Pre-55 Halloween & the Octave of All Saints

[kelley]

Pre-55 Halloween & the Octave of All Saints

The Vigil and Octave of All Saints: Preparing for and Prolonging the Glory of Heaven

The Feast of All Saints on November 1 remains one of the great solemnities of the Catholic year. Yet what Catholics experience today is only part of the liturgical observance that existed before the reforms of the 1950s. Traditionally, the feast did not stand by itself. It was approached through a Vigil on October 31, historically observed with fasting and abstinence, and its celebration continued through an Octave ending on November 8. Thus, the Church surrounded the vision of heavenly glory with both penitential preparation and prolonged rejoicing.

The suppression of both the Vigil and the Octave in 1955 is especially instructive because it shows how the attempted reform changed more than the number of observances found in a Missal. Before the reform, October 31 prepared the faithful for the saints through penance, November 1 celebrated their triumph, November 2 turned the attention of the Church toward the faithful departed, and the days that followed continued beneath the influence of the All Saints Octave. The first portion of November therefore possessed a strongly eschatological character in which the Church Militant, the Church Suffering, and the Church Triumphant were placed before the faithful in remarkably close succession.

The story of the Vigil also shows that changes to the liturgical calendar and changes to fasting law did not always occur simultaneously. When the Vigil Mass and Office were abolished in 1955, the obligation of fasting attached to October 31 did not automatically disappear. For a short period, American Catholics could therefore still be bound to fast on a day whose liturgical Vigil had already been suppressed. This unusual situation helps illustrate how an ancient unity of liturgy and asceticism was gradually dismantled during the middle of the twentieth century.

The Development of the Feast, Vigil, and Octave

The roots of All Saints reach back to the ancient commemorations of the martyrs. Pope Gregory III, who reigned from 731 to 741, dedicated a chapel in St. Peter’s Basilica to all the saints and fixed its anniversary on November 1. Pope Gregory IV later extended the November observance throughout the Church. According to the historical account cited by the Catholic Encyclopedia, the Vigil appears to have been observed almost as early as the feast itself, while the Octave was added under Pope Sixtus IV in the fifteenth century.

The existence of both a Vigil and an Octave gave All Saints the same basic shape possessed by many of the Church’s greater observances. A Vigil provided preparation before the feast, while an Octave prolonged the celebration after it. This was not arbitrary multiplication. The older calendar treated the mysteries of the Faith as realities for which the soul should prepare and within which it should remain for some time afterward.

This arrangement was especially appropriate for All Saints. November 1 commemorates not merely the saints whose names appear in the Martyrology or whose feasts are kept during the year, but the countless souls who have attained the Beatific Vision and whose names are known only to God. The Collect asks that, through the merits of so many intercessors, God would grant the faithful an abundance of His mercy. The Feast of All Saints therefore directs the Catholic toward the end for which he was created: union with God in Heaven. It is entirely fitting that so great a feast should have possessed both penitential preparation beforehand and an octave afterward. 

The Vigil of All Saints and the Traditional Fast

The Vigil of All Saints was historically more than an anticipatory Mass and Office. October 31 was also a day of fasting. The practice is ancient. The Synod of Seligenstadt in 1022 mentioned the fasts observed on the vigils of Christmas, Epiphany, feasts of the Apostles, the Assumption, St. Lawrence, and All Saints. These vigil fasts were part of the broader Catholic understanding that major feasts should often be approached by denying oneself beforehand.

The exact discipline varied considerably from place to place over the centuries, particularly before the universal codification of canon law. In Catholic territories of colonial America, the Vigil of All Saints regularly appeared among the obligatory fast days. In the United States around the beginning of the twentieth century, it remained one of the comparatively small number of vigils on which fasting was still required. The 1909 Catholic Encyclopedia, for example, listed the vigils of Christmas, Pentecost, the Assumption, and All Saints among the American fast days.

The 1917 Code of Canon Law further standardized the discipline. By then many older vigil fasts had already disappeared, but the Vigil of All Saints survived among only four vigils retaining a universal obligation of fasting: Pentecost, the Assumption, All Saints, and Christmas. That fact alone demonstrates the prominence still accorded to November 1. Long after Catholics had ceased being obliged to fast before many other ancient feasts, the Church continued to require penance before All Saints.

The spiritual logic is easy to understand. All Saints presents the final victory of grace in human souls, but the saints did not attain Heaven through a comfortable Christianity. They practiced mortification, resisted temptation, performed works of mercy, endured suffering, and persevered until death. The faithful were asked, however modestly, to imitate the spirit of self-denial by which the saints had cooperated with grace. 

