it goes longer than 45 minutes.
(Along the same lines, I would have to say that my twitchy, ADD afflicted family does OK at the Easter Vigil, since it there is enough “going on” and changing that their attention doesn’t stray too far and fidgeting doesn’t set in. Candles and flames help, too…
Our Vigil this year was done in under ninety minutes. We had one baptism and one confirmation. We sang a lot of the service a capella including the Gloria and the Alleluia/Psalm 118 after the Epistle, and also sang the Vidi Aquam and the Pascha nostrum immolatus est Christus.
The pastor doesn’t like to do the readings and Psalms, so he reduces it to three readings, three Psalms, and then the Gloria etc. He said he would “never again endure” (!!!) a Vigil with all nine readings (if you count the Epistle and the Gospel).
In contrast, a former pastor used to start the liturgy of the word by telling the people, “sit back and absorb these readings. It’s the one night a year when you hear the whole story of salvation from the beginning through the resurrection.” And then we would do ALL NINE readings and Psalms (although I chose simple settings). Even that Vigil was only a little over two hours.
The Vigil should IMHO be considered a privilege or a rare jewel to be treasured — not a slab of bacon to be cut into rashers according to one’s preference. O the ingratitude!
Answer: No
I don’t go to it anymore because I have double choral duties on SUnday morning that require me to get to church even earlier than usual, and staying up past my usual bedtime wreacks congestive havoc with my early morning voice.
Otherwise, I’d go as was formerly my habit.
Do not cut the readings or psalmody. The psalmody should be sung, but elaborate settings for each is unnecessary - emphasize no more than a couple with more elaborate settings.
Do not get pragmatic. Pragmatism is the enemy of good liturgy - which is why America suffers such mediocre liturgies so often.
The homily should be very focused. It should not be a commentary. It should not be reflection. It should be a profoundly pointed evangelisation of joyous faith in the victory of Christ over death itself. (If you need a model, see St Peter’s homilies recounted in the Acts of the Apostles.) If you feel a need to be original in order to be authentic, reconsider that need.
Our vigil this year was just under 2 1/2 hours, with nine baptisms and 25 confirmed.
Things I have discovered over the years: 1) you don’t need 5 minute (or 7 minute) psalm settings. One might have to wrestle one’s music director to the ground, however. I think that there is the urge to do the most elaborate settings on the high holy night. 2) you don’t need an elaborate Gloria. Ours, this year, was through composed and it was enhanced by the gradual lighting of the church. But with a lengthy Alleluia, you don’t also need a very lengthy Gloria. 3) The initiation liturgy is elaborate enough. You don’t need to add to it with sung settings of anything. We do sing the baptismal acclamation after every baptism, but they need to get out of the font and get a towel anyway, so you don’t add time. 4) you have to impress upon one’s neophytes that there is NO blowdrying or make up or anything else! Dry off, get dressed, get back. This year all did that in the time it took the rest of us to profess faith, get sprinkled and get set for the confirmations.
We also do a ‘Kid’s Vigil’ every year. Partially because we usually have children being fully initiated. And because others have kids, or other relatives coming. Then, I encourage other families in the parish to bring their kids. The kids see the fire and hear the Exsultet. Then they go to a chapel for their own Liturgy of the Word, and they come (racing) back at the Gloria. It makes a HUGE difference. The rest of the liturgy moves and is moving, but that sitting for an hour in a dark church never worked for any kids I know.
And I would agree with a short homily. I can engineer most of the above. A presider who understands that the liturgy, the witness to faith, the symbols all preach the Risen Christ - that is something you can’t control, but you can hope for!
The last time I went to an Easter Vigil before this year was when I was ten. Of course then I thought it was too long, but at the ripe old age of 31 I hardly noticed the time - in fact I was disappointed that we did only four of the seven Old Testament readings.
Regarding point number one, we did the responsorial psalms, but only two verses each, so that cut down on the time. And Archbishop Wuerl’s homily was kept to a reasonable length, even if it was the fifth time we heard heard some sort of variation on it in seven days.
Use the gradual texts instead of the respobnsorial palms. You’ll gain tradition and save time!
If people follow the rubrics, the whole Easter Vigil is set up wonderfully. Darkness to light! Singing! And then, we hear the whole story of God’s relationship with us throughout the Old Testament. It’s like living inside the story of our family and the God we love!
And then people get baptized into that story! And then we have the Eucharist! It’s great!
