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Daily Readings for: April 07, 2012
(Readings on USCCB website)

Collect: Christ became obedient for us unto death, even to the death of the cross. Amen.

Lent: April 7th

  Holy Saturday — Easter Vigil Old Calendar: Holy Saturday — Easter Vigil

On Holy Saturday the Church waits at the Lord's tomb, meditating on his suffering and death. The altar is left bare, and the sacrifice of the Mass is not celebrated. Only after the solemn vigil during the night, held in anticipation of the resurrection, does the Easter celebration begin, with a spirit of joy that overflows into the following period of fifty days.

Outside of Holy Week, the Church celebrates the Optional Memorial of St. John the Baptist de la Salle.

Stational Church


Holy Saturday
Holy Saturday (from Sabbatum Sanctum, its official liturgical name) is sacred as the day of the Lord's rest; it has been called the "Second Sabbath" after creation. The day is and should be the most calm and quiet day of the entire Church year, a day broken by no liturgical function. Christ lies in the grave, the Church sits near and mourns. After the great battle He is resting in peace, but upon Him we see the scars of intense suffering...The mortal wounds on His Body remain visible....Jesus' enemies are still furious, attempting to obliterate the very memory of the Lord by lies and slander.

Mary and the disciples are grief-stricken, while the Church must mournfully admit that too many of her children return home from Calvary cold and hard of heart. When Mother Church reflects upon all of this, it seems as if the wounds of her dearly Beloved were again beginning to bleed.

According to tradition, the entire body of the Church is represented in Mary: she is the "credentium collectio universa" (Congregation for Divine Worship, Lettera circolare sulla preparazione e celebrazione delle feste pasquali, 73). Thus, the Blessed Virgin Mary, as she waits near the Lord's tomb, as she is represented in Christian tradition, is an icon of the Virgin Church keeping vigil at the tomb of her Spouse while awaiting the celebration of his resurrection.

The pious exercise of the Ora di Maria is inspired by this intuition of the relationship between the Virgin Mary and the Church: while the body of her Son lays in the tomb and his soul has descended to the dead to announce liberation from the shadow of darkness to his ancestors, the Blessed Virgin Mary, foreshadowing and representing the Church, awaits, in faith, the victorious triumph of her Son over death. — Directory on Popular Piety and the Liturgy

Although we are still in mourning, there is much preparation during this day to prepare for Easter. Out of the kitchen comes the smells of Easter pastries and bread, the lamb or hams and of course, the Easter eggs.

There are no liturgies celebrated this day, unless the local parish priest blesses the food baskets. In Slavic countries there is a blessing of the traditional Easter foods, prepared in baskets: eggs, ham, lamb and sausages, butter and cheeses, horseradish and salt and the Easter breads. The Easter blessings of food owe their origin to the fact that these particular foods, namely, fleshmeat and milk products, including eggs, were forbidden in the Middle Ages during the Lenten fast and abstinence. When the feast of Easter brought the rigorous fast to an end, and these foods were again allowed at table, the people showed their joy and gratitude by first taking the food to church for a blessing. Moreover, they hoped that the Church's blessing on such edibles would prove a remedy for whatever harmful effects the body might have suffered from the long period of self-denial. Today the Easter blessings of food are still held in many churches in the United States, especially in Slavic parishes.

If there is no blessing for the Easter foods in the parish, the father of the family can pray the Blessing over the Easter foods.

It is during the night between Holy Saturday and Easter Sunday that the Easter Vigil is celebrated. The service begins around ten o'clock, in order that the solemn vigil Mass may start at midnight.

Activities

  • Today we remember Christ in the tomb. It is not Easter yet, so it's not time for celebration. The day is usually spent working on the final preparations for the biggest feast of the Church year. The list of suggested activities is long, but highlights are decorating Easter eggs and attending a special Easter food blessing.

  • For families with smaller children, you could create a miniature Easter garden, with a tomb. The figure of the risen Christ will be placed in the garden on Easter morning.

  • Another activity for families is creation of a paschal candle to use at home.

  • The Directory on Popular Piety discusses some of the various devotions related to Easter, including the Blessing of the Family Table, Annual Blessing of Family Home, the Via Lucis and the Visit to the Mother of the Risen Christ.


The Station today is at St. John Lateran. During the afternoon of Holy Saturday the faithful were summoned here for the final scrutiny of the catechumens. Then, in the evening began the vigil or night of watching which concluded at dawn with the solemn baptisms — the neophytes, plunged into the baptismal waters and there buried with Christ, were born to the life of grace at the very time when our Savior came forth triumphant from the tomb at dawn on Easter morning.



36 posted on 04/07/2012 1:31:35 PM PDT by Salvation ("With God all things are possible." Matthew 19:26)
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To: Salvation
The Word Among Us

Meditation: Isaiah 55:1-11

Easter Vigil

Heed me, and you shall eat well, you shall delight in rich fare. (Isaiah 55:2)

There are so many powerful symbols during the Easter Vigil! We gather in darkness as a brand-new fire is ignited. That light spreads from the Paschal candle to our own tapers, swallowing up darkness and isolation in its radiant glow.

We hear how our father Abraham sacrificed a lamb caught in a thorn-bush in place of his only son, and we stand in awe before the Father who offers up his thorn-crowned Son as a sacrifice for our sins.

We hear God declare his unconditional faithfulness to the covenant he made with his people, and we join the elect as they pro­fess their faith and love and enter into this covenant themselves. We exult as the Lord of Hosts opens a path for his people through the sea of destruction, and we see the Paschal candle plunged into the font, making its waters the place where the old life of sin and death will be destroyed.

We marvel as the power of God’s voice brings forth creation, and we bow before the humility of the Incarnate Word as he bursts from the silent grave. We hear God promise to place his Spirit within his people, and we witness the anointing with oil that conveys the fullness of that Spirit to brand-new Catholics.

Fire and light, sacrificial Lamb, words of faith, holy water, life-giving Word, fragrant oil— all of our senses are filled with the life of God at the Vigil! But none of these is the central sym­bol of this great celebration. It is the eucharistic banquet of life. It’s the glorious celebration of Jesus’ decisive victory over sin and death, the commemoration of the way Jesus’ resurrection has brought fulfillment to each and every other symbol of our faith. This, and not just Baptism and Confirmation, is the most impor­tant thing that the newly baptized will experience tonight.

And even better, it’s not a once-in-a-lifetime experience. It’s a reality we can all share at every Mass!

“Christ is risen indeed!”

Romans 6:3-11; Matthew 28:1-10


37 posted on 04/07/2012 1:40:09 PM PDT by Salvation ("With God all things are possible." Matthew 19:26)
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