The Vigils of the Apostles: Apostolic Watchfulness and Penitential Preparation

As great as the Venerable Pope Pius XII was, much of it is negated by his appointment of Bugnini as Secretary to the Commission for Liturgical Reform, thus beginning the destruction of the Mass.

From One Peter Five

By Matthew Plese, TOP

Lost Feasts and Principles from the Pre-1955 Roman Missal

Part I – The Roman Calendar in 1954: The Last Year of Wholeness

Part II – The Vigil of the Epiphany: the Forgotten Gateway to Christ’s Manifestation

Part III – The Chair of St. Peter and the Octave of Christian Unity: Authority, Conversion, and the Eclipse of Continuity

Part IV — The Vigils of the Apostles: Apostolic Watchfulness and Penitential Preparation

Among the most instructive features of the traditional, pre-55 Roman calendar was its insistence that the great mysteries of the Church be prepared for, not rushed into. Nowhere was this principle more clearly expressed than in the vigils of the Apostles—days of fasting, abstinence, and watchful prayer that preceded the feasts of those men upon whom Christ Himself had built His Church. These vigils were not late medieval accretions nor optional devotions. They were ancient, universal, and deeply rooted in the Church’s understanding of apostolic authority, martyrdom, and spiritual readiness.

By the middle of the twentieth century, however, nearly all of these apostolic vigils had disappeared from the universal calendar. What was lost was not merely a set of fast days, but a coherent theology: the conviction that the Church must approach her apostolic foundations with humility, penance, and vigilance.

The Apostles and the Structure of Sacred Time

In the traditional Roman Rite, the Apostles were not remembered abstractly. Their feasts were embedded within a disciplined rhythm of preparation and celebration that mirrored the Gospel itself. Christ did not send His Apostles forth casually; He formed them through prayer, fasting, persecution, and sacrifice. The calendar reflected this reality by surrounding their feasts with acts of bodily discipline.

Historically, the Roman Church observed vigils before the feasts of most of the Apostles including Sts. Peter and Paul, St. Andrew, St. James, St. Bartholomew, St. Matthew, St. Simon and St. Jude, St. Matthias, and St. Thomas. These vigils were days of fasting and abstinence, binding under pain of sin according to the discipline of the time, though the observance of them as such varied from place to place. The Feast of Ss. Philip and James – in Pascaltide – or St. John – in Christmastide – were exceptions without vigils of their own.

The logic was simple and profoundly Biblical. The Apostles were the witnesses of Christ’s Passion and Resurrection. To celebrate them worthily, the Church first entered into their sufferings. Joy followed penance; glory followed sacrifice.

Apostolic Vigils and the Theology of Watchfulness

The very word vigil comes from the Latin vigilia – a watch kept through the night. In Scripture, watchfulness is inseparable from fidelity. Christ commands His disciples to “watch and pray,” and the Apostles themselves exhort the Church to remain vigilant against sin and spiritual sloth. The calendar once incarnated this command not metaphorically, but concretely.

The vigils of the Apostles taught the faithful that apostolic authority is not triumphal but cruciform. Before honoring Peter as Prince of the Apostles, the Church fasted in remembrance of his chains and eventual martyrdom. Before celebrating Andrew’s missionary zeal, the faithful disciplined their bodies in anticipation of his cross-shaped death. The vigil was a silent sermon: the Apostles reign because they first suffered.

This principle was especially evident in the Vigil of Sts. Peter and Paul on June 28, one of the most ancient fast days of the Roman Church. It stood alongside the vigils of Christmas and Pentecost as a major penitential preparation, underscoring the unique role of the two chief Apostles as founders of the Roman See. Even when most of the Vigils of the Apostles ceased being days of mandatory fasting and abstinence, the Vigil of Saints Peter and Paul remained as such. The Vigil of Ss. Peter and Paul ceased being a fast day in America by 1842. In Great Britain, Ireland, Australia, and Canada the Vigil of Ss. Peter and Paul remained a day of fasting and abstinence up until the 1917 Code of Canon law.

The Vigil of St. Matthias: An Apostolic Pattern Preserved

The Vigil of St. Matthias offers a particularly clear illustration of the Church’s traditional instinct. Matthias, chosen to replace Judas, was not among the original Twelve during Christ’s earthly ministry, yet his election was surrounded by prayer, discernment, and divine choice. His feast, traditionally kept on February 24 or February 25 in leap years, was preceded by a vigil of fasting and abstinence.

This vigil was remarkable not because of Matthias’s prominence, but because of what it revealed: even a comparatively “quiet” Apostle was honored with penitential preparation. The Church did not reserve vigils only for the most dramatic figures. Apostolic office itself was enough to warrant watchfulness.

The Vigil of St. Matthias also reinforced a crucial ecclesiological truth. Apostolic succession is not self-generated. It arises from prayer, sacrifice, and divine action. By fasting before his feast, the faithful were reminded that the authority of the Apostles—and of their successors—rests not on human merit but on God’s choice, ratified through suffering.

Uniform Discipline, Universal Meaning

What made the apostolic vigils so powerful was their universality. They were not local customs or monastic observances. They appeared consistently across missals, devotional manuals, and episcopal regulations. Lay Catholics knew them. Families structured their meals around them. Clergy preached on them. They were part of the lived Catholic experience.

This universality conveyed an implicit lesson: the Apostles belong to the whole Church, and the Church prepares for them together. The calendar formed a shared spiritual language in which fasting before apostolic feasts was simply assumed, much as fasting before Christmas or Easter once was.

