Holy Saturday

On Holy Saturday, the Church waits at the Lord's tomb, meditating on his suuefring and death. The altar is left bare, and the mass is not celebrated until after the solemn vigil during the night, held then in anticipation of the resurrection. Only then does the Easter celebration begin, with a spirit of joy that overflows into the following period of fifty days. The early church continued to fast through Holy Saturday.

The Easter Vigil

Some may think of the Easter Vigil as just a longer mass but this is only part of the story. There are things we do at the Easter Vigil that we do at no other time in the church year.

We light the new Easter Candle from a large fire outside to remind us that Jesus is our light in the darkness, we then process into the darkened church. We hear the great hymn of praise called the 'Exultet', in which we praise Christ for saving us. The hymn says that we would greatly prefer a fallen universe with Christ to a perfect one without him. 'O Happy fault which deserved so great a Saviour'. We hear more readings than usual on this night, recounting the history of our salvation. Most significantly we welcome new members into the Church and with them we all renew our Baptismal promises.

We need time to do all these things well, so we begin a fifty day season of feasting with this long liturgy that is packed with all the riches the Church has to offer.