According to the current Code of Canon Law:
A person who assists at a Mass celebrated anywhere in a Catholic rite either on the feast day itself or in the evening of the preceding day satisfies the obligation of participating in the Mass (can. 1248 §1).
Sunday is a holy day of obligation (can. 1246 §1), and as a result, you can fulfill your Sunday obligation either by going to Mass during the 24 hours of Sunday or on Saturday evening.
(The same principle applies to holy days of obligation that fall on other days of the week—though we won’t go into that here).
Masses celebrated on the evening of the preceding day are commonly called “vigil Masses,” though this isn’t their official name.
Instead, they are formally known as “anticipated” Masses since they use the same readings as the following day rather than special readings designed for a vigil service.
A Proposed Explanation
Many people want to know why this is permitted. Why can we fulfill our Sunday obligation by going to Mass on Saturday evening?
A common proposal is that it is because—in the Jewish timekeeping system—the day begins at sunset, and so there is a sense in which Sunday begins on Saturday evening.
Catholics are thus allowed to fulfill their Sunday obligation at this time in honor of Christianity’s Jewish heritage.
It’s a plausible explanation, but is it true?
Here are three problems with it.
Jewish Practice Was Inconsistent
The first problem is that Jewish reckoning of when the day begins was inconsistent.
There are four logical points during the day where it makes sense to start a new day:
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- Sunrise
- Sunset
- Midnight
- Midday (i.e., noon)
Different cultures have used various points for their day divisions. In the Handbook of Biblical Chronology (2nd ed.), Jack Finegan writes:
11. In ancient Egypt the day probably began at dawn, in ancient Mesopotamia it began in the evening.
Among the Greeks the day was reckoned from sunset to sunset, while the Romans already began the day in the “modern” fashion at midnight.
Summing up the different reckonings among different people in his time Pliny [the Elder] wrote:
The Babylonians count the period between two sunrises, the Athenians that between two sunsets, the Umbrians from midday to midday, the common people everywhere from dawn to dark, the Roman priests and the authorities who fixed the official day, and also the Egyptians and Hipparchus, the period from midnight to midnight [Natural History 2.79.188].
But what about the Israelites? When did they reckon the day as starting? The answer is that it varied. Finegan continues:
12. In the Old Testament the earlier practice seems to have been to consider that the day began in the morning.
In Gen 19:34, for example, the “morrow” (asv) or “next day” (rsv) clearly begins with the morning after the preceding night.
The later practice was to count the day as beginning in the evening.
So in the Old Testament it looks like the early practice was to reckon the day as beginning at sunrise, but the later practice seems to have been to reckon it as beginning at sunset.
And since the New Testament is later than the Old Testament, that means that—in Jesus’ day—the day began at sunset, right?
Well . . .
13. In the New Testament in the Synoptic Gospels and Acts the day seems usually to be considered as beginning in the morning.
Mark 11:11 states that Jesus entered Jerusalem, went into the temple, and when he had looked at everything, since it was “now eventide” (asv) or “already late” (rsv), went out to Bethany with the twelve; verse 12 continues the narrative and tells that on the “morrow” (asv) or the “following day” (rsv) they came back to the city.
It is evident that the new day has begun with the morning following the preceding evening.
Likewise Matt 28:1; Mark 16:1f., and Luke 23:56–24:1 all picture the first day of the week beginning with the dawn following the preceding Sabbath.
And Acts 4:3, for an example in that book, tells how Peter and John were put in custody “until the morrow, for it was already evening,” thus clearly indicating that the new day would begin the next morning.
It has been suggested that this counting of the day as beginning with the morning is a continuation of the earlier Old Testament practice already described (§12), and that this usage was maintained in parts of Galilee and was followed by Jesus and the early disciples, which would account for its appearing so frequently in the Synoptic Gospels and Acts.
But is there no trace in the Synoptic Gospels and Acts of the idea of the day beginning at sunset? And what about the Gospel of John? Finegan continues:
On the other hand, even though the common reckoning in the Synoptic Gospels is from the morning, in Mark 1:32 = Luke 4:40, the later Old Testament (§12) and Jewish usage of counting the one day as ending and the next as beginning at sunset is plainly reflected in the fact that the people of Capernaum were free to bring the sick to Jesus at sunset when the Sabbath came to an end.
As for the Fourth Gospel, in John 20:1 Mary Magdalene comes to the tomb while it is still dark, yet it is already “on the first day of the week.”
