UVM News and Readings: October 2026

FSSP All Souls Novena

For the repose of the souls of the family members and friends of the TLM community in Maine, UVM has enrolled in the FSSP All Souls Novena with a $50 gift.

Psalterium Institute Compline by Candlelight

On Saturday, October 17, at 7:00 PM, please join The Psalterium Institute for an evening of ancient prayer and music: the Church’s night office, Compline, sung by candlelight in the Lewiston Basilica of Saints Peter & Paul. The service will feature Gregorian chant, sacred choral works performed by the Institute’s chamber choir, brief readings, prayers, and sustained silence — a deliberate space for reflection, rest, and renewal.

Readings on The Traditional Latin Mass

The Aspersion of Holy Water (Asperges Me)

The rite of the aspersion of holy water takes place on Sundays, because it recalls baptism and was originally attached to Easter Sunday, the Sunday recalled by every Sunday, the day of the Lord. . .

The aspersion itself, which follows when the ministers have entered the church, is really a combination of blessing and exorcism, almost a domestic rite. It resembles the aspersions seen in monasteries when a tour was made of the cloister, or the individual cells were visited. The final prayer of this ceremony, Exaudi nos, Domine...(Hear us, O holy Lord, almighty Father, eternal God: and vouchsafe to send thy holy angel from heaven, to guard, cherish, protect, visit, and defend all that dwell in this house), which is that of the blessing prescribed by the Ritual when the priest blesses a house as he enters it to carry out a ceremony, refers to the habitaculum, the house where one lives, for which one requests a visit from the Angel of God. . .

That is the real effect of the blessed and exorcised water, virtually the same as that of baptismal water, and of the water with which we mark ourselves on entering the church. There is a link between this water and the Blood of Christ, since immersion in the waters of baptism represents in reality immersion in the cistern of Christ’s propitiatory Blood: “For if the blood of goats and of oxen, and the ashes of an heifer being sprinkled, sanctify such as are defiled, to the cleansing of the flesh: How much more shall the blood of Christ, who by the Holy Ghost offered himself unspotted unto God, cleanse our conscience from dead works, to serve the living God?” (Heb 9:13–14). After the aspersion, the priest puts aside the heavenly cope and clothes himself in the chasuble that represents the clothing of Jesus Christ, both in his state of glory in heaven and in his sacramental and unbloody state of weakness on the altar.

A Forest of Symbols: The Traditional Mass and Its Meaning, by Fr. Claude Barthe

The Liturgical Year

From The Liturgical Year, Very Rev. Dom Prosper Guéranger Abbot of Solesmes, 1833-1875

October 13 – Saint Edward the Confessor, King of England

This glorious saint was like a beautiful lily, crowning the ancient branch of the kings of Wessex. The times had progressed since that sixth century, when the pagan Cerdic and other pirate chiefs from the North Sea scattered with ruins the island of saints. Having accomplished their mission of wrath, the Anglo-Saxons became instruments of grace to the land they had conquered. Evangelized by Rome, even as the Britons they had just chastised, they remembered, better than the latter, whence their salvation had come; a spring-tide blossoming of sanctity showed the pleasure God took once more in Albion, for the constant fidelity of the princes and people of the heptarchy towards the See of Peter. In the year of our Lord 800, Egbert, a descendant of Cerdic, had gone on pilgrimage to Rome, when a deputation from the West Saxons offered him the crown, beside the tomb of the Prince of the apostles, at whose feet Charlemagne, at that very time, was restoring the empire. As Egbert united under one scepter the power of the seven kingdoms, so Saint Edward, his last descendant, represents today in his own person the glorious holiness of them all.