Leaving out the readings leaves out a good chunk of the meaning. Especially since, in our parish, we skip from the creation of Adam and Eve past the covenants entirely, all the way to the parting of the Red Sea. What’s that about?
Of course, if a longer Easter Vigil was instituted, it would only be fair to warn people ahead of time. It would also probably solve a lot of the problems with low Mass attendance on Easter morning.
Checking my old Missals, I find that the Tridentine Holy Saturday liturgy (held in the morning, which virtually no one attended) had twelve OT readings, plus the Epistle and the Gospel and more elaborate ceremonies for the blessing of the Pascal candle and the holy water.
After the reforms of Pius XII, the OT readings were reduced to four but the Novus Ordo increased them to seven. Do those extra three really add anything? I think that the Pius XII version is overall superior to what we have now. Why was it found necessary to “update” it further? I’m just being crotchety.
The real question isn’t about the length of the Vigil. The real question is about the best way to include families with many small children in the worship of the Church on Easter.
I don’t have any expectation that this issue will ever be seriously addressed by anybody.
Fr. Martin is correct. The Vigil is not for children. I might bring a single infant or toddler, or several children over 7, but it would be extremely difficult to bring my whole family to the Vigil Mass. I have 8 children and 5 of them are under 7.
Mass the following morning isn’t great for kids either. We see about 4 times as mny people in our parish as usual, and this year the Mass lasted a full 2 hours. Parking is terribly difficult beacuse we go to an urban parish. Many people have to stand in the back of the Church or in the vestibule.
I have to tell you that bringing my family to Mass on Easter is always a trial. I bring my family to Easter Mass out of obedience. If I don’t get to Vigil by myself or with one or 2 children, as I did not this year, then I don’t really feel any Easter Joy at liturgy until the following Sunday when the overcrowding and excessive length is at an end.
Worshiping on Easter is too much like trying to worship in an overcrowded train station. Next year I’m going to try the extraordinary form for Easter. I hear from friends they are not overcrowded.
If done well, the Vigil can never be too long. My previous parish consistently had a 4 hour long Vigil. It was packed to overflowing every single year - people would come hours early to get seats. All 7 readings and psalms are always given, everything that can be sung is sung. Of course, with that many people, even with EMs communion takes forever. This parish enters between 10-20 catechumens and candidates every Easter, so that takes a while. And Fr. Ed is a brilliant homilist, but never a short one. The choir sings a mix of traditional, contemporary, latin and english hymns and songs - and they are not prone to cutting out verses. And every time I went, I left exhilarated and joyful.
On the other hand, last year we went to the Vigil at our new parish. It was maybe an hour and a half, and it felt like it dragged on. There was a single cantor, and only 4 of the readings were read (the short form of each one, to top it off). We didn’t sing all the verses of any hymn. There was one candidate and one catechumen, and the homily was a normal 10 minutes. The church was practically empty. All the essential pieces were there, but there wasn’t any joy in it - it felt like the cantor, pastor, etc were just getting it over with.
So this year, we didn’t go to the Vigil. Somehow, it didn’t seem worth finding a babysitter or losing any sleep.
That’s not to say that a 4 hour vigil will always be superior to a 2 hour vigil. I am aware that our previous parish is a rare jewel. But the vigil should be the high point of the Church year. We shouldn’t be thinking about how long (or short) it is, but asking whether our disposition (individually and as a community) fittingly reflects the centrality of the mystery we are there to proclaim. The Vigil isn’t a performance, it is a liturgy and a celebration. It doesn’t need to be artificially extended, but it doesn’t need to be purposely shortened either.
Sandra: I’m curious to know (ifyou have the information easily at hand; I understand this is a rather difficult query if you don’t): what were the current readings not in the Pius XII version, and what were some in the old version that appear in neither of the subsequent versions?
One more note: regarding children at the Vigil. My parents brought all 7 of us to the Vigil as children. It helped that most of us joined the choir as soon as we were allowed (around age 8), but then my Dad was in the choir too, so my Mom was alone in the pew with the little ones. The Vigil we attended was around 2.5 hours, but we all came early (the choir had a practice an hour before).
I’m sure it was difficult for my parents sometimes. We weren’t always easy kids. But it imbued all of us with a deep love for this liturgy.
Here’s something my mother wrote about it: http://www.domestic-church.com/CONTENT.DCC/19990301/ARTICLES/meditation.htm
I’m grateful that my earliest memories of Easter are of candles and music and the sweet smell of incense. Nothing else - not chocolate or baskets, egg hunts or easter bunnies - could make as deep and lasting an impression as the Exultet in a dark church lit by a hundred points of candlelight, or driving home in the dark leaning up against my siblings and hearing the echoes of alleluias all the way home.
