Skipping readings on Easter Vigil?

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So I attended Holy Thursday, Good Friday, and Easter Vigil in a new diocese, new parish this year as I have moved. Some things were good others were interesting, others just plain confusing.
Tonight for the Easter Vigil, only 3 of the 7 old testement readings were done. :confused::confused: Can they do that? This was the Cathederal parish and one of the Bishops said Mass. Instead of a sprinkling rite, we all filed up and just blessed ourselves in the baptismal font. (not to mention that everything was pretty disorganzied, as they forgot consecrated hosts right before communion and the organist started playing before the priest said “this is the lamb of God…” and he had to talk over the organ.) The decon also didn’t realize that there is the special sending forth for Easter with the sung Alleluia. (same thing happened on Holy Thursday when he tried to ‘end’ the mass, the Bishop had to stop him.) Sigh. There were no Baptisms, no Conformations. I hope that isn’t a sign of the whole diocese, just this parish.

Also on Holy Thursday, there was no washing of the feet.

Anyways, are these things legit? Is some of it up to pastoral discretion? Did I just grow up in a weird area that these things now seem strange to me? Some stories, articles, and church teaching would be welcome.

As a side note, I really like the Bishop. He gave the best homily on the real presence I have ever heard, and his homily tonight was really good as well. So I am not sure these things are done with his consent/knowledge or if he just doesn’t put his foot down and allows it to happen?

Thanks in advance,
Pax
 
The Foot Washing on Holy Thursday is optional.

As for the readings at the Vigil, if they can’t all be done, three OT readings – or for a very grave reason, two – should be done. The reading from Exodus MUST be done.

I’m very happy that for the last 8 years we’ve done all the readings. An unfortunate side-effect is that fewer and fewer people attend the Vigil because “It toooo long…” Tonight we had ~70 people in the church (a 450 family parish). I think the readers and the choir made up 1/3 of the congregation.

Oh, for the official ‘what’s what’, check out Paschale Solemnitatis. It’ll tell you most of what you want to know about how the Church wants us to celebrate Lent and Easter.
 
We did four Old Testament readings. We used to do only three but after a few years I convinced the pastor to increase it to four. I don’t think he would go for more than that. I know what you mean by people staying away if there are all the readings. In my mother in law’s parish each year less and less come because they feel it is too long…they also do a lot of bi-lingual stuff which makes it even longer.
 
Joannm said:
We did four Old Testament readings. We used to do only three but after a few years I convinced the pastor to increase it to four. I don’t think he would go for more than that. I know what you mean by people staying away if there are all the readings. In my mother in law’s parish each year less and less come because they feel it is too long…they also do a lot of bi-lingual stuff which makes it even longer.
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Our Vigil, without Baptisms, Reception into full Communion or Confirmations, lasted 2 hours. That’s with all the OT readings and all the Psalms sung and prayers prayed. It’s only once a year folks! They don’t have any problems sitting through a movie or a couple of TV shows, why is it that when it’s for God it’s sooooo difficult?
 
We had 1 baptism and 3 additional who were confirmed. We did 7 readings. Father sang the Eucharistic prayer. Mass was 2:45 hours. It was beautiful!
 
Ours ran 3 hours with 8 baptisms and about 15 confirmations. We did all the readings and had the sprinkling rite. I was confirmed tonight and brought several protestant family members with me. It was about an hour and twenty minutes before we got to the Gloria and I think some of my family was really getting restless up to that point. That would probably be the only point I could see in favor of dropping some of the readings, since I’m probably going to have a hard time convincing some of my family to ever attend Mass again.

Nonetheless, it was a beautiful service and one that I will (obviously) never forget.
 
Thanks for the link Phemie.

Congratulations and welcome Jackinbox,

I guess at my old parish, Easter Vigil was 3 plus hours long and it was packed every year, so that some of us would have to get there at least 30min early to save a seat. (regular Mass was generally over an hour.)
This Easter Vigil was only an 1 1/2 hours, so I guess it seemed short to me. And quite empty, I think most of the people there were readers, choir members, or EMHCs. 🙂

Thanks for all the replies.

Pax
 
jilly4ski said:
This Easter Vigil was only an 1 1/2 hours, so I guess it seemed short to me. And quite empty, I think most of the people there were readers, choir members, or EMHCs. 🙂
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Doesn’t that make you sad? 😦

It was the same in our church. I sat in the second row next to the choir because I was singing one of the Psalms and then I was reading the Epistle. There was no one in the first row of pews, 3 of us in the second row and 5 in the third row then it was empty rows for many rows back.