This can be explained by supposing that the late Old Testament and Jewish usage is in view, according to which the new day had begun at the preceding sunset, or it can be explained equally well by supposing that John is giving the description in terms of the official Roman day which, as Pliny told us (§11), began at midnight.
In either case, the new day had begun already before the sunrise.
So Jewish practice about when the day began was inconsistent. The Old Testament uses both sunrise and sunset as points for beginning the day, and the New Testament isn’t consistent, either.
The Synoptic Gospels and Acts usually have the day starting with sunrise (though not always), and it isn’t clear (at least from what Finegan writes) whether John is using sunset or midnight.
This is not a strong basis for saying the modern practice of anticipated Masses is simply a continuation of a well-established Jewish practice from the days of Jesus.
However, there’s another problem.
The Practice Was Introduced in the 1960s
The second problem is that anticipated Masses date to the 1960s.
They aren’t something that the Church has been doing for the last 2,000 years—which is what you would expect if they were simply the continuation of an ancient Jewish practice.
Instead, what happened was that in 1964, the Vatican made an announcement (on Vatican Radio) that the faithful could fulfill their Sunday obligation on Saturday evenings in certain churches that had been designated for this purpose by the local bishop.
The permission applied only to Sundays (not other holy days of obligation), and it did not apply to all locations where Mass was being celebrated—only to specially designated churches.
Most fundamentally, it was only at the discretion of the local bishop—not part of the Church’s universal law.
That changed in 1983 with the release of the revised Code of Canon Law, which removed these restrictions and allowed the faithful to fulfill their Mass obligation on the preceding evening for Sundays and other holy days and anywhere a Mass is being celebrated, as long as it is “in a Catholic rite.”
(This means, among other things, that the Mass doesn’t have to use the next day’s readings, as these will vary between rites; e.g., the Chaldean rite uses a different lectionary than the Roman rite).
So this is not an immemorial practice. It was introduced to the universal Church—at the bishop’s discretion—in the 1960s and then broadened in 1983. It thus isn’t simply a continuation of an ancient Jewish practice.
Still, it’s possible that—in the 1960s zeal for restoring ancient liturgical uses—that the Vatican decided to restore an older practice that had fallen into disuse.
So is that what they did?
It’s Not What They Said
The third problem with the idea is that it’s just not what the Vatican said when they introduced the practice.
On June 12, 1964, Vatican Radio announced:
The faithful can also satisfy the Sunday precept of holy Mass by assisting at the celebration of the divine service in the afternoon of Saturday in churches specifically designated by the local ecclesiastical authority.
The Sacred Congregation of the Council, at the request of local Ordinaries [i.e., bishops], granted the faculty to celebrate holy Mass after first Vespers on Saturday together with the valid discharge of the Sunday precept.
It is left to the prudent judgment of the Ordinaries to indicate the times, localities, and churches which will enjoy this faculty as has already been done in some dioceses of Italy, Switzerland, and Argentina (n. This concession has also been recently granted to Catholics in Israel where, as is known, Sunday is considered a working day).
Among the considerations which have prompted this concession at the present time are:
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- the enormous and ever-increasing frequency of weekend trips and of skiing excursions for whose patronizers the schedules of departure and return make it at least difficult to fulfill the Sunday precept;
- the situation in which numerous mountain villagers find themselves where, during the long periods of isolation brought about by accumulation of snow, part of the inhabitants would not be able to get to church and can at present have contact with the priest on Saturday;
- the serious dearth of clergy in some countries in which at present the priest by being able to celebrate four Sunday Masses including that on Saturday, will meet the greater number of the faithful [Canon Law Digest 6:670-671].
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So the Vatican indicated that the reasons anticipated Masses were introduced included modern weekend travel, weather conditions, and a shortage of priests in some countries.
None of these considerations were restoring an ancient Jewish practice.
However, Vatican Radio did say that the named factors were “among the considerations” leading to the decision. That doesn’t completely rule out that the decision was influenced by an older Jewish practice in some way.
But it would indicate that this either wasn’t a consideration or wasn’t a principal consideration.
Conclusion
In light of these factors, it wouldn’t be responsible to tell people that we can fulfill our Sunday obligations on Saturday evening based on ancient Jewish time reckoning:
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- Ancient Jewish practice was actually mixed, including in the time of Christ
- There was no continuation of the day-begins-at-sunset practice in the Church, and anticipated Masses were only introduced in the 1960s
- When they were introduced, all the named factors leading to the decision were modern, not ancient
