Dr. Peter Kwasniewski has an excellent Facebook post (which I very much hope he will turn into an article) demonstrating why the pre-1955 Easter Vigil is superior to alternatives within the Roman Rite. An excerpt:

One could go on and on… The bottom line is that the whole liturgy, one vast hymn of praise to the might of God revealed in the creation of the world, the creation of the old Israel, and the creation of the new Israel, possessed a cosmic sweep, an historical rootedness, and an immersion into mystery that I have never seen before, in a seamless interconnection with none of those embarrassing modular joints or ceremonial caesuras typical of the work of Vatican committees from 1948 onwards.

Dr. Peter Kwasniewski

This is spot on. I would add that this year, I was struck by the particularly insistent if understated theme of divine paternity, generation, and filiation found throughout the twelve readings. They build perfectly to the blessing of the font. This ritual, so clearly a stylised evocation of the procreative act, is elaborated through repeated prayers of fecundation. The font is renewed as a vessel of new life, the place where souls are adopted by God. The divine paternity in Christ, through the Spirit in the sacraments of the Church, is one of the Vigil’s great themes. I hadn’t noticed it before. But it makes sense. After all, our adoption as “filii et filiae” (in the words of the Vigil’s vesperal hymn) is entirely constituted by the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. In other words, the whole of the Paschal Mystery.

I was likewise struck by the apostrophising of the fire, candle, and water…I hadn’t noticed it before. It reminded me of the Old Believer icons that show the elemental spirits and the angels of the weather.

This Rite is clearly the product of a similar worldview. One gets the distinct sense that these are not mere poetic effluvia, but, as Dr. Kwasniewski notes, a real address to the material world, as if summoning it to sacramentality.

The liturgy had a majesty to it, a mounting series of joined but unconfused symbols, which the orations and lessons and ceremonies brought forth at a stately, leisurely pace: fire, candle, water, all *directly* addressed in words of power. It is the Church taking command of the rudiments of creation and literally ordering them to serve Christ and the salvation of souls.

Dr. Peter Kwasniewski

Man imprints a touch of humanity upon those animals and things he takes up into his own life. Dogs, for instance, are not mere beasts; they occupy a quasi-human realm by virtue of their adoption into our own homes and rhythms of life. That is – our culture.

God does much the same with His creation. A self-diffusing goodness, He creates and redeems us as integral persons after His own image and likeness. The old Paschal Vigil suggests that He also imprints both sacrality and a kind of elemental personality upon the non-hypostatic creation, too. The Trinity has, if you like, its own culture. God wishes us to join in that culture, that pattern of common life shared by the three Divine persons. God assimilates us to that culture by cultus.

Namely, the sacraments. In these rites, the Church teaches us how God animates the sacramental potential inherent in all nature.

There is much to meditate here upon the underlying spirituality of the natural and material world we inhabit. At any rate, all Catholics would do well to attend a pre-55 Easter next year if they can. They will experience the Church’s liturgical pedagogy at its deepest and most mystically resonant.