In past years our Easter Vigil started around 3am and ended between 6 and 6:30am. This year, due to our church renovation and different location, we had the Vigil at 8pm and it ended right at midnight. Our choir also sang all the psalms, the homily was great but probably long, and we had many baptisms. But this mass is the Superbowl of masses. When was the last time you heard of someone complaining about how long the Superbowl was?
Several years ago, before I became more fervent in my faith, I made the “mistake” of going to an evening Vigil so I could “get it over with” and sleep in on Sunday — and that one was only about 2.5 hours. So for those who are like I was, even a relatively short Vigil is going to be too long if it’s much longer than a normal Sunday mass. I think it’s a mistake to bend over backwards too much to please those who aren’t really all that interested anyway. In fact, a long Vigil may help communicate that hey, this is IMPORTANT!
The thing I like about the 3am Vigil is that nearly everyone who’s there WANTS to be there and aren’t just there to fulfill their obligation. It has always been full, but not so full that no one has a seat.
One idea for those parishes with the equipment to do it is to film some of the baptisms and confirmations or the procession with the Easter candle and then show a brief clip of some of the activities of the Vigil on Sunday morning or another Sunday in Easter — to capture some of the excitement of the Vigil and share it with those who don’t go.
Another thing we did in previous years was to show some religious art relevant to the readings on a screen during the Old Testament readings. Not sure how it conforms to the GIRM, but in the dark at 3am, it really helps to keep your attention. I took my then 3 yr old son last year and he stayed awake and listened to all the readings. It wasn’t until after the baptisms began that he fell asleep.
I can’t even imagine asking the question. But then, in the Orthodox rite, there is a set homily (by St. John Chrystostom) and it is read at the end of Matins right before Liturgy starts.
And, kids fall asleep everywhere, and are just laid on the floor, on a bench, in the parish house, or in the car.
I did not attend the Easter Vigil this year (St. Monica Church), but last year’s seemed to take more than three hours. There were quite a few (42, maybe) coming into the Church. The length of the Vigil is not an issue, I think, because it’s expected.
Slightly off topic, there were ten, yes 10, masses on Easter Sunday. Can anyone beat that?
Heh. Coming up on my fifth Orthodox celebration of Easter, the question “Is Easter Vigil too long?” generated a chuckle or three.
I’ll also note that that’s a service where there a *lot* of kids. Don’t underestimate them.
“Pragmatism is the enemy of good liturgy.” I think I want to have that put on a few hundred t-shirts and hand them out on streetcorners.
Richard
Yes, James, the three sets of readings were a bit different, only the Creation, Passover, and Exodus made it into all.
Tridentine: Gen 1,2:2; Gen 5:31, 6,7,8:1-21; Gen 22: 1-19; Ex 14:24-31, 15:1; Is 54:17- 55:1; Baruch 3:9-38; Ez 38:1-4; Is 4:1-6; Ex 13:1-11; Jonah 3:1-19; Deut 31:22-30; Dan 3:1-24
Pius XII: Gen 1-2:2; Ex 14:24-31, 15:1; Is 4:2-6
Novus Ordo: Gen 1-2:2; Gen 22: 1-18; Ex 14-15:1; Is: 54: 5-14; Is 55: 1-11; Baruch 3:9-15, 33, $:4; Ez 36:16-17-18:28
Also the two older liturgies had only short Psalm verses between readings and not long responsorial Psalms.
I’m going to go with: not too long for reading about in books, but way to long for real life. I love the Church — I love her liturgy — I love Easter. I do not love 3 seriously intense hours after an already very intense week with other 2 hour liturgies — and I mean this not as a lack of devotion, but out of sheer exhaustion. I don’t know how the Easter vigil people have the mental and spiritual stamina for it! My family always just goes to Easter Mass on sunday morning!
I’ve been trying to convince my pastor for years that not wanting to spend an extra 30 minutes in Church is not a “great pastoral need” legitimizing cutting readings out during the Easter Vigil.
I’ve actually started to notice that the number of people at the Vigil Mass has been decreasing over the past number of years. There are enough other parishes in my town that I suspect people are quietly attending other parishes where, perhaps all the readings are done, or the music is more traditional (with all of the beautiful hymns written by the great masters and saints of the past why must we do spirituals which come from African-American Protestant culture?)
Sandra: Thanks a lot. I like it that the Abraham and Isaac story was brought back; I don’t have any strong opinions on the other changes. Four does seem a bit more manageable a number than seven, let alone twelve, with due respect to our Eastern brethren and their superior stamina.
I would also note that the Tridentine version seems to have contained the entire three-chapter version of Noah’s Ark, which is probably the longest single reading I have ever heard of outside the Passion readings on Palm Sunday and Good Friday.
Hey, what about the bonfire? That’s what makes it worth sitting through, well-spoken readings or not . . .
I think that it is permitted to omit the psalms (or at least some of them). I’m pretty sure that I found that in the Sacramentary. That’s how I convinced our former pastor to do all seven + readings.
I wouldn’t mind if we did all of the psalms at the vigil, but our music leaders (and all music leaders I’ve ever encountered) don’t understand that every responsorial psalm doesn’ have to have accompaniment and sound like one of the hymns. I would love it if every single week we would have an actual responsorial psalm instead of a song-break-between-readings type thing.
And, I can’t stand it when the music leaders change the psalm from the one in the lectionary (even though they are given alternatives) just because “it’s prettier than the psalm in the misalette.”
I wish my parish did more readings……only 3 (plus the gospel reading, I guess). When I attended at a different church several years ago (a college campus), they did all the readings and everything. The celebration stayed with me for a month afterwards…..
When I was a little girl, young whippersnappers, the marks of the New Fire on the grass in front of the church were the only sign that the Holy Saturday liturgy had happened. I suppose the altar boys’ parents went but I don’t know of anyone else. I didn’t go until after the reforms of Pius XII.
On the other hand, Good Friday was a Very Big Thing, with the Tre Ore service that really did last three hours.
Our parish’s vigil clocked in at 3-3.5 hours and was beautiful. My wife sang in the choir and my teenage daughter played trumpet; our 10 year old sat quietly in the pew with me although she did get a little fidgety. I’d say the church was about 3/4 full. Both the pastor and associate pastor were along with a mystery “bonus priest” - I didn’t have a chance to find out where he came from.
On the other hand, do any of you get the feeling that because the stops are all pulled out for vigil, that the Easter Sunday masses get short shrift? My wife sang in the choir again at the 10:30 mass the next morning, and came away with exactly that feeling - a fairly cursor ceremony celebrated by a priest who teaches at a local high school. It just seemed like a missed opportunity to welcome everyone else.
We did all of the readings at my parish this year, for the first time in a long time. It was seriously frustrating, but not because of time.
We have a new pastor, and he was trying to balance his love of the liturgy with an awareness that our parish is bilingual (English and Spanish speakers)…so the language of the readings and psalms alternated. The result was that no one was happy! It was too dark to read along in the missal. I don’t speak very much Spanish, so I missed half of the Liturgy of the Word. Parishioners who primarily speak Spanish missed as much or more.
Hopefully next year there will be enough light to read by, or some other workable solution.
I mostly agree, but I admit I didn’t go to Vigil this year.
The only problem I have with what you’re saying is we are different than we were in that we are becoming a nation of older people. My mother is diabetic with feet problems. I have scoliosis, granted due to my OI not age, and can’t sit for 3 hours. (Although I don’t think I ever was at one quite that long) I don’t think the Vigil should change for us, but I don’t think there’s any shame in going Easter morning if you can’t handle that length.
We had one of about 3 hours. The most difficult part was trying to have it be a bilingual Mass. Some things obviously had to be monolingual; such as some of the readings (although the Gospel was read in both), and the Exsultet (which is about 7.5 minutes sung) The prayers went back and forth. I can go back and forth linguistically with no problem, but I’m not sure how most people would experience it. The pastor was very good in delivering the homily: relatively short, and switching back and forth in chunks so as to not lose anyone.
Back at the home priory, they did everything. But since it’s not a parish, only a semi-private oratory, there were no baptisms or confirmations. That came in at two hours. Just about everything that could be sung, WAS sung. But not having baptisms does kind of rob a little joy out of the Vigil.
Is it most people’s experience that the fire is actually lit outdoors? A few comments above seem to take that for granted, but it’s never been true at any Vigil I’ve attended.
Too long? If people thinks its too long then their prayer lives must suck. That’s my hah answer.
My experience was in a rural parish prior to 1952. The Holy Saturday service was at dawn back then.
Don’t Byzantine churches light the new fire outside the building’s external door and bring it inside?