For the first time in my tenure at St. Peter’s, St. Louis, we will offer the Great Vigil of Easter. It is, in my opinion, the single most important service in the Book of Common Prayer. If you want to know what Christianity is about, come to the Easter Vigil.
But, for the first time in my career, I was faced with the challenge of finding music for the Vigil that works well without a choir. And this has led me to focus on what is most crucial to the service.
The Episcopal Church has developed a very theatrical approach to the “Easter moment” in this liturgy. In most vigils, churches quickly turn on all the lights, shout Alleluia, and have the organ thunder for the first time since Thursday.
But the Prayer Book doesn’t say to do any of this. And, in fact, I wonder if some of these customs might violate the spirit of what the Vigil is about.
We don’t need to switch on all the electric lights in sight. Vigils have happened by candlelight for hundreds, even thousands of years. Instead, the candles being lit on the Altar should be allowed to shine with symbolic brightness. And I would advocate to let that lighting happen by itself without trying to cover it with music.
We won’t be sounding a fanfare this year, because we won’t have a robust congregation singing the hymn afterward. It’s fun to have the pipes sound once again here, but an organ — even one as large and fine as ours — shouldn’t be the focal point of this moment. It shouldn’t overshadow the singing of the Canticle that follows. This year, we’ll let the ancient Te Deum ring forth in the best way we can.
And the Easter versicle and response (“Alleluia. Christ is risen. / Christ is risen indeed. Alleluia.”) which is so commonly heard at this point in the liturgy is optional here (it is, however, a must on Easter Day!). Its inclusion at this point in the Vigil comes from the Eastern Orthodox tradition, but it’s not required by the Prayer Book.
What if this moment of the Vigil showed the resurrection, instead of told it? Let the light spread and listen to the ancient hymn of praise.
You overcame the sting of death
and opened the kingdom of heaven to all believers.
Jesus didn’t sound a fanfare when he got out of the tomb in the middle of the night on Saturday. He didn’t snap a selfie and post it to Twitter either. He just did it. In the dark. It was a quiet resurrection.
When the women came to the tomb the next morning, they saw the stone was rolled away and then they knew something had happened. But they didn’t see or hear the resurrection take place. No one did.
And I think this is a big part of what the Vigil is about. We’re stepping into the stream of cosmic time to enter into the very night that this quiet resurrection occurred. And we can make plenty of noise with Mary Magdalene and the disciples as the good news spreads in the light of day. But here, in the night, it seems to me that the Vigil wants to bear witness to this deeply sacred quietness.
One of my very favorite pieces of prose about the Easter Vigil is about the Great Alleluia which heralds the Gospel.
“This [Great Alleluia] rises with a slow movement; it rises above the grave of Adam, and it has the blood of Christ on its wings. It is the marriage song of the Paschal night, which will grow slowly brighter as it meets the day of resurrection. But these are only words. The first alleluia of the Paschal night is a mystery, unutterable like all mysteries. As this alleluia is, so is the whole life of Christians: A gentle, quiet song of joy which meets the rise of day in the midst of the suffering of night time.” (A. Löhr, The Mass Throughout the Year)
It feels like there’s so much I haven’t been able to do as a choirmaster in the last year. But let us take heart in what we can do, and by the grace of God will always do: let us sing a “gentle, quiet song of joy which meets the rise of day in the midst of the suffering of night time.”