Nephew to St. Edward the Martyr, our holy king is known to God and man by the beautiful title of the Confessor. The Church, in her account of his life, sets forth more particularly the virtues which won him so glorious an appellation; but we must remember moreover that his reign of twenty-four years was one of the happiest England has ever known. Alfred the Great had no more illustrious imitator. The Danes, so long masters, now entirely subjugated within the kingdom, and without, held at bay by the noble attitude of the prince; Macbeth, the usurper of the Scotch throne, vanquished in a campaign that Shakespeare has immortalized; St. Edward’s Laws, which remain to this day the basis of the British constitution; the saint’s munificence towards all noble enterprises, while at the same time he diminished the taxes: all this proves with sufficient clearness, that the sweetness of virtue, which made him the intimate friend of St. John the beloved disciple, is not incompatible with the greatness of a monarch.

Edward, surnamed the Confessor, nephew to St. Edward king and martyr, was the last king of the Anglo-Saxon race. Our Lord had revealed that he would one day be king, to a holy man named Brithwald. When Edward was ten years old, the Danes, who were devastating England, sought his life; he was therefore obliged to go into exile, to the court of his uncle the duke of Normandy. Amid the vices and temptations of the Norman court, he grew up pure and innocent, a subject of admiration to all. His pious devotion towards God and holy things was most remarkable. He was of a very gentle disposition, and so great a stranger to ambition that he was wont to say he would rather forego the kingdom than take possession of it by violence and bloodshed.

On the death of the tyrants who had murdered his brothers and seized their kingdom, he was recalled to his country, and ascended the throne to the greatest satisfaction and joy of all his subjects. He then applied himself to remove all traces of the havoc wrought by the enemy. To begin at the sanctuary, he built many churches, and restored others, endowing them with rents and privileges; for he was very anxious to see religion, which had been neglected, flourishing again. All writers assert that, though compelled by his nobles to marry, both he and his bride preserved their virginity intact. Such were his love of Christ and his faith, that he was one day permitted to see our Lord in the Mass, shining with heavenly light and smiling upon him. His lavish charity won him the name of the father of orphans and of the poor; and he was never so happy as when he had exhausted the royal treasury on their behalf.

October 24 – Saint Raphael, Archangel

The approach of the great solemnity, which will soon be shedding upon us all the splendors of heaven, seems to inspire the Church with a profound recollection. Except for the homage she must needs pay, on their own date, to the glorious Apostles Simon and Jude, only a few Feasts of simple rite break the silence of these last days of October. Our souls must be in conformity with the dispositions of our common Mother. It will not, however, be out of keeping to give a thought to the great Archangel, honored today by many particular churches.

The ministry fulfilled in our regard by the heavenly spirits is admirably set forth in the graceful scenes depicted in the history of Tobias. Rehearsing the good services of the guide and friend, whom he still called his brother Azarias, the younger Tobias said to his father: Father, what wages shall we give him? or what can be worthy of his benefits? He conducted me and brought me safe again, he received the money of Gabelus, he caused me to have my wife, and he chased from her the evil spirit, he gave joy to her parents, myself he delivered from being devoured by the fish, thee also he hath made to see the light of heaven, and we are filled with all good things through him. (Tobit 12:2-3)

And when father and son endeavored, after the fashion of men, to return thanks to him who had rendered them such good service, the Angel discovered himself to them, in order to refer their gratitude to their supreme Benefactor. Bless ye the God of heaven, give glory to him in the sight of all that live, because he hath shewn his mercy to you … When thou didst pray with tears, and didst bury the dead … I offered thy prayer to the Lord. And because wast acceptable to God, it was necessary that temptation should prove thee. And now the Lord hath sent me to heal thee, and to deliver Sara thy son’s wife from the devil. For I am the Angel Raphael, one of the seven, who stand before the Lord … Peace be to you, fear not; … bless ye him and sing praises to him. (Tobit 12:6-18)

We too will celebrate the blessings of heaven. For as surely as Tobias beheld with his bodily eyes the Archangel Raphael, we know by faith that the Angel of the Lord accompanies us from the cradle to the tomb. Let us have the same trustful confidence in him. Then, along the path of life, more beset with perils than the road to the country of the Medes, we shall be in perfect safety; all that happens to us will be for the best, because prepared by our Lord; and as though we were already in heaven, our Angel will cause us to shed blessings upon all around us.