We present below the third and final meditation in Dr Antony Conlon's trilogy for the Sacred Triduum, which offers a mediation upon the solemn rites of this night, the supreme moment of our Salvation.
A very happy Easter to all our readers!
The liturgy which many in the Church celebrate tonight is in the form revised by Pope Pius XII in the 1950’s. It re-introduced the time of an evening celebration, begun after dark on Holy Saturday evening. This is considered by some –incorrectly- to be the most popular time of the celebration for the ancients. The missal indicates that the Church in Rome where this liturgy was customarily celebrated was that of St John Lateran. This great basilica was previously known as the Basilica of our Saviour and is the mother church of all Christendom. It was the first great public place of Christian worship specifically built as such in the fourth century by the Emperor Constantine. There it was that in the centuries following the end of the early persecutions of Christians, the new Roman converts were publicly baptised and initiated into the mysteries of the Church. Submerged in the water three times, in memory of the three days of Christ in the tomb, they emerged as new members of His Church. They had symbolically died to sin to be brought back to new life with Him.
The liturgy of this night is the richest and the most lengthy of all the great ceremonies of this week. It begins in darkness and ends in light. This darkness is symbolic as well as real. The light in this case is not natural but is the illumination of faith, signified by a lighted candle. We have been led out of the bondage of ignorance and slavery to sin to the light of truth and the freedom of the children of God. This is nothing less than an expression in visible symbols of what has happened to us in baptism. In the early centuries, as we know from study and research, the ceremonies of baptism usually occurred during this celebration and were an essential part of it. All the great themes of the struggle against evil, and death its elder child, are apparent in the rites and prayers in use in this liturgy. This evening, I would just like briefly to mention something about the presumed origin of some of the rites and symbols associated with this liturgy. I am indebted to the works of Dr Heinrich Kellner, Heortology, A History of Christian Festivals and Mgr Louis Duchesne, Christian Worship, both written in the first decade of the 20thcentury, for most of these details.
The very first part of the Vigil, the blessing of the new fire, was unknown in ancient Rome...
Kellner says it originated in Germany, where it was known as the “Osterfeuer” and it was introduced into Rome by Pope Leo IV (847-855). Duchesne however, maintains that it came from the British Isles. From there it was brought to Germany by the British and Irish monks who were evangelists there in the eight century. This is certainly more likely, for the ancient Celts are renowned for their particular devotion to fires in their pagan rites. The Easter fires were always new and lit from new flints. Rome had its own version of the new fire. On Maundy Thursday, all the old oil from the church lamps in the Lateran Basilica was collected into three large vessels containing wicks, which were placed in the corner of the church. From these vessels all the candles and other lights used at the Easter Vigil were lighted. The ceremony of taking the light from these vessels was always solemn, being done at the Pope’s order by a bishop or a priest.
Another great symbol of the Vigil, the Paschal Candle is of uncertain origin. Documentary evidence indicates there was a blessing of the Easter candle in Spain. The fourth Council of Toledo (633) recommends the adoption of this practice to the other parts of the Iberian peninsula. It was seen as a symbol of Christ and was blessed through the chanting of the praeconium paschaleor Exultet. This great song of triumph is said to have been composed by St Augustine. We have some verses “in laudem quadam cerei composed by him in his opus De Civitate Dei ( xv; 22). The oldest form of the Exultetknown in later centuries always included an invocation of blessing on the Holy Roman Emperor. This continued to form part of the praeconiumright up to the twentieth century although the last inheritor of that dignity, Francis II of Austria abandoned it in 1804.
A text from the early eight century Gelasian Sacramentary (liturgy of the court of Charlemagne with strong Roman elements) gives the text of one of the most colourful of the these prayers of blessing for the candle. It came originally from Southern Italy. The archdeacon announced the beginning of the great festival, then called for a blessing on that luminous pillar which was about to shed its radiance on the mysteries of the Christian Passover, as in like manner of old the pillar of fire had gone before the children of Israel to guide them in their wanderings in the desert. He dwelt poetically upon the elements composing it, the papyrus which furnished the wick and the virgin oil and the beeswax which formed the material. He then eulogised the bee, chaste and fecund like the Virgin Mary, and which in the manner of its generation, produced a type of the eternal origin of the Word of God. The scrolls upon which these chants were written, were beautifully ornamented with pictures of the various elements mentioned in the text and with a portrait of the reigning sovereign. The pictures were upside down to the text so that as the scroll gradually unfolded over the ambo or lectern, the people below could see the pictures and appreciate them. The introduction of the ceremonies associated with the Paschal Candle into the Roman Rite is generally attributed to Pope Zozimus (417-418).
In ancient times the illuminations inside the Church were complimented by those outside and the Emperor Constantine, in the fourth century, gave orders for the streets of the capital to be illuminated during the Easter festival. The time of the celebration varied throughout the centuries and in different places. The Roman Gelasian Sacramentary of the early eight century (already mentioned) prescribes the time of the Vigil as early on Saturday morning. It begins with exorcisms and professions of faith for the neophytes and arrives at the blessing of the candle and the baptisms at 2pm. The Gregorian Sacramentary (originally Roman and later used in the Frankish kingdom) orders the time of the Vigil to commence from 2pm. Manuscripts still in existence show that in medieval times the lighting of the Paschal Fire took place on Saturday morning.
The form of the ceremonial that we shall participate in this evening is a distillation of so many different elements that have formed it over many centuries. In its fourth century pure Roman form it was relatively simple but impressive because it was done by the Pope himself. In later centuries influences from all over Europe combined to produce the varied and symbolic rite that we now possess. As we proceed with this joyful liturgical pilgrimage through the centuries of Christian faith, bear in mend the antiquity, sacredness and origins of much that you will see. Fire, candle, the Easter canticle of blessing, the litanies, the Mass, all these parts have not been the product of bureaucratic cutting and pasting by some supposed expert with poor knowledge of custom and tradition and nothing much else to do. Rather they have grown organically from the deep and devoted piety and usage of centuries of faith. We here are all privileged to both appreciate these often neglected realities and also to be able to take part in this particular form of the Easter Vigil celebration.
One of the more regrettable outcomes of the way we live now and the pressure of social customs that deny us a fighting chance to keep Lent as we should, is that we are probably less well prepared for Easter than we should be. I do not just mean that we have ignored Lent altogether, but that we have probably had less time than we would like and less freedom from our regular duties to devote ourselves sufficiently to the rigorous preparation encouraged in years gone by. Nevertheless, we can appreciate the plenitude of this solemnity and try to participate in it enthusiastically. We also have the inestimable advantage of having elicited the setting and venerable form of these ceremonies available to us by legitimate authorization. This is a privilege that few of our fellow Catholics are in a position to enjoy. Let us be grateful for that. Above all, we are not engaged in thumbing through the dusty pages of archaic rituals in the exercise of escaping from the terrible soullessness of the world in which we live. Rather we are endeavouring to invest the present with a liturgical elixir which is dynamic and vital and as relevant now as ever as it. That is so because it is the fruit of piety and of centuries of patient development and orthodox conservation. May we prove worthy of the treasures of liturgy in which we participate and partake in the fruits of the Easter liturgy with humility and gratitude to God.
Surrexit Dominus vere, Alleluia!
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