Dear Father,
We don’t have a Saturday vigil Mass in my church. I thought every church had to have one. I don’t know if the bishop knows about this situation and I don’t want to get my priest in trouble. I wanted your opinion about if I should talk to my priest about this. Thanks.
-Sam
Dear Sam,
The short answer is no, you don’t necessarily need to talk with your priest about this particular situation. And, no, typically the Saturday evening Mass is not a vigil Mass. And, no, not every parish needs one. And, no, you don’t need to go to the bishop, and, no, you wouldn’t get him in trouble even if you did contact the bishop.
A Saturday evening Mass is not really a “vigil” Mass unless it happens to be the Saturday night before Easter Sunday or the night before special solemnities in the Church. The word vigil comes from the Latin vigilia, meaning a watchfulness, staying awake, being alert. At a vigil Mass, we are watching for the actual day of the feast to arrive. Vigil Masses mark very important times for us to be alert to God’s power in our lives.
The typical Saturday evening Mass is properly referred to as a Mass of Anticipation or an Anticipated Sunday Mass. When Saturday evening Masses became common, they received the wrong name: Vigil. And, unfortunately, the name has stuck.
Interestingly, the origin of Saturday evening Masses is tied to the beginning of changes to the Eucharistic fasting laws, according to author Shawn Tunink. Prior to 1957, Catholics were required to fast beginning at midnight if they were to receive Holy Communion.
Clearly, if you wanted to eat on Sunday morning or even have Sunday lunch, you would go to the earliest possible Mass. Most, if not all, would have found it unthinkable to go to Communion at a late Mass on account of the fasting requirement.
However, in 1957, Pope Pius XII reduced the Eucharistic fast to three hours. This opened the possibility for planning to receive Communion at a later Mass, even at an evening Mass, especially for people forced to work on Sunday mornings.
In the 1960s, some European dioceses requested permission for Saturday evening Masses that would fulfill the Sunday obligation, which the Holy See granted. In the United States, our bishops asked for and received permission for Saturday evening Masses in the 1970s. Now the Vatican permission is inscribed in the current Code of Canon Law (#1248).
People have claimed that the Saturday evening Mass was permitted because we have inherited the Jewish practice of celebrating the beginning of a day on the previous evening. The apologist, John Grondelski, maintains that the Saturday evening Mass permission from Rome had nothing to do with Jewish reckoning of time. Instead, it was merely a legal decision.
In fact, according to Tunink, when Saturday evening Masses began, they were called anticipated Masses. They are not truly “vigil” Masses. A vigil Mass actually refers to what Grondelski calls a “self-contained liturgy.” The most obvious example is the Easter Vigil, the mother of all (true) vigils. It is self-contained in that it has its own set of Scripture readings and Mass prayers that differ from those of Easter Sunday. The same happens with the Pentecost Vigil.
Likewise, there are true vigil Masses to celebrate the Ascension of the Lord, the Nativity of our Lord, the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary, the Nativity of St. John the Baptist and the Solemnity of Sts. Peter and Paul. Other solemn feast days, like Sundays, may have anticipated Masses the evening before.
The difference between a vigil and an anticipated Mass is more than semantics. Words matter. Even if this is not the most pressing distinction needed in the Church, it is important because of what a true vigil represents.
Grondelski points out that when the Holy See permitted anticipated Sunday Masses, it was concerned that we not dilute the preeminence of Sunday itself. Sunday is the Lord’s Day because on it He rose from the dead in order to re-create us. The danger is that people use the anticipated Mass to “get Mass out of the way.” Sunday then becomes a day to do whatever I want rather than to keep holy the Lord’s day, as God tells us in the Third Commandment. Recreational activity is not forbidden, but must find its proper place after the worship of God on Sunday.
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