What time was your Easter Vigil?

  • Thread starter Thread starter Justin1224
  • Start date Start date
Status
Not open for further replies.
Not practical for most, but when I was a student our Vigil started at 11 and ended at one, and then we had a big party until about 6, when we showered and went for a big greasy breakfast. Then off to Sunday morning service. The servers always looked a bit resurrected themselves.
 
Ours was at 23 hrs and the electrical lights were turned on during Gloria.
 
ctkrcia said:
Ours began at 6:30 PM - well before sunset at 7:50 PM, which is about 20 minutes before dark.

It kinda bums me that we start so early, even though our pastor acknowledges it to be so. The reason we start early is due to two reasons. First, the parish starts all services on the Triddum at 6:30 PM - it’s easy for everyone to remember. Secondly, we have only one priest and he is 78 years old. He has to do the Vigil Mass, which was almost 3 hours long, plus on Easter Sunday there are four masses (6:30 AM, 8:00 AM, 10:30 AM, and 5:00 PM).
Click to expand...
Your pastor has quite the load. I know that you must pray for him. Both of my brothers are priests and they had their vigils at 830pm, fire and all with readings. What diocese is that that has a 78 yr old pastor with that kind of work?
 
Phemie said:
Yes it’s the rule. The fire should really be dispelling the night. From Paschale Solemnitatis:

Our Bishop sent explicit instructions that the Vigil was not to start before 9 p.m. Of course that meant that the pastor for the Mission down the road from us ordered his stand-in to start at 7. Ours started at 9. The lights were off until the Gloria but it’s my understanding that they should come on after the Exsultet since Easter has now been proclaimed.

As for following along in their missalettes – for one night they don’t.
Click to expand...
Thanks, Phemie. That would explain why the oratory under the care of ICKSP started at 9:00 despite most parishes in the diocese starting no later than 7:30. Our bishop is addressing the deficiencies in the diocese but they are many and well-entrenched. I’m sure he’ll get to this one eventually.

AMDG
jsa
 
Phemie said:
The lights were off until the Gloria but it’s my understanding that they should come on after the Exsultet since Easter has now been proclaimed.

As for following along in their missalettes – for one night they don’t.
Click to expand...
Yes, the lights are supposed to come on after the Exultet and candles extinguished. We turn them on low during the readings and then full and light the candles during the Gloria.
 
blackrobe said:
Whence the regulation that Easter Vigil should not commence until a certain level of darkness prevails? I can understand waiting for sunset, but is that a rule? Just curious.

AMDG
jsa
Click to expand...
In our Diocese, the Bishop requested that we not start until after 9:30 pm (full dark), and at our parish, we did that. (I heard through the grapevine that some parishes started while it was still fully light out.)

The lights were turned on way too soon, I thought, but that was the only problem I had with it - everything else was very beautiful! 🙂

We omitted three of the readings, but we didn’t omit any of the Sequences, this year - and this year, too, they were sung! 👍

It was the priest who called for the lights to be turned on, so it wasn’t a mistake on the part of the Sacristan (I have been in parishes where the Sacristan mistakenly turned the lights on too soon, but in this case, I actually saw the priest go up to the Sacristan and tell her to turn on the lights).
 
What about Easter next year? It’s later in the year. According to the Naval Academy (I LOVE the internet), the sunset for my area this year, the sunset for Easter at about 8 pm. For next year, with Easter being April 24, it’s setting a half hour later.:eek:

Hmm… :rolleyes:

Mebbe we can do like another poster and have greasy breakfast in the morning 😃
 
Justin1224 said:
Also, when does your church turn on the lights during the vigil?

Our vigil was at 7:30. When I found out the time of the vigil which was before Lent started, I thought it might be too early, and that it wouldn’t be dark enough. In fact, after doing some research I discovered that most of the parishes in our diocese had their vigil at 7:30. It wasn’t really dark as our sunset was at 7:08 but after going inside the church after the service of light outside, it was dark in the church. We do all our readings/psalms/prayers in the dark and don’t turn on the lights until the Gloria. Thats the way I prefer it to be.
Click to expand...
Our Easter Vigil was at 9pm beginning with the service of light.
 
Ours started at 7:30, right at sunset, before dark. I’m not sure why he was in such a rush, because we only did 2 OT readings, no litany of the saints.
 
Our Vigil started at 10:30PM; the lights came on at the Gloria, and it was 3.5 hours long.
 
Ours started at 8:45 pm - 45 minutes after sunset, which is our diocese’s official earliest start time for the Vigil. It was fully dark - in fact, the power was out to half the town until a few minutes before we started! We were getting ready to do the entire Mass with candles and flashlights and an electric lantern only! It would have been exciting, but I would have missed the organ in particular.
 
We started at 8pm (a few minutes after, really, like all Masses :)). The sky was still a little pink outside for the first part, but it was completely dark inside the church. The altar servers held candles at the ambo for the readings, and the choir had their own little electric lights for their music stands. All the lights came on at the Gloria.
 
Phemie said:
Yes it’s the rule. The fire should really be dispelling the night. From Paschale Solemnitatis:

Our Bishop sent explicit instructions that the Vigil was not to start before 9 p.m. Of course that meant that the pastor for the Mission down the road from us ordered his stand-in to start at 7. Ours started at 9. The lights were off until the Gloria but it’s my understanding that they should come on after the Exsultet since Easter has now been proclaimed.

As for following along in their missalettes – for one night they don’t.
Click to expand...
The Sacramentary specifically states that the lights should come on during the Exultet. That is how it was celebrated at St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome.

Ours started at 8:30PM. Unfortunately, my pastor had the lights turned off until the Gloria. This did not help since the it was a bilingual service. Those who did not understand the particular language the readings were proclaimed in could not follow along in their native tongue. So, what the faithful did was bring small flashlights with them, use the light from their mobile phones or just keep their candles lit.
 
our started at 8:30pm

the requirement isn’t that its supposed to be dark, but that it should be after the sun sets, or at dusk. so it could still be bright outside but the sun has set, thats okay

this is in accordance to the Jewish defenition of a day, that a new day begins as soon as the sun sets, not necessarily when its dark. our priest talked about this a while back. they usually have colored stripes on their sleeves, like a blue and a purple shade, something like that. when they can’t tell the difference between the two colors, thats when the new day starts

oh, and we did 5OT readings
 
Late, no totally dard but really neat service. I love this service most beatiful Mass of the entire year.
 
Ours started at 8:00 p.m. and didn’t finish till over midnight!
The lights came on for the Gloria
 
My Latin Church parish began at 8:00 and it was fully dark by then inside the church.

I find it interesting that “Midnight Mass” is sacrosanct at Christmas and seems to typically take place at or close to midnight even though there is nothing liturgically that requires that and in North America it is fully dark by 6:00 or 7:00 anyway, earlier where I live. Granted the Christmas Mass is not as long as the Easter Vigil. Still, if the Easter Vigil began at 8:00 and lasted for 3 hours it would be finished before the Christmas Midnight Mass even begins. And due to the confusion many have about the importance of Easter as compared to Christmas the attendance is often greater for the Christmas “Midnight Mass” than it is for Easter Vigil.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top