The First Mid-Century Weakening

The traditional fast began to weaken even before the liturgical Vigil itself was abolished. In the United States, the bishops standardized fasting and abstinence regulations in 1951. Under those rules, the Vigil of All Saints remained a fast day, but the abstinence requirement had been reduced. Meat could now be eaten at the principal meal, assuming it was not a Friday, making October 31 a day of partial rather than complete abstinence.

This distinction may appear minor to Catholics today, when the very concept of partial abstinence is almost unknown, but it represented another stage in a much longer relaxation of the Church’s fasting discipline. The Vigil still demanded one full meal and the restricted smaller meals allowed under the law of fasting, but the older complete abstinence from flesh meat had been mitigated.

Thus, on the eve of the great liturgical reforms of the 1950s, the Vigil of All Saints retained both its Mass and Office and its obligatory fast, but its penitential observance in the United States had already been weakened. The events that followed would go much further.

The Abolition of the Vigil in 1955

Pope Pius XII’s reform of 1955 substantially reduced the number of liturgical vigils in the Roman calendar. The decree Cum nostra hac aetate, issued by the Sacred Congregation of Rites on March 23, 1955, retained Christmas and Pentecost as privileged vigils and preserved only a handful of others as common vigils. The remaining vigils, including that of All Saints, were suppressed. The same reform eliminated the vigils of the Epiphany, the Immaculate Conception, and the feasts of nearly all the Apostles except Ss. Peter and Paul.

Consequently, the traditional Mass and Office of October 31 disappeared from the Roman calendar. Halloween, literally the eve of All Hallows, continued to retain its name in popular culture, but the Catholic liturgical observance from which that name derived had been removed.

The loss of a vigil is more significant than the elimination of an additional Mass formulary. A vigil gave a feast a threshold. The Church began directing the mind of the faithful toward the coming mystery before the feast itself arrived. In some cases that preparation was joyful; in others, including All Saints, it was explicitly penitential. The calendar thereby taught that the great celebrations of the Christian life should be approached deliberately rather than encountered abruptly.

The disappearance of the Vigil of All Saints weakened precisely this aspect of the feast. November 1 remained, but the day of preparation that had preceded it for centuries was no longer present liturgically.

When the Fast Outlived the Vigil

What happened next is one of the more interesting details in the history of the reform. Because the 1955 decree was liturgical in character, questions arose as to whether suppression of the Vigil also abolished the fasting and abstinence obligations attached to October 31.

The bishops of the United States sought clarification from Rome. In a response dated March 15, 1957, they were informed that the decree of the Sacred Congregation of Rites concerned “simply the liturgical part of the day” and did not itself affect the obligations of fast and abstinence, which existed as penitential preparation for the following feast.

For a short period, then, the distinction between the two became unusually visible. Liturgically, the Vigil had ceased to exist; penitentially, the faithful could still be required to observe it. The Mass and Office were gone, but the fast remained because the canonical discipline had not been abolished by the liturgical decree.

The American bishops subsequently dispensed the faithful from both the fast and the partial abstinence attached to the Vigil of All Saints. The process was therefore gradual. Before the reforms, October 31 possessed a liturgical Vigil and a traditional fast with abstinence. In 1951, the American abstinence discipline was weakened. In 1955, the liturgical Vigil was abolished. After Rome clarified in 1957 that this had not automatically ended the penitential law, the American bishops dispensed the remaining obligation as well.

Within only a few years, what had been both a liturgical and ascetical preparation for All Saints had ceased to exist in ordinary Catholic practice.

The Octave of All Saints

The feast was diminished on its other side as well. Before 1955, All Saints possessed a Common Octave extending through November 8. Under the rubrics then in force, the days within the Octave, from the second through the seventh day, were Semidouble and yielded to Double and Semidouble feasts while taking precedence over Simple feasts. When a higher-ranking feast occurred, the Octave was ordinarily commemorated at Lauds, Mass, and Vespers, except when the rubrics excluded the commemoration for feasts of sufficiently high rank.

These details are important because they demonstrate that an octave was not necessarily eight uninterrupted repetitions of exactly the same Mass. The older calendar was capable of carrying several liturgical memories at once. On November 4, for example, St. Charles Borromeo could be celebrated while the Octave of All Saints remained present through its commemoration. The occurring saint and the larger mystery of the octave did not have to compete for exclusive possession of the day.

This layering was one of the characteristics of the pre-1955 calendar. The Church could celebrate an individual saint while still remembering the company of all the saints. The result was a liturgical year possessing considerably more texture than a calendar in which each date is expected to carry only one principal thought.