By the early twentieth century, the discipline had already been softened in some places, yet the vigils remained listed and recognized. Their final liturgical removal in the 1955 reforms marked the end of an unbroken tradition stretching back many centuries. By the time of the 1962 Missal, only the Vigil of St. Peter and Paul remained on the calendar.[1]

The Apostles as Holy Days of Obligation

This apostolic watchfulness was reinforced for centuries by the Church’s treatment of the Apostles’ feasts as Holy Days of Obligation on the universal calendar. Prior to the sweeping reductions of the early twentieth century, the feasts of all the Apostles were binding feast days for the faithful. As Father Francis X. Weiser notes, the feasts of the Apostles were raised to public holidays as early as 932 AD, a recognition of their foundational role in the life of the Church.

By the time of Pope Urban VIII’s reform in 1642, the universal calendar included thirty-six Holy Days of Obligation, among them every apostolic feast: St. Andrew, St. James, St. John, St. Thomas, Sts. Philip and James, St. Bartholomew, St. Matthew, Sts. Simon and Jude, and St. Matthias, alongside Sts. Peter and Paul. When Pope St. Pius X reduced the number of obligatory feasts in 1911—from thirty-six to eight—and when the 1917 Code of Canon Law later fixed the number at ten, the feasts of the Apostles were among those removed from obligatory observance, though in practice most of them were not kept as days of obligation in most dioceses.

Although prudentially motivated, this reduction had lasting catechetical consequences. The gradual disappearance of apostolic feasts as days of obligation diminished their prominence in the lived faith of ordinary Catholics, contributing to a widespread unfamiliarity with the Apostles themselves. The older calendar had ensured that the faithful knew the Apostles by praying, fasting, resting, and worshiping on their feast days; the modern calendar remembers them, but no longer requires the same level of attentiveness or reverence.

The Suppression of the Apostolic Vigils

The liturgical reforms of the mid-twentieth century, particularly those initiated under Pope Pius XII and expanded under Pope John XXIII, eliminated nearly all. The stated goal was simplification. In practice, this meant the systematic removal of preparatory fasts that had once shaped Catholic life.

The vigils of the Apostles disappeared quietly. No theological refutation was offered. No argument was made that fasting, abstinence, or watchful prayer before apostolic feasts was harmful or erroneous. The discipline was simply judged unnecessary.

Yet this judgment reflected a profound shift. The older calendar assumed that human nature requires external discipline in order to receive spiritual goods fruitfully. The newer approach increasingly treated such discipline as optional, burdensome, or outdated. In removing the vigils, the calendar ceased to teach bodily preparation as a normal part of honoring the Apostles.

What Was Lost

The loss of the apostolic vigils weakened several interrelated truths.

First, it diminished the Church’s emphasis on penance as preparation, not merely as punishment for sin. Fasting before apostolic feasts was not about guilt; it was about readiness.

Second, it obscured the suffering of the Apostles themselves. Without vigils, their feasts risk becoming honorary commemorations rather than reminders of martyrdom, persecution, and sacrifice.

Third, it weakened the connection between apostolic authority and asceticism. The calendar no longer formed the faithful to associate leadership in the Church with self-denial and watchfulness.

Finally, it impoverished domestic Catholic life. Vigils once shaped family meals, parish schedules, and personal devotion. Their removal flattened the rhythm of sacred time, making feast days appear abruptly rather than emerging organically from preparation.

Apostolic Vigils and the Communion of Saints

At a deeper level, the apostolic vigils expressed the Church’s belief that the Apostles remain active members of the Mystical Body. To fast before their feasts was to acknowledge that they still intercede, still govern, still guard the Church. The vigil was an act of humility before living authorities in heaven.

In this sense, the loss of these vigils parallels the loss of duplicate feasts and apparitions. The calendar shifted away from relational memory toward efficient commemoration. The Apostles were remembered, but no longer approached with the same reverence, patience, and preparation.

Recovering Apostolic Watchfulness Today

Although no longer required by law, nothing prevents Catholics today from recovering the spirit of the apostolic vigils. Fasting or abstaining on the eves of apostolic feasts, praying the traditional collects, or simply cultivating recollection on those days reconnects the faithful to a deeper liturgical inheritance.

Such practices are not antiquarian. They are profoundly contemporary in a Church struggling to recover seriousness, discipline, and reverence. The Apostles were not men of ease. They were watchers, sufferers, and witnesses. The calendar once trained the faithful to meet them on those terms.

Conclusion

The vigils of the Apostles embodied a principle that runs through the entire pre-1955 Roman Missal: great realities require preparation. Apostolic authority, martyrdom, and sanctity are not grasped casually. They are approached through watchfulness, fasting, and humility.

In losing these vigils, the Church did not lose doctrine, but she did lose a teacher. The calendar no longer instructed the faithful to pause, to fast, and to watch before honoring the foundations of the Church. To recover the vigils of the Apostles is therefore to recover a vision of Catholic life that is sober, disciplined, and deeply biblical—a vision in which the Church waits before she rejoices, and prepares before she celebrates.

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[1] While the Vigils of the other Apostles were removed by Pope Pius XII in 1955, the Vigil of Ss. Peter and Paul remained and is preserved in the 1962 Missal. At the time of the formation of the Tridentine Calendar, the Vigil of Ss. Peter and Paul was commemorated on June 28 as it fell on the Feast of St. Leo II. In 1921, the Feast of St. Leo II was moved to July 3rd, and St. Irenaeus was added to the Universal Calendar on June 28; the Vigil of Ss. Peter and Paul remained commemorated. However, in 1960, St. Irenaeus was moved to July 3rd, and St. Leo II disappeared from the Calendar to free up the 28th entirely for the Vigil. Sadly, the vigil disappeared altogether in the Novus Ordo 1969 Calendar. Therefore, how the Vigil is celebrated or commemorated on June 28 will depend on the year of the Missal. More information on this is stated here.