Feast date: Dec 24

In the first ages, during the night before every feast, a vigil was kept. In the evening the faithful assembled in the place or church where the feast was to be celebrated and prepared themselves by prayers, readings from Holy Writ (now the Offices of Vespers and Matins), and sometimes also by hearing a sermon. On such occasions, as on fast days in general, Mass also was celebrated in the evening, before the Vespers of the following day. Towards morning the people dispersed to the streets and houses near the church, to wait for the solemn services of the forenoon.

 

This vigil was a regular institution of Christian life and was defended and highly recommended by St. Augustine and St. Jerome (see Pleithner, "Aeltere Geschichte des Breviergebetes", pp. 223 sq.). The morning intermission gave rise to grave abuses; the people caroused and danced in the streets and halls around the church (Durandus, "Rat. Div. off.", VI, 7), and St. Jerome speaks of these improprieties (Epist. ad Ripuarium).

 

The Synod of Seligenstadt (1022) mentions vigils on the eves of Christmas, Epiphany, the feast of the Apostles, the Assumption of Mary, St. Laurence, and All Saints, besides the fast of two weeks before the Nativity of St. John. After the eleventh century the fast, Office, and Mass of the nocturnal vigil were transferred to the day before the feast, and even now [1909] the liturgy of the Holy Saturday (vigil of Easter) shows, in all its parts, that originally it was not kept on the morning of Saturday, but during Easter Night. The day before the feast was henceforth called vigil.

 

A similar celebration before the high feast exists also in the Orthodox (Greek) Church, and is called pannychis or hagrypnia. In the Occident only the older feasts have vigils, even the feasts of the first class introduced after the thirteenth century (Corpus Christi, the Sacred Heart) have no vigils, except the Immaculate Conception, which Pope Leo XIII (Nov. 30 1879) singled out for this distinction. The number of vigils in the Roman Calendar besides Holy Saturday is seventeen, viz., the eves of Christmas, the Epiphany, the Ascension, Pentecost, the Immaculate Conception, the Assumption, the eight feasts of the Apostles, St. John the Baptist, St. Laurence, and All Saints. Some dioceses and religiousorders have particular vigils, e.g. the Servites, on the Saturday next before the feast of the Seven Dolours of Our Lady; the Carmelites, on the eve of the feast of Mount Carmel. In the United States only four of theses vigils are feast days: the vigils of Christmas, Pentecost, the Assumption, and All Saints. 

Following his address to the Roman Curia, Pope Leo XIV held a separate audience in which he exchanged Christmas greetings with employees of the Curia, the Vatican City State, the Vicariate of Rome, and their families.

Pope Leo thanked the employees for the work and reflected on the presence of various kinds of laborers in the Nativity scene.

“While Mary and Joseph adore the Child and the shepherds approach in wonder, the other characters go about their daily business,” Pope Leo said. “They seem detached from the central event, but this is not the case: in reality, each one participates in it just as they are, staying in their place and doing what they have to do, their job.”

“I like to think that this can also be true for us in our working days: each of us carries out our task and we praise God precisely by doing it well, with commitment,” the Pope added. “Sometimes we are so caught up in our occupations that we do not think about the Lord or the Church; but the very fact of working with dedication, trying to give our best, and also—for you lay people—with love for your family, for your children, gives glory to the Lord.”

Cardinal Lazarus You Heung-sik, the prefect of the Dicastery for the Clergy, said in an interview that “there can be no future” for the priesthood “without fidelity.”

“Fidelity, especially in the Western world, tends to be considered almost a negative value, something for immobile, static people of another era,” he said. “Nothing could be further from the truth ... Fidelity, in fact, is the very measure of charity.”

The prelate also said that the crisis in priestly vocations is not universal and that, where it exists, it affects marriage and the religious life as well.

“A world that encourages temporary, partial relationships and discourages stable, lasting commitments—let’s say faithful ones—is a world that distracts everyone from seeking their vocation, let alone persevering in it,” he said.

Cardinal Luis Antonio Tagle, one of the two pro-prefects of the Dicastery for Evangelization, recently concluded a visit to the United Arab Emirates, where he celebrated Mass for 30,000 in Dubai (the nation’s largest city) and 18,000 in Abu Dhabi (the nation’s capital).

Islam is the official religion of the Middle Eastern nation of 10 million (map); because of a large migrant population, only 75% of its residents are Muslim, while 13% are Christian (12% Catholic), 6% are Hindu, and 3% are Buddhist. Pope Francis made an apostolic journey there in 2019.

Over 20 million pilgrims have visited the Papal Basilica of Saint Mary Major during the 2025 jubilee year.

