How Holy Is This Night

Caminante, no hay camino: The Great Vigil of Easter

Brother Curtis spoke of the Exsultet:‘This past Easter morning at 4:00 a.m. we were celebrating the Easter Vigil in the monastery where I live. At one moment early on in the liturgy I was stunned, quite unexpectedly. I had a kind of epiphany, something which has very much stayed with me during these past months. The monastery chapel was still in darkness, illuminated only by lighted tapers held by the monks and a large number of people worshipping with us and the great Paschal Candle. In this darkened space tears rolled off my chin. The tears started in the course of the deacon’s singing the Exsultet, this ancient hymn proclaiming the Easter light of Christ. One phrase in the Exsultet stunned me, made me tremble a bit, and then came the tears. The phrase was this:“How holy is this night, when wickedness is put to flight, and sin is washed way. It restores innocence to the fallen….”

Innocence. Christ’s offering us not just forgiveness, not just redemption of what is wasted or lost, but innocence. If Jesus, knowing you even better than you know yourself, were to say to you, “You are innocent,” could you take it in? “You are innocent.” Could you begin to imagine being innocent? “You are innocent.” This is not about being “declared innocent,” like a verdict rendered in a court of law. This is not the adjudication of innocence but rather the restoration of innocence. That’s the context in which we hear these words sung in the Exsultet. Our being made innocent again by Christ.’

Stunned… that’s how I felt just now as I browsed links about the Exsultet, and found this – because I’m helping to chant it tomorrow night, and this is one of my two lines. At the very beginning of the service, right after the new fire is kindled in some sort of cauldron deal out on the porch.

I hope to GOD I don’t have a big emotional reaction to the text now that I’ve read the above, because I have to get through it cleanly so I can hand off to the next soloist. It’s unseemly to blub when singing an unaccompanied, ancient, and very holy chant.  I had a good few moments of nervousness before my one line of Latin text Thursday night, and I’m thankful that my big (shared) number comes right at the beginning of the Vigil service, which will go on and on and on. Gah! But it all comes out right in the end.

In the chant, the word “innocence” is highlighted musically by starting on a higher note than usual, which lends a lovely plaintive quality to the sound of it. Unlike last year, I’m not fighting the Bronchitis from Hell, and I was able to get through it in rehearsal all right, and had a chance to look it over again briefly after tonight’s Good Friday service (which also went all right).

We split the Exsultet up at St Nick’s because it’s a dauntingly long 6 or 7 minutes for one person to do. None of us are deacons, but I’ve heard a female deacon sing it beautifully – the first time I ever heard it, in fact. Father Paul will take quite a lot of the load, singing the middle section that includes a form of the “Sursum Corda.”

There is a slightly different version that includes additional traditional text here. We sing from a copy out of the book of occasional services, that’s been carefully marked up with points over specific notes to indicate a bit of extra musical “oomph” in the chant, such as at “hearts and minds.” And we made a couple of revisions to one or two words to make them less exclusive – “forebears” instead of “forefathers” and that sort of thing.

We got snow today and it will likely snow a bit more tomorrow, so it’ll be cold and sloppy again. Which is just lovely. Lovely. Good job we’re starting the nice little bonfire to warm up with.