Today is Holy Saturday and the Church, after having commemorated the Passion and Death of the Lord, prepares to celebrate the Risen One. The largest of these celebrations is the “Pascual Vigil”.
mourning turned into hope
The first hours of the day are marked by a spirit of mourning, which prolongs the atmosphere of silence and meditation of the day before. These are hours of waiting in which Catholics remember that Jesus was placed in the tomb and then descended into hell.
Certainly there are hours of waiting, but not of loneliness. The Mother of God, Mary, accompanies her children in this trance, in which God seems absent. The Virgin remains firm next to the tomb of her Son, strengthening the faith, trust and hope of all her children.
Light that drives away the darkness
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Later, late at night, the most special Eucharistic celebration of the liturgical year takes place: the Easter Vigil, ‘the liturgy of liturgies’, ‘the mass between masses’, which celebrates the blessed night in which Jesus he rose again and crowned his work of salvation.
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The Easter Vigil is the celebration par excellence of Christ’s definitive victory over evil, sin and death.
Celebrating the victory of our God
During the Easter Vigil three important symbols are performed. The first is the celebration of light or fire. The priest blesses the burning bonfire located outside the temple and, taking fire from it, lights the paschal candle, symbol of Christ. The light of the candle ends the darkness.
The second is given in the celebration inside the temple. There the Pascual Proclamation is sung, a poem from the 4th century that proclaims the fulfillment of all promises in Christ, who receives glory and honor forever.
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The Liturgy of the Word is articulated in a sequence of seven readings in which the history of salvation is recalled, from the Creation of the world to the Resurrection of the Lord. In this part, the reading of the book of Exodus stands out, in which the passage of the people of Israel through the Red Sea is narrated, when the Jews fled from the Egyptian troops that persecuted them and were saved by God.
That divine action was the first of what would happen later: God would save his people again, but this time he will do it by delivering his beloved Son.
