Easter Vigil before dark?

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Episcopalian said:
Weirdest thing ever. I attended an Easter Vigil at 10am-1pm. Full blown liturgy with a blessing of the fire, holy water, baptism, Pascal calendar, and 14 chanted prophecies.

I have absolutely no idea why it was so early! They had vespers right after it too, except I didn’t stay for that.
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Was it a Catholic Easter Vigil Mass, or an Episcopalian service?
 
Ours started at 8PM. As it does every year. We start outside, with blessing of the fire. I couldn’t tell you which readings were read. Sorry, I just don’t remember.

We welcomed about 40 into full Communion with the Church, including 15 baptisms.

Our recessional started at about 10:30pm. A short reception followed, then we were all headed home for a good night’s sleep.

Living in Alabama, it was plenty dark.
 
It was Episcopalian, but that particular parish follows pre-Vatican II style worship.

Maybe morning vigil was from that era?
 
I was going to ask if you assisted at the Extraordinary Form Vigil using the old Holy Week liturgies before the revisions in the 1950s. Before Pope Pius XII moved the time of the Vigil to the dark hours the Easter Vigil was celebrated after praying the Hour of None, so roughly around 3-4pm. The Easter Vigil also concluded with a truncated form of Vespers (Psalm 116 and the Magnificat only). 10AM or 12PM Easter Vigils were a liturgical abuse in the early 20th century (gasp! The Latin Mass had liturgical abuses!?) in which priests would rush through the Divine Office such that they’d pray None in the morning right before their 10AM or 12PM Vigil thus technically keeping the letter of the law while violating its spirit.

The Vatican granted an indult last year to any Latin Mass community that wished to celebrate the pre-55 Holy Week to do so, and presumably to keep the historic timing (meaning 3PM or 4PM not 10AM!). This indult is good for three years, this year being the second (so if anyone wishes to avail themselves of this next year might be your last chance!) Our own Easter Vigil started at 4PM this year and ended at 7:30PM with three baptisms (also in the older form!) These three were confirmed the following morning on Easter proper.
 
Your Bishop told all of the parishes what the earliest time was that the Vigil could begin. You could just ask the Diocese office if you want to know.
 
Ours is mostly English speakers so we just mix the hymns (flip flopping the readings) and pick hymns/songs that are inherently bilingual, (Holy Thursday and Good Friday (now) are bilingual, the Vigil is English with a touch of Spanish) for Thursday we sing a version of the responsorial psalm that has the text in Spanish then English, which is beautiful and always gets stuck in my head, but for Good Friday we do the same but the tune is ugly, we used to sing a beautiful one that phrased it as “Abba, Abba, I put my life in your hands” but no longer 🙁. Sometimes there are songs where using both languages can be beautiful (and often are cases where Jesus is the same text with the same tune in a different language) but sometimes it just ruins the power of the words being compounded by the tune.
Thursday
Friday (before)
 
Well, how about a bit of charity towards those who left? As long as they attend Mass the next day, they have fulfilled any obligation. I seriously doubt anyone leaving knew when they arrived that it could be 2 or more hours long. No one is required to attend the Easter Vigil (although I wish most could and would).
 
They could have just been people who walked in off the street as it is an old mission church downtown in a large city, or members of the family, or as I said, those who only attend church Easter and Christmas. There is nothing uncharitable, I was only commenting on what I observed and it was distracting to those of us committed to staying until the end.
The Jewish synagogues have the same problem. Many Jewish people only want to attend during the High Holidays of Yom Kippur and Rosh Hashanah.
I am sure other Christian churches see a surge of attendance on Easter and Christmas
also. @otjm
 
We can’t judge why people left.

Some people have medical issues, and they have to leave to either take care of themselves or a loved one.

Some have jobs (sometimes more than 1 job) that requires awful hours.

Some are afraid to drive after a certain time.

And some people can’t sit that long without real pain, or without falling asleep.
 
I observed people leaving. I did not take
a survey.
I have attended Easter vigils for many years, but never saw such a large number leave as at this church. Maybe because I was in almost the last pew is why I noticed so many.
It was distracting.
For those who have no idea what is happening, I doubt they would have much
interest.
 
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