The basilica’s archpriest will close the basilica’s holy door for the jubilee year on December 25. The basilica is also the site of the tomb of Pope Francis, who died on April 21 and was interred there on April 26.

In a front-page op-ed in the Vatican newspaper, a prominent Holy Land Franciscan decried Israeli treatment of Palestinian civilians.

Writing in the December 20 edition of L’Osservatore Romano, Father Ibrahim Faltas, OFM, said that “around Gaza and the State of Palestine in the West Bank, physical and visible walls have been built that prevent access to the ‘unauthorized’: humanitarian aid and relatives, volunteers, journalists, and international observers.”

He added:

What or who prevents us from helping desperate human beings who live in an inhumane way? ... Who recognizes as enemies men and women exhausted by the pain of not being able to help those to whom they gave life, children and the elderly, easy targets of violence, human beings without strength and sick? What interest prohibits feeding, healing, and warming with what is available in abundance just a few steps away? Why not give the possibility of life to those who cannot live without the medicines that await them just beyond a crossing or a checkpoint?

Until earlier this year, Father Faltas was the second-ranking official of the Custody of the Holy Land, the Franciscan province there; he is now director of Terra Santa Schools.

The Vatican has announced the dates of the closing of the holy doors that were opened at the beginning of the 2025 jubilee year. The closing dates differ from the dates established by Pope Francis in Spes Non Confundit, his bull of indiction for the jubilee year.

The holy doors in Santa Maria Maggiore, the Lateran Basilica, and the Basilica of St. Paul Outside the Walls were all originally scheduled to be closed on December 28. Under the new schedule, the archpriests of the three basilicas will close the respective holy doors on December 25, December 27, and December 28. Pope Leo XIV will close the holy door in St. Peter’s Basilica on January 6, as originally scheduled.

In addition, Cardinal Baldassare Reina closed the holy door in Rebibbia Prison on December 21. In his bull of indiction, Pope Francis expressed the hope of opening a holy door in a prison, but without establishing opening and closing dates; he opened the holy door in that prison last December 26.

Father Francesco Ielpo, OFM, the custos (Franciscan provincial) of the Holy Land, has issued a Christmas message, “Fragility in Light.”

“The holiest liturgy is celebrated on straw, with the sharp smell of manure, in the caresses of a mother and in the cry of a child,” he said. “Once again, Jesus is not afraid to descend to the lowest point of our humanity, made of violence, sin, pain, tears, and hardship. Once again, He is born and asks us, just as we are, to be a cradle for Him, with the poor straw of our fragility.”

In the 14th century, the Holy See entrusted the care of the holy sites in the Holy Land, including the sites in Bethlehem, to the care of the Franciscan order.

Pope Leo XIV, in a rescript, approved a new statute for the Labor Office of the Apostolic See (ULSA).

Vatican News reported that the new statute has several innovations:

These include a broader Council, with representation for the first time from the Secretariat of State, the Vicariate of Rome, the Vatican’s healthcare services (FAS, Fondo Assistenza Sanitaria), and the Pension Fund; a greater, more “synodal” involvement of the various represented entities; taking on a consultative role to assist Dicasteries, the Governorate, and other bodies in drafting specific regulations and other normative acts; and the requirement of expertise in labor law and Vatican law for lawyers involved in disputes brought by employees and former employees.

Praedicate Evangelium, the 2022 apostolic constitution on the Roman Curia, states that “everything that concerns the performance of the personnel of the Roman Curia and other related issues falls within the competence of the Labor Office of the Apostolic See, whose duty it is to protect and promote the rights of collaborators, according to the principles of the social doctrine of the Church” (Art. 11).

Cardinal Walter Kasper, the 92-year-old president emeritus of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity, has commemorated the 60th anniversary of the closing of the Second Vatican Council with a lengthy essay in the Vatican newspaper.

“Conservative and progressive [interpretations of Vatican II] are not opposites, since, correctly understood, they are part of the same whole,” he wrote. “The hope is that the new Pope, Leo XIV, has recognized the absurdity of this dispute and will say that we must disarm our language: we should not polarize and speak against each other, but dialogue in a conciliatory way. One can only hope that Pope Leo will succeed in this reconciliation.”

“The Second Vatican Council showed that the Church is not a rigid and immobile entity,” he concluded. “The Council set many things in motion. This dynamism is also needed in the new century. The streams of pilgrims who came to Rome in the last months of the Holy Year—more than 30 million people and so many young people from all over the world—showed that the Church, despite all the controversies after the Second Vatican Council and despite the increase in persecution against Christians in the world, has remained alive and young.”