Vigil (liturgy)

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A Vigil (from Latin vigilia , Night Watch ', Greek pannychis ), also called Pluraletantum vigils needed is a nightly prayer vigil in front of a festival of the church year , which is celebrated mostly in community. Its elements are psalms and readings of biblical and other spiritual texts, such as those of the church fathers . In the Liturgy of the Hours is Matins with their Nocturnes originally intended for the night or the early hours Hore of the liturgical day, which is why in monastic cloisters as vigils is called. Until 1955, the days before certain high festivals were also referred to as vigil (day).

Night watch in Judaism and in the New Testament

Nocturnal study of the Torah and praise prayers are common in Judaism and are very common as a Seder on the eve of the Passover festival . In the New Testament , the warning to be vigilant is often combined with the warning to prayer (so Mt 24.42  EU , Mt 25.1-13  EU ) based on the example of Jesus , who repeatedly withdrew to watch and pray (e.g. Lk 6.12  EU ).

The vigils in the church year

In early Christianity through the Middle Ages, believers gathered in Vigiliae to prepare for Sunday or a festival by fasting , prayer, and listening to the Word of God, or they did it individually in their homes. In the case of large pilgrimages , the night before the pilgrimage day was watched through praying at the sanctuary and concluded with the celebration of Holy Mass at sunrise . In the early church, each feast of the church year had its own vigil. Towards the morning of the day of the vigil, the faithful used to gather in the streets around the church to wait for the solemn services; a custom mentioned and recommended by the church fathers Augustine and Hieronymus .

In 932, the Synod of Erfurt also combined fasting with the celebration of a vigil. Fasting on Christmas Eve is already mentioned in 412 by Theophilos , that before the feast of the Epiphany in 407 by John Chrysostom and that before Pentecost in the Sacramentarium Leonianum from the 7th century. In 867, Pope Nicholas I mentioned fasting on Christmas Eve and the feast of the Assumption of Mary in his Responsa… ad consulta Bulgarorum .

With the increase in the number of festivals in the liturgical calendar, the number of vigils was greatly reduced. The Synod of Seligenstadt leads the vigils of Christmas , the feast of the Epiphany, those of the apostles' feasts , the Assumption of Mary, of St. Lawrence and that of All Saints , as well as a vigil with two weeks of fasting before the solemnity of the birth of John the Baptist .

In the West, only the older feasts had vigil days, while even before more recent solemn festivals such as Corpus Christi and the Sacred Heart of Jesus none were held, with the exception of the feast of the Immaculate Conception . Finally, the Roman general calendar showed seventeen such vigils in addition to Holy Saturday , with some dioceses and orders still having their own vigil days, such as the Carmelites before the solemnity of Our Lady on Mount Carmel .

In the early Middle Ages, the nocturnal vigil celebrations moved to the evening before. Later they could be “fetched” in the afternoon and finally in the morning of the day before a festival; in the process, however, the character of the night watch was increasingly eroded. It developed its own Propriumstexte for the entire celebration of Mass and the Divine Office, or portions thereof, so that the Vigiltag virtually an all-day preliminary celebration was, were honored by the high tower, similar to a Octave .

Around the middle of the 20th century, the following festivals had a vigil:

Pope Pius XII In 1955, with the exception of Christmas Eve, the Christmas vigil, abolished the vigils as festive doubles. After the liturgical reform of the Second Vatican Council, a vigil mass can only be viewed as the evening mass of individual solemn festivals. Where it is customary, vigils can be celebrated on the nights before Sundays, high festivals and pilgrimage days. The nightly Christmas mass and Easter Vigil are such vigil celebrations.

present

The most concise nocturnal vigil celebration with its own liturgy is Easter vigil . St. Augustine describes the vigil of that night as so significant that she has drawn this common name to the other vigils like a proper name. There is a similar celebration in the Greek Orthodox Church , where it is called Pannychis or Hagrypnia . The Christmas mass on Holy Night is also to be understood as a vigil.

For the design of vigils before Sundays, festivals or days of pilgrimage, the liturgy stipulates that the reading chamber can be expanded with elements from the appendix to the book of hours on vigils, or another design can be chosen according to the rules for celebrations of the Word of God .

More recently, the night watch in the open air at the end of World Youth Days has become a tradition, where young people keep watch to prepare for the climax of World Youth Day, the closing mass.

literature

  • Franz Xaver Pleithner, The oldest history of the Breviary Prayer or Development of the Church Liturgy up to the 5th Century , Verlag Kösel, 1887

Individual evidence

  1. Angelus A. Häussling : Vigil . In: Walter Kasper (Ed.): Lexicon for Theology and Church . 3. Edition. tape 10 . Herder, Freiburg im Breisgau 2001, Sp. 785 f .
  2. Introduction to the Liturgy of the Hours , no.71
  3. ^ F. Holweck, Eve of a Feast , in: The Catholic Encyclopedia . New York. Robert Appleton Company, 1909
  4. ^ F. Holweck, Eve of a Feast , in: The Catholic Encyclopedia . New York. Robert Appleton Company, 1909
  5. ^ F. Holweck, Eve of a Feast , in: The Catholic Encyclopedia . New York. Robert Appleton Company, 1909
  6. ^ F. Holweck, Eve of a Feast , in: The Catholic Encyclopedia . New York. Robert Appleton Company, 1909
  7. ^ Missale Romanum Editio XXIX, Regensburg 1953, pp. 1 ** - 3 **.
  8. Angelus A. Häussling : Vigil . In: Walter Kasper (Ed.): Lexicon for Theology and Church . 3. Edition. tape 10 . Herder, Freiburg im Breisgau 2001, Sp. 786 .
  9. Basic order of the church year No. 11.
  10. General Introduction to the Liturgy of the Hours [1] , nos. 70–73.
  11. General introduction to the Liturgy of the Hours No. 70 [2] .
  12. ^ F. Holweck, Eve of a Feast , in: The Catholic Encyclopedia . New York. Robert Appleton Company, 1909
  13. General introduction to the Liturgy of the Hours No. 71.73 [3] .