Vigil of All Saints

The Vigil of All Saints is anticipated today as the 31st October falls on a Sunday this year. The Vigil is of simple rite and the liturgical colour is violet. The ferial tone is used for the orations and for the preface and Pater noster at Mass.

At Mattins the invitatory, hymn, antiphons and psalms are those of Saturday but the lessons, Descendens Jesus, are taken from the Common of Several Martyrs with the responsories taken from the Saturday of the fourth week of October. At Lauds the second scheme of psalmody is sung with Pss. 50, 91, 63, the O.T. canticle Audite, caeli & 150. After the antiphon on the Benedictus is repated the ferial preces are sung with the choir kneeling. After the collect of the Vigil the Suffrage of the Saints is omitted (prior to the 1911 reform the series of Suffrages were sung as on any Vigil or ferial day.

At Prime the fourth psalms, Ps. 149, that is allocated to the first schema of Lauds is added to the three psalms for Saturday. Both the Dominical and ferial preces are sung, the choir kneeling. At the other Horae Minorae the short series of ferial preces are sung, again with the choir kneeling.

Mass is sung after None. The ministers wear violet dalmatic and tunicle. There is no Gloria. The second collect is of the Holy Ghost, Deus,qui corda, the third collect either for the Church or the pope. As it is a 'kneeling day' the choir kneels for the prayers and from the Sanctus until Pax Domini. As the Gloria is not sung the dismissal is Benedicamus Domino.

Vespers are first Vespers of the feast of Christ the King with a corresponding colour change to festive white. The Office is proper and the antiphons Pacificus vocabitur etc are sung with Pss. 109, 110, 111, 112 and 116. The hymn is Te saeculorum Principem. For the feast all hymns of Iambic metre are sung with the Doxology Jesu, tibi sit gloria, Qui sceptra mundi temperas, Cum Patre et almo Spiritu, In sempiterna saecula. After the collect of the feast the Sunday is commemorated. The antiphon on the Magnificat is Vidi, Dominum for the Saturday before the first Sunday in November.

In the 'liturgical books of 1962' the Vigil of All Saints has been abolished. Today is kept as a fourth class Office of the BVM on Saturday. At Vespers there is no commemoration of the Sunday (if there were the antiphon for the Saturday before the fifth Sunday in October would be used). At Compline and the other Horae Minorae the special Doxology is omitted.