Am I the only one who has misgivings when, at the Easter Vigil, the Celebrant invites the Congregation to extinguish their Easter candles at some point in the service (usually before the readings begin?<\/p>\n
It suddenly seems as if these candles — which at the beginning of the Vigil were lit as the profound\u00a0symbol of the\u00a0resurrection\u00a0\u00a0— are\u00a0nothing more than liturgical debris, to be un-lit for the sake of convenience.\u00a0 Even if we take these candles home with us and light them at\u00a0our Easter meals, within the Easter Vigil\u00a0 itself we are asked to make a sudden switch from\u00a0holding these candles as deep pointers to the Resurrection to treating\u00a0these\u00a0candles as, basically, a liturgical nuisance.\u00a0 It seems\u00a0impractical, after all,\u00a0to ask people to hold\u00a0lit candles throughout a long\u00a0service).<\/p>\n
But are there other options than simply extinguishing what we just celebrated as the “light of Christ”?\u00a0 Would it, for example,\u00a0be possible to gather the lit\u00a0candles in stands filled with sand, around the sanctuary?\u00a0 Maybe some Pray Tell <\/em>folks have already solved this issue?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Am I the only one who has misgivings when, at the Easter Vigil, the Celebrant invites the Congregation to extinguish their Easter candles at some point in the service (usually before the readings begin?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,17,91],"tags":[1274,160],"class_list":["post-9171","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-devotions-and-sacramentals","category-liturgical-spirituality","category-liturgical-year","tag-candles","tag-easter-vigil"],"yoast_head":"\n