The Roman Church for centuries observed a vigil before the Feast of All Saints.
All Saints is a Holy Day of Obligation. Make a plan.
We Roman fast before our feasts. The fast was intended also as a way to help the poor, in that it was a time also to deny one’s self and give alms not from one’s excess, but from one’s own need. Vigils – which are penitential – were/are held before feasts and ordinations and also for the sake of pressing petitions. In the Roman Rite the Masses were somewhat simplified and shorn of more joyous elements, for example, no Gloria, Alleluia or Ite.
On 30 October, after the priests have said their usual morning Masses, The World’s Best Sacristan is already setting up Missals and vestments for observance of the Vigil, though strictly speaking it is not in the 1962 calendar. That said, if the Triduum can be used from earlier books and if new saints since 1962 can be incorporated into the older schedule, there shouldn’t be a compelling reason to be worked up about saying the Vigil of All Saints rather than texts of … whatever, since it is a “dies non“. What? A Mass for of Alfonso Rodriguez, SJ (+1617) with the common of a confessor? A Votive Mass of the Holy Spirit? Why not the Vigil, in the true Roman style?
We are our rites… and we are flexible and reasonable.
As Schuster wrote of this day:
When we pray to the saints in heaven they do as Joseph did when his brothers arrived in Egypt. He went before Pharaoh and, full of joy, announced : Fratres mei et domus patris mei . . . venerunt ad me. And the King out of love for Joseph gave to them the land of Gessen.
COLLECT:
Dómine, Deus noster, multiplica super nos grátiam tuam: et, quorum prævenimus gloriósa sollémnia, tríbue subsequi in sancta professione lætítiam.
Multiply Your grace upon us, O Lord our God, and grant that by our holy profession of faith we may attain to the bliss of those whose glorious celebration we anticipate.
I note that the Vatican curial calendar is back on track several days after the end of the “ora legale”. Good work guys. The sun rose at 06:37 (if the calendar is to be believed), 7 minutes after I did. It will set at 17:10 well before I go to sleep.
The sun rose today at 7:35 on the Vatican curial calendar but the hour is now different since daylight savings ended at 03:00 here in the Central European Time zone: hence 6:37 (the calendar is off a couple minutes according to more accurate online clocks). Sunset is at 18:13 on the Vatican calendar, hence: 17:35 (or really 17:10).
