LiturgyTools.net: Catholic Easter Vigil service planning template

This is a template for planning a Roman Catholic Easter Saturday Vigil ceremony in the Ordinary Form.

The vigil is the most complicated of the Easter Triduum services, and has a number of options depending on how the Easter fire is managed, how many Old Testament readings are proclaimed, and whether there there are candidates for baptism and / or confirmation.

This form can be used to keep track of decisions about specific parts of the service, and to help with communication between the many people who are involved.

Downloadable file

MS Word version
Easter Vigil planning template

This planning form is is over several landscape (ie sideways) A4 sheets of paper: it is not possible to make a one-page-at-a-glance version, with sections for the Service of Light, Liturgy of the Word, Liturgy of Baptism / Confirmation and Liturgy of the Eucharist

Only a Microsoft Word version is provided, because you will almost certainly need to add / remove categories based on local needs.

Four columns

The regular Catholic Mass liturgy planning template lists the service elements and has some space for the details of each one.

But the Easter Vigil has a lot of extra elements, many of which need things to be moved from their usual place and arranged in certain ways which are unique to this service. So this template has four columns, one for each of:

Service element name
Details (eg which reading or hymn, by who, leads from where)
Preparation needed
Preparation who / status

These give space for identifying preparations during the service planning. And they link details of the preparations and people involved directly to the liturgical actions that need them.

This approach was adopted after using the template to plan several Easter Vigil ceremonies, and several other large one-off services.

Adding and removing sections

You may need to add extra items or to delete some. Doing this is simple, because the template is made with a Table.

To add or remove a whole line or row,

Select the whole line above or below
Right click
Chose Insert or Delete
Choose either Row Above, Row Below (to add a line) or Delete Row (for to remove it)

To add or remove a whole column,

Select the entire column on either side
Right click
Chose Insert or Delete
Choose either Insert Columns to the Left, Insert Colums to the Right - or one of the other options as appropriate.