Easter Vigil Mass

Easter is the holiest day of the year for Catholics. We believe that what took place on that first Easter two millenniums ago changed all of creation for all of time. So we try and make it special. Catholics also mark days like our Jewish brethren as sundown to sundown, not midnight to midnight. So starting a bit before sundown on Holy Saturday, we start the vigil for the celebration of Easter.

We start outside of our darkened church. There we light a fire against the darkness. From that fire we light the new Easter candle that we will use for the next year.

From the Easter candle we light our individual candles and enter the church following the Easter candle and the priest. In this picture are some of the altar servers waiting to start the procession.

 Okay, one little flash picture just so you can see the Easter candle being carried by the deacon and father in the background in white and gold vestments.

The church is lit only by the candles as we read from the Old Testament and sing Psalms. Then as we begin the readings from the New Testament all of the lights are thrown on at once and we sing the Gloria.

Easter is a traditional time for new people to enter the Catholic Church. Here father, holding the Easter candle leads the new catechumens in a procession through the church where they eventually end up at the baptismal. Those that need to be, are baptized.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Why did I start this blog?

I suppose the first topic of my blog should be a bit about why I felt the need to fill the internet a bit more with my ramblings and what kinds of things I'm going to ramble about. I am at a point in my life where my outlook on what is important is changing. Due to a number of factors, I find myself spending more time in contemplation. Some of this is religious and spiritual in nature and some of it is just thoughts I find interesting. As for the religious and spiritual aspects, I will say right up front that I am a proud Roman Catholic, a Fourth Degree member of the Knights of Columbus and a Senior Catechist commissioned by the Bishop. That being said, I am not attempting to produce something canon to the Roman Catholic Church. I may well say something that differs from canon. If you wish to know the "Catholic" aspect of something I write, leave me a message and I will find out. I am also interested in technology. I have a Nokia internet tablet that I have hacked to do m...
Read more

How I Make Maps for my Newton

I use an Apple Newton. I have for years. And although I am slowly moving from the Newton to a Nokia Internet Tablet, there are still times I use my Newton and still some things it does better than anything else I have found. But that is a topic for another posting. In this posting I want to explain how I make maps for use with my Garmin Fortrex 101 GPS and GPSMap Lite for the Newton. Also, this tutorial will be for making maps on a PC. Apologies to my Mac friends but I have just never made a map on my Mac. The first decision is to decide are we making a road map or a wilderness-hiking map. Both follow the same basic principles but there is a difference in the map source. For Road maps I use maps captured from MS MapPoint. I have also used Google mapping. For hiking maps I generally use satellite photos from Google Earth. I did download a special mapping version of AdobeReader and you can get pdf versions of most US topographical maps from the US geological survey web site. But I found ...
Read more

Why I am a hospice volunteer

When the phone rang at 5:00 AM I answered it right away. I am a light sleeper and come awake quickly and calls at 5:00 AM are never good unless they are from overseas or about babies being born. It was my mother. It seems my father had an infection in his leg and had gone to the hospital by ambulance. Once they had drained it, my mother said, they would need a ride home. So my wife and I got up, showered, got dressed and went to the hospital. When we arrived, a nurse in the emergency room called to me. He said your mother said you look like Santa. Then he led us to a patient elevator to go up to where my father was and my mother was waiting. On the way up he broke the news. "Your father has necrotizing fasciitis." I was stunned and my wife looked at me. "Flesh eating bacteria" I told her. Once we were in the waiting room my mother filled in what we had missed. My father had awakened in the night and told my mother that his leg hurt terribly and to call for an ambula...
Read more