As previously noted, the Church’s greatest and most important liturgy of the year is the Paschal Vigil. It has pride of place. It is not just a long version of “Sunday Mass.” In the ancient Church, the Paschal Vigil lasted all night and ended with daybreak, just as the Gospel reminds us that — at daybreak — the women were on their way to Christ’s Tomb only to find it already empty. That is why, in the ancient Church, there were no separate “Masses” on Easter Sunday.

But the stamina of the Christian community began to change, especially as the Church went from being a persecuted sect to a favored religion in the Roman Empire. That transition had many consequences. One important example was the shift in candidates for baptism. Earlier, most people who were baptized were adults (although, when families became Christians, the children were baptized, too). Later, most candidates for baptism were children, born into already-Christian families rather than converts to Christianity. And, of course, there were questions in the zeal of Christians: people who might become martyrs for their faith generally had a more robust commitment to it than people who “inherited” it through their family or society.

So, as liturgical historian Adolf Adam notes, in the fourth century we already find local appeals to Christian communities to try to keep and celebrate the Vigil through the morning. In the sixth century, we already find the appearance of Masses on Easter Day because the Vigil had concluded by midnight. 

Because the Vigil had originally ended at dawn, which mirrored the time when the first women encountered the empty tomb, when Easter Sunday Masses emerged, they at first also tended to cluster toward daybreak. Gradually, Easter Day liturgies spread to other hours of the morning but the first impulse was to connect the liturgy on Easter Day with daybreak. Many, many centuries later, there was a tradition in Central Europe (Germany and Poland) to celebrate Easter Mass at dawn (Resurekcja). There were historical reasons for this, not least of which was that — important as it was — for a period in very recent centuries the Easter Vigil had fallen into a service celebrated sometime on Holy Saturday morning or noontime, making the Easter Mass at dawn in practice the first liturgy of Easter. With the restoration of the Paschal Vigil to its proper place and full glory, that morning service must yield its prominence.

The reform of the liturgy that began in the 20th century was guided by an effort of “going back to the sources,” i.e., trying to recover how the Church celebrated her liturgy in her earliest centuries. That led to important reforms by Pope Pius XII in the 1950s that restored many of the services of Holy Week. And the liturgical reform following Vatican II, promulgated in 1970, recovered the Easter Vigil in its full, ancient, and original glory as the first liturgy of Easter. That is why the Holy See has sought to discourage these “Masses at dawn,” because they suggest that somehow that is when Christ rose and this is the arrival of Easter when in fact — as the Easter Vigil makes clear — Easter has already arrived. The tomb is empty! (By comparison, history led to four Masses for various times on Christmas: the Christmas Vigil on the evening of the 24th; Midnight Mass; “Mass at Dawn;” and “Mass During the Day.” But there is no counterpart “Mass at Dawn” for Easter. There is only one liturgy for Easter Mass during the day). 

There is a shadow in the United States of the practice of accentuating dawn: the Protestant proclivity for Easter “sunrise services.” Protestantism has always been involved in a paradox: its claim that the Catholic Church had broken from what Jesus and the early Church did (rather than developed from it) often meant that Protestants took what they imagined to be the practice of the ancient Church (which often, in fact, were their 16th-century preferences) as what those practices were. Liturgical and theological research aimed at “going back to the sources” tended to confirm Catholic practice and challenge Protestant practice. 

In the Church, Masses came to be established on Easter Day. But the liturgy for Mass on Easter Day does not — in comparison to the substantial differences we see during the Triduum — differ very much from a usual Sunday Mass. Where it does differ is:

First, the insertion of a “Sequence” before the Gospel. Sequences are quasi-poetic type chants recited or, preferably, sung before the Gospel. Sequences precede the Gospel on certain very important solemnities, e.g., Easter Sunday, Pentecost, and Corpus Christi. 

Second, the renewal of baptismal vows. As noted, Easter and baptism are inseparably linked. Therefore, even though actual baptism was administered at the Easter Vigil, even there the entire congregation is connected to the baptismal act through the renewal of baptismal vows on the part of those already Christians. The Church maintains that linkage in all the Masses on Easter Sunday through the congregation’s renewal of baptismal vows. As noted, the renewal of baptismal vows accentuates both a turning from sin (renouncing the devil, evil, and their attractiveness) as well as a turning to God, professing faith in the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. The profession of faith in God involves profession of faith in the three Persons of the Trinity, posed in the format of questions that mirror the content of the Creed. That is why the renewal of baptismal vows substitutes for the Nicene Creed on Easter Sunday.

After the renewal of baptismal vows, the priest sprinkles the congregation with the holy water that had been blessed at the Easter Vigil, again reinforcing the Easter-baptism nexus.

Third, the triple alleluia — to mark the special dignity of Easter, the alleluia is tripled both in the Acclamation before the Gospel and in the final dismissal at the end of Mass.

Other than these changes, the usual proper prayers specific to the solemnity (Collect, Prayer over the Gifts, Postcommunion), Easter preface, and possible additional insertions into the First Eucharistic Prayer, the Mass of Easter Sunday does not otherwise differ from a typical Sunday.

One note about the Easter Season: its continuity. The Church knows that the ‘joy of the Resurrection” cannot be contained in one day or even the Octave. The “Joy of the Resurrection” extends to Pentecost, the gift of the Holy Spirit who completes Jesus’ work. That is why the 50 days of Eastertide are treated as one unified whole and why the Sundays following Easter Sunday are not called “Sundays after Easter” but “Sundays of Easter.” The Sunday following Easter Sunday is not, therefore, the “First Sunday after Easter” but the “Second Sunday of Easter.”

No other liturgical season of the Church year — not even Christmastide — has such distinct liturgies, liturgies some of whose features date back to even the Apostolic Age, as the Paschal Triduum and what is preparatory to it, such as Lent and Palm Sunday. Hopefully, these essays have provided you with a better understanding of how and why these liturgies are structured as they are so that, going back to the principle lex orandi, lex credendi, how we pray expresses what we believe, your conscious and active participation in them deepens your faith in your Redeemer who lives, never to die.