UVM News and Readings: November 2026
Psalterium Institute - Vespers for the Dead
Saturday, November 7, 6:00 PM: Lower Chapel, Basilica of Ss. Peter & Paul, Lewiston
Every November the Church turns her heart toward those who have gone before us, marked with the sign of faith. On Saturday, November 7, the Psalterium Institute invites you to join in that prayer through Vespers from the Office of the Dead.
For centuries, monks, nuns, clergy, and faithful have sung the psalms at the close of day in the Divine Office, the Church's ancient rhythm of prayer that sanctifies the hours. The Office of the Dead is one of its most moving treasures. Its psalms move from sorrow to hope, from the depths of De profundis to quiet trust in the mercy of God. This evening's liturgy will feature music that has been used during office for centuries: the Church's own voice of prayer.
Alongside the chant, the Psalterium choir will offer sacred choral music from several eras, chosen for reflection and meditation. Throughout the evening there will be ample silence, room to rest, to listen, and to pray for your own beloved dead.
Readings on The Traditional Latin Mass
The Confession of the Ministers
At the start of these prayers of confession, the priest and his ministers greet the altar again and then mark themselves with a first sign of the cross. This is of great importance, since right from the beginning it identifies the priest sacrificing in persona Christi with the holy victim, the same Christ. The sign of the cross, a summary of faith in Christ, is moreover the most specific cultic symbol, unlike other gestures known also from the usage of the courts of Late Antiquity, like processions and censings. One can surely make the same observation regarding the liturgical kiss of peace on the cheek or on the shoulder, a sign of the virtue of charity that sums up all Christian life.
The sign of the cross is followed by the psalm Judica me (Ps 42), with the antiphon Introibo ad altare Dei (I will go in to the altar of God), which is verse 4 of the same psalm, explaining the choice of this text for the initial moment of the celebration. The Confiteor that follows the psalm, the principal act in this preparation by the ministers, is one among numerous similar formulations found in the old missals. Its recital reminds us of the growth in the practice of repeated confession between the end of Late Antiquity and the start of the High Middle Ages. St Ambrose (c. 339–397), bishop of Milan, says that the psalm Introibo... ad Deum qui laetificat juventutem meam (I will go... unto God, who giveth joy to my youth), was used for the passage of the newly baptized from the baptistery to the altar. Thus the ministers, as they approach the altar, express their wish to recover the baptismal purity of spiritual children.
The totality of these penitential gestures and prayers also recalls the abasement of Christ, who “bowed the heavens, and came down” (Ps 17: 9) and emptied himself in taking the form of a servant (Phil 2: 7).”
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
November 17 – Saint Gregory Thaumaturgus, Bishop and Confessor
Moses instructed in all the wisdom of the Egyptians, mighty in his words and in his deeds, (Acts 7:22) retired into the desert: Gregory, adorned with the best gifts of birth and nature, brilliant in rhetoric, rich in every science, hid himself from men in the flower of his youth, and hastened to offer to God in solitude the holocaust best pleasing to the Lord. Each was the hope of his race; yet each turned away to lose himself in the contemplation of heavenly mysteries. Meanwhile, the yoke of Pharaoh lay heavy upon Israel; meanwhile, souls were perishing, whom one of Gregory’s burning words might have snatched from the empire of idolatry: was not such flight, then, desertion?
Is it for man to proclaim himself a savior, when Jesus did not arrogate that title to himself? And when evil was rife all around, did the Carpenter of Nazareth do wrong to remain in the shade for thirty years previous to his short period of ministry? O ye teachers of our excited, fevered times, who dream of a new hierarchy among the virtues, and understand divine charity far otherwise than did our fathers: not those are of the race of Israel’s saviors whose ideas concerning social good differ from those of the world’s Redeemer.
Gregory, like Moses, was of that blessed race. His friends and enemies agreed in saying that he resembled the Hebrew legislator in the excellence of his virtue, and in the splendor of the prodigies wrought by his word. (Basil, De Spiritu Sancto 29) Both were actuated by the desire of knowing God, and manifesting him to the men they were called to lead: the fullness of doctrine is the gift most necessary to the guides of the people, and their want of it the greatest penury. I am who am was the answer to Moses’ inquiry; and this sublime formula, confided to him from the midst of the burning bush, authenticated the mission which called him forth from the desert. When Gregory was commanded by God to go out in to the world, the blessed Virgin, of whom the burning bush was a figure, appeared before his dazzled eyes in the dark night when he was praying for light. And St. John, following the Mother of God, let fall from his lips this other formula completing the former for the disciples of the Law of love:
“One only God, Father of the living Word, of that substantial and mighty Wisdom who is the eternal expression of himself; the perfect principle of the only and perfect Son begotten by him. One only Lord, sole-begotten of the Only one; God of God, efficacious Word, Wisdom embracing and containing the world, creative power of all creation, true Son of a true Father. One only Holy Spirit, holding of God his divine existence, revealed to men by the Son of whom he is the perfect likeness, life and life-giving, holy and imparting holiness. The perfect Trinity, immutable, inseparable in glory, in eternity, in dominion.” (Gregory of Nyssa on the life of Gregory Thaumaturgus)
This was the message our Saint was to communicate to his country, the creed that was to bear his name in the Church.
November 21 – The Presentation of the Blessed Virgin Mary
The Presentation is one of the minor solemnities of our Lady, and was inscribed at a comparatively late date on the sacred Cycle; it seems to court the homage of our silent contemplation. The world, unknown to itself, is ruled by the secret prayers of the just; and the Queen of saints, in her hidden mysteries, wrought far more powerfully than the so-called great men, whose noisy achievements fill the annals of the human race.
The East had been celebrating for seven centuries at least (Pitra, Analecta sacra Spicilegio Solesmensi parata i, 275) the entrance of the Mother of God into the temple of Jerusalem , (Menæa, ad. diem hanc.) when in 1372 Gregory XI permitted it to be kept for the first time (Le Blant, No. 542 “Inscriptions chrétiennes de la Gaule”) by the Roman court at Avignon. Mary in return broke the chains of captivity that had bound the Papacy for seventy years; and soon the successor of St. Peter returned to Rome. The feast of the Visitation, as we saw on July 2nd, was in like manner inserted in the Western Calendar to commemorate the reestablishment of unity after the schism which followed the exile.
In 1373, following the example of the Sovereign Pontiff, Charles V of France introduced the feast of the Presentation into the chapel of his palace. By letters dated the 10th of November 1374, to the masters and students of the college of Navarre, he expressed his desire that it should be celebrated throughout the kingdom: “Charles, by the grace of God king of the Franks, to our dearly beloved: health in him who ceases not to honor his Mother on earth. Among other objects of our solicitude, of our