St. Peter's, the largest church in the world, is normally packed for the Easter Vigil. This year, vast parts of the basilica were completely empty and silent. Microphones picked up the smallest sounds from the liturgy.
This year’s Easter Vigil liturgy was scaled back. The preparation of the Paschal candle was omitted due to “the health emergency in progress”, the Vatican said, as was the lighting of candles among the faithful.
Instead, the basilica was lit up gradually until it was fully illuminated at the Gloria, when the bells of St. Peter’s tolled. No baptisms took place, only a renewal of baptismal promises.
The pope celebrated the Vigil at the Altar of the Chair, which was flanked by the miraculous crucifix of San Marcello and the Byzantine icon of Mary, Salus Populi Romani.
In his homily, the 83-year-old pope noted that in St Matthew’s Gospel the women found Jesus’ tomb empty “after the Sabbath”.
“This is how the Gospel of this holy Vigil began: with the Sabbath,” he said. “It is the day of the Easter Triduum that we tend to neglect as we eagerly await the passage from Friday’s cross to Easter Sunday’s Alleluia. This year however, we are experiencing, more than ever, the great silence of Holy Saturday.”
“We can imagine ourselves in the position of the women on that day. They, like us, had before their eyes the drama of suffering, of an unexpected tragedy that happened all too suddenly. They had seen death and it weighed on their hearts.”
“Pain was mixed with fear: would they suffer the same fate as the Master? Then too there was fear about the future and all that would need to be rebuilt. A painful memory, a hope cut short. For them, as for us, it was the darkest hour.”
But the women did not allow themselves to be paralyzed, the pope observed.
“Jesus, like a seed buried in the ground, was about to make new life blossom in the world; and these women, by prayer and love, were helping to make that hope flower,” he said. “How many people, in these sad days, have done and are still doing what those women did, sowing seeds of hope! With small gestures of care, affection and prayer.”