As usual, the two last rows were full and had been since 8:30 p.m. What is it with Catholics and this love for the last pew??? They never get to see anything that’s going on at the altar. The only thing they ever get the best view of is the welcoming of families presenting babies for Baptism.

Fr and I were joking this week and I said that if I ever built my ideal church it would only have one row of pews then everyone would be in the last row.

His idea: several rows of pews, each on their own hydraulic risers. You only have the front-most pew up when people start coming in; after that one is full you bring up the second one, and so on, and so on…😃
 
Phemie said:
Doesn’t that make you sad? 😦

It was the same in our church. I sat in the second row next to the choir because I was singing one of the Psalms and then I was reading the Epistle. There was no one in the first row of pews, 3 of us in the second row and 5 in the third row then it was empty rows for many rows back.

As usual, the two last rows were full and had been since 8:30 p.m. What is it with Catholics and this love for the last pew??? They never get to see anything that’s going on at the altar. The only thing they ever get the best view of is the welcoming of families presenting babies for Baptism.

Fr and I were joking this week and I said that if I ever built my ideal church it would only have one row of pews then everyone would be in the last row.

His idea: several rows of pews, each on their own hydraulic risers. You only have the front-most pew up when people start coming in; after that one is full you bring up the second one, and so on, and so on…😃
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Yes it is quite sad, though we were sitting in the front half and my DH said that the back of church was quite full. I didn’t notice. I love the hydrolic pew idea, 👍 Or you could have pews on wheels and have musical pews, where the pews move those in back closer to the front. 😃

Pax
 
Ours lasted 2 hrs 45 minutes, with all the readings, and a looooong Litany of Saints. I am so glad our parish priest reinstated reading all the readings when he came. I was used to that from my first parish, and the Easter Vigil always seemed lopped off somehow with only 4 readings, We also had 5 people being received into the Church - one was baptized, two were teenagers too young for confirmation, and two adults.

As for how many attended, I ended up being one of those sending the baskets around at offertory, and was shocked at how few people were there. There were people in most seats in the main part of the church, and at least one person in most of the pews a the sides - usually it’s packed to standing room only! But then I remembered that when I arrived (about an hour before the Vigil started, they were finishing up an equally filled Vigil in Vietnamese, and that there were two other Vigils, one in Polish, and one in Norwegian earlier in the evening, at two chapels in town. 😃

Our parish priest has realized that you cannot pack a parish of 7000 people into a church that seats 400. And to think, the first Easter Vigil they held in that church, the whole parish, every man jack of them, could fit into one tenth of the pews they built. And now it’s far too small! Visionaries! Now we pray to the Lord that he may inspire people to cough up enough money to either build or buy another church of the same size in our parish. We need it! Too bad there are Lutheran churches nearby that have an average of 10-15 people each Sunday who insist on keeping their church buildings, even those which were originally Catholic (before the reformation) while we are stuffed to the rafters!
 
jilly4ski said:
Yes it is quite sad, though we were sitting in the front half and my DH said that the back of church was quite full. I didn’t notice. I love the hydrolic pew idea, 👍 Or you could have pews on wheels and have musical pews, where the pews move those in back closer to the front. 😃

Pax
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I recall an old joke on that. The pastor thought it was great, until 15 minutes into his sermon [this was back when they were sermons, not homilies] the pulpit slowly lowered into the floor with him in it. 😃
 
jackinbox said:
Ours ran 3 hours with 8 baptisms and about 15 confirmations. We did all the readings and had the sprinkling rite. I was confirmed tonight and brought several protestant family members with me. It was about an hour and twenty minutes before we got to the Gloria and I think some of my family was really getting restless up to that point. That would probably be the only point I could see in favor of dropping some of the readings, since I’m probably going to have a hard time convincing some of my family to ever attend Mass again.

Nonetheless, it was a beautiful service and one that I will (obviously) never forget.
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That’s how ours was last year (although not as many baptisms - we did have a very large group, though). Last year, they did a full vigil. This year, they did only 3 readings. I think the choir sung between the readings (and between individual baptisms) last year. Just about everything else was done, except for reading the confirmation saints along with the anointing of oils (that I think took 10-15 minutes with our group! This year’s group was 2/3rd the size). So, yeah, when they took those things out, it went from 3 hours to a little over 2 hours. We did do the Litany of Saints this year. I’m not sure if I remember that being done last year. Then again, I might’ve been savoring the moment too much to notice. 🙂 The church wasn’t as filled, either. Then again, with our group having almost 20 people coming into the church last year, that’s a lot of family members and friends. Conversely, Easter Mass was overflowing this year. Maybe many decided to come to the Easter Mass rather than the Easter Vigil this year.
 
We only had 3 readings, but Mass was right about 3 hours with just those. We have 14 people baptized, 14 people received into the Church and 9 just Confirmations. And the whole place was plenty full! 😃
 
If the seven readings take too long we could always use seven readers and do them simultaneously. 😃
 
We had seven readings; however, the responsorial psalms were abbreviated to just one verse. :eek: The exultet was a butchered OCP version that removed all of the beauty of the original text. It was paraphrased to the point that it was not recognizable and it was proclaimed to the beat of a drum.:eek:

An entire family was received into the Church. However, our pastor removed his chasuble and stole and baptized the one adult and three children via immersion. :confused: The immersion did not bother me as much as his removing the stole. Then, it took about 20 minutes or so for the family to get dried and dressed. The choir ran out of verses so it got to the point that my pastor had to send the father of the family (who had already been baptized) to see what was taking so long. Now, the kids were about 10-14 years of age. I was curious as to why they got confirmed. After the confirmations, there was a convalidation ceremony for the parents. My pastor did not put his stole and chasuble back on until after the convalidation.

The only saving grace was that my parochial vicar preached an incredibly awesome homily. 👍
 
All seven readings were done. Five men and two women did the readings, and they did them beautifully. It was obvious that each of them must have put a good bit of time into practicing and thinking about their individual readings. A young man and a young woman took turns leading the responsorial psalms. They both had marvelously clear voices. The same young man sang the Exsultet in a wonderously ringing tenor voice. All nine of those people were dressed for the occasion; the men in dark suits, white shirts and ties and the women in long black skirts with white blouses.
This Vigil was at the cathedral and it was the most utterly beautiful liturgy I have ever attended in my life. Everything was deliberately paced and all details were pretty near perfect. Nothing was left out. The Vigil began at 9pm and did not finish until 12:55 am. There were more than three dozen baptisms, including four babies [who never made a peep throughout the long service. I began to wonder if the parents had sedated them somehow!] Altogether we welcomed seventy three new Catholics into the Cathedral parish at the Vigil. After the confirmations, they all stood in rows along the steps leading up to the sanctuary and the Bishop asked the congregation to welcome our new brothers and sisters home. The standing ovation lasted a good four minutes. The Bishop was beaming from ear to ear the whole time. During the clapping, I thought about how so many on this forum are aghast at the very idea of clapping during Mass. IMHO, Jesus and the angels and Saints were clapping last night along with the rest of us to welcome so many new members into His flock.
Once Mass was over, even though it had been very long, no one seemed to be in any hurry to leave. After the recessional, the Bishop, his auxilliary, a retired bishop, and the priests from the cathedral remained on the courtyard just below the front steps and greeted everyone going out the main doors. Pretty soon, a huge crowd gathered around them and stayed for quite a long time. Finally, the auxilliay bishop reminded everyone that there was a reception being held in the cathedral hall and that it would be much warmer in there than standing outside in below zero temperatures. The Bishop, his chasuble whipped by the wind, then led his flock along the walkway around the cathedral into the hall. It was pretty funny the way all those who were staying just fell into line behind him. Kind of like the Pied Piper!
The Cathedral was packed for the Vigil although not as packed as on Good Friday. On Good Friday, we were squished in like sardines almost an hour before the service began. The narthex was full and it was estimated that about three hundred people stood out side on the steps and in the courtyard as well. I went to my own parish for Easter morning Mass and afterwards asked the sacristan if there had been a decent turnout for the Vigil. He said that the church was almost three quarters full and that Father was pleased. The Mass had lasted almost three hours and there were five baptisms and eight confirmations. He asked me if I had been away since he hadn’t seen me at any of the Triduum liturgies. I felt a bit guilty in saying that I had gone to the cathedral instead!
 
There are 15 OT readings at the Vesperal Liturgy of Holy Saturday.

One of them is the entire book of Jonah.
 
benedictgal said:
We had seven readings; however, the responsorial psalms were abbreviated to just one verse. :eek: The exultet was a butchered OCP version that removed all of the beauty of the original text. It was paraphrased to the point that it was not recognizable and it was proclaimed to the beat of a drum.:eek:

For as long as I’ve been in this parish the cantor has chanted the Exsultet since none of the pastors sang. This year the new pastor did it, and guess what…he can’t sing either. He chanted as far as 'The Lord be with you" and then he spoke the rest. 😦

Now, the kids were about 10-14 years of age. I was curious as to why they got confirmed.
Why wouldn’t they be? If they knew enough to be baptized and receive Communion they were prepared enough for Confirmation.
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