The Octave of All Saints also fit naturally into the character of November. November 1 celebrated the saints who had already attained Heaven. November 2 turned immediately toward the faithful departed who were still undergoing purification. The days afterward returned repeatedly to the saints through the Octave. Heaven and Purgatory were therefore not distant theological ideas but realities placed repeatedly before Catholics during the opening days of the month.

The Octave Day on November 8

The Octave reached its conclusion on November 8. The traditional Mass texts for the Octave Day are striking in their emphasis on martyrdom, suffering, and heavenly victory. The Introit calls upon God to remember the blood of His saints. The Epistle from Hebrews recalls those who “conquered kingdoms,” endured imprisonment and torture, and preferred suffering to abandoning the Faith. The Offertory declares that God is wonderful in His saints, while the Communion recalls those whom God tried “as gold in the furnace.”

These texts show how far the traditional observance was from a merely sentimental idea of sanctity. All Saints certainly rejoices in the innumerable company of the blessed, but the Church did not separate their glory from the suffering through which so many reached it. The Octave Day returned the faithful to the cost of discipleship and to the supernatural triumph accomplished by grace.

In this sense, the Vigil and the Octave complemented one another especially well. The Vigil imposed penance upon those still struggling on earth. The Octave celebrated those whose struggle had ended in victory. The entire structure placed the Christian life between those two realities: mortification here and glory hereafter.

The Suppression of the Octave

The Octave of All Saints disappeared in the same 1955 reform that abolished its Vigil. Cum nostra hac aetate reduced the Roman calendar to only three octaves: Easter, Pentecost, and Christmas. The Octaves of Epiphany, Corpus Christi, the Ascension, the Sacred Heart, the Immaculate Conception, the Assumption, Sts. Peter and Paul, All Saints, and the other universal and particular octaves were suppressed.

As discussed in the previous installment of this series, the abolition of most octaves represented a fundamental change in the Church’s treatment of liturgical time. A feast that had formerly remained before the faithful for eight days now ordinarily ended with the calendar date itself. All Saints provides a particularly clear example because the same reform removed both its preparation and its prolongation.

What the Older Structure Taught

The older observance of All Saints illustrates a principle that has appeared repeatedly throughout this series. The traditional Roman calendar did not simply communicate doctrines; it arranged time so that Catholics would live according to them. The Vigil and Octave of All Saints are a particularly beautiful example because they placed the whole supernatural purpose of Christian life before the faithful.

The October 31 fast reminded Catholics that there is no crown without the cross. The Feast of All Saints showed the result of perseverance in grace. All Souls immediately afterward reminded the faithful of those who had died in friendship with God but still required purification and the prayers of the Church. The continuing Octave then returned the mind repeatedly to the saints who had already reached the goal.

This was liturgical catechesis in the fullest sense. Without requiring a lecture, the calendar taught the Communion of Saints, the necessity of penance, the reality of Purgatory, the intercession of the blessed, and the Christian hope of Heaven. The faithful did not merely read these doctrines in a catechism. They encountered them through fasting, feasting, requiem prayers, commemorations, and the recurring texts of the Mass and Office.

The removal of the Vigil and Octave did not formally deny any of these teachings. But it did reduce the means by which those teachings were woven into the lives of ordinary Catholics.

Recovering the Traditional Observance

Catholics who follow or draw spiritual nourishment from the pre-1955 calendar can still recover much of this older pattern. October 31 can once again be treated as a day of voluntary fasting and abstinence in preparation for All Saints. The Litany of the Saints, spiritual reading from the lives of the saints, Confession, and attendance at Mass on November 1 are all appropriate ways to restore the specifically Catholic character of the day.

The Octave can likewise be remembered through November 8. The Collect of All Saints may be added to private prayers, families can read about different saints each day, and Catholics can consciously invoke the intercession of the Church Triumphant throughout the week. November is already traditionally devoted to the Holy Souls, and there is no contradiction in simultaneously remembering the blessed in Heaven. Rather, the older calendar demonstrates how naturally the two belong together.

None of these practices binds the faithful under present law, aside from attendance at Mass on All Saints Day. The restoration of the rest is valuable because they recover a spiritual principle that the older calendar expressed with particular clarity: the Church prepares for her greatest celebrations and does not abandon them as soon as the feast day ends.

The older Roman calendar gave All Saints more than a day because Heaven deserved more than a passing thought. It prepared for the saints through penance and continued to rejoice in them through an octave. Recovering that older pattern can help restore not merely a lost observance but a more Catholic understanding of life itself: the conviction that our present struggle is ordered toward eternal glory, that the saints have already reached what we seek, and that the whole purpose of our time on earth is to join them.

-  Matthew Plese