The reason is, of course, that it is meant to be a Vigil service during which the community watches and waits for the celebration of the Resurrection. In the early Church, the readings would last all through the night together with the singing of psalms between them. In the Vigil as it had come to be celebrated, albeit on Holy Saturday morning, there were twelve readings from the Old Testament. With the revised Vigil service there are fewer readings but the reading from Exodus is obligatory because it relates the event which the Jewish people were celebrating at the time of Jesus’ Passover through death into life, foreshadowed in their Passover from Egypt through the Red Sea towards the Promised Land. It is regrettable that in some places the number of readings is cut down to a minimum to make the service shorter. The whole point of it being long is that it should have about it the feeling of a Vigil of watching and waiting for the Lord’s Resurrection.
