The Easter Vigil: Celebrating Freedom

A Mysterious Night

For more than 30 years, my dad has served as a catechist at our home parish, helping form and prepare catechumens for the Sacraments of Initiation (Baptism, Confirmation, and Eucharist). When I was in junior high, I often accompanied my dad to the weekly RCIA (now OCIA) meetings. For those preparing to enter the Church, these meetings were times of deep formation, both intellectual and spiritual. I myself learned so much during these sessions and it fanned into flame my desire to know, love, and serve God more and more.

Over the course of the months of preparation, everyone’s attention was focused on one event, one evening, the Easter Vigil! This liturgy—certainly the longest in the Church year—is often clouded in mystery and bewilderment. The Saturday evening before Easter Sunday is the only Saturday evening of the year without a regular “anticipated” Mass. Instead, after sunset, every parish begins the solemn Vigil of Easter. 

The “Vigil” of Easter

This liturgy is certainly a Mass, as the Eucharist is celebrated, but it is so much more! It begins with the lighting and blessing of the Easter fire and the preparation and blessing of the Easter candle. The Light of Christ is introduced into the darkened church building, and our individual candles are lit. Then, the solemn Vigil begins, with its multiplicity of Old Testament readings, each with its own acclamation or responsorial psalm. 

What makes the Easter Vigil properly a “vigil” is its lengthy Liturgy of the Word. In the early centuries of Christianity, there is strong evidence of a special vigil being held in the nighttime hours of Easter Sunday. The celebration of light with the blessing of the fire and the candle, followed by a solemn vigil of readings would have been commonplace. Indeed, we have inherited a marvelous Easter tradition, dating back well over a millennium.

A New Light

That the solemn Vigil of the Word follows immediately upon the procession of the Easter candle into the church is no accident. The paschal candle itself symbolizes the Passion, Death, and Resurrection of Jesus, for as the candle is burned away—as it dies—it produces light. The candle’s light, a great icon of the Resurrection, gives deeper understanding to the Word that is solemnly proclaimed at our Easter Vigil. 

Today’s Easter Vigil offers as many as seven Old Testament Readings, followed by one reading from Saint Paul, and the Gospel of the Resurrection. But why such a focus on the Old Testament? Doesn’t Easter usher in a New Covenant and the New Testament? Indeed, it does, but it also sheds new light on what has come before. Among the primary actions of the Holy Spirit is to “prepare” the Church (see CCC, no. 1092). You see, the Old Testament is not just a haphazard grouping of random stories from the days before Jesus. No, the Old Testament is a story of the Spirit’s slow, merciful, and provident preparation of the people of God for the coming of Jesus, for his Paschal Mystery, for his dying and rising. 

In the light of Christ, everything that has come before has new meaning! The story of creation from Genesis 1 not only recalls the first creation, but helps us to marvel at the new creation in Christ. In the story of Abraham and his son Isaac in Genesis 22, we see that Jesus is the true Son, who is sacrificed for us. In the prophets who proclaim a new Jerusalem, living water, and freedom, we rejoice in the beautiful way that the Easter mystery fulfills all the prophets. Indeed, the same Spirit who prepared the People of God for centuries has, through the person of Jesus, rescued us from the slavery of sin and brought us into freedom.  

Through the Waters

Of the many Old Testament readings at the Easter Vigil, however, one of them is most revered and celebrated, the story of the passing through the Red Sea in Exodus 14. Though the Church allows each parish to choose at least three of the seven of the Old Testament readings for the Easter Vigil, Exodus 14 must be among them, for there is no clearer foreshadowing of the New Covenant and of Easter itself than this telling of the Old Covenant and Hebrew Passover. 

Consider its many details. The chosen people, enslaved in Egypt, are instructed to slaughter an unblemished lamb, to eat its flesh, and to apply its blood to the doorposts of their home. Then, God instructs them to flee the slavery of Egypt for freedom in a Promised Land. To do so, God separates the waters of the Red Sea and they pass through the waters into freedom. Their captors, chasing after them, are drowned in the waters of the sea.

What a beautiful preparation and foreshadowing of Easter! In the Eucharist, we eat the flesh of the Lamb of God, and our lips are purpled with his blood. In Baptism, we have passed through the waters of life and the enemy of our salvation is drowned in defeat. Indeed, the Resurrections sheds new light on the Hebrew Passover, and our celebration of Easter is enriched by recalling God’s providential care for his chosen people. 

Glorious Freedom

The Lenten Season has many purposes, one of them being a time of intense preparation for those preparing to enter the Church at Easter. In a sense, they are journeying through their own “old testament” time of preparation, and the Spirit is certainly guiding them. Fittingly, after the Vigil of the Word, the rites of Christian Initiation will take place. For those of us already baptized, Lent can be a time for us to recall with gratitude the graces of our own Baptism, when we passed—thanks be to God!—through the waters of life, bringing us into “the glorious freedom of the children of God” (Romans 8:21).