Baptisim at the Easter Vigil

[Eloueen]

Hey there! First off, let me say that I’m new here… A long time lurker but I finally broke down and registered. Hooray! \o/

Now: for my question. I’m new to the Catholic faith, and will be celebrating my baptism this Saturday. This is all well and good (and I’m so excited!) but I got to thinking, and I’d like to know why we do this on this particular day, instead of say… the Easter Day service. Now, I know that the Catholic Church follows a lot of traditions that originated from Judaism, like marking the start of the Holy days at sun-down… so I guess in a way it makes sense to do it at the ‘start’ of the day. In my head I guess I’ve kind-of come up with a little story to make it make sense to me - I imagine that as word of Christ’s crucifixion and the events following (like the temple shroud being sundered) that many people turned to Christ and that it’s symbolic to do it on this day of vigilance to commemorate all those that found him after his death.

I know that’s probably leagues away from the real story, so help me out here! What IS the story / reason for baptizing the catchments on this day?

 

[japhy]

Hey there! First off, let me say that I’m new here… A long time lurker but I finally broke down and registered. Hooray! \o/

Welcome!

I’d like to know why we do this on this particular day, instead of say… the Easter Day service.

The concepts of Lent, Holy Week, and the Paschal Triduum were not formally developed for a few centuries after Christ’s Ascension (around the 4th century or so), and the early Church celebrated the Paschal Mystery (His passion, death, and resurrection) all in one event, the Paschal Vigil. (“Pascha” is the Greek word for “Passover”, which was the context of Jesus’ Passion, which is why the early Christians – many, if not all, of whom spoke Greek – called this celebration the Pascha. In English, this became “Easter”, but that’s a whole other story.)

The Church kept a vigil of prayer, commemorating Christ’s passion and death, until sunrise, when she celebrated the resurrection.

The Easter Vigil, then, is not about “the day before Easter”: it is a true vigil in the sense that it anticipates something (Easter) and attains it. That’s why this day was chosen as the day to initiate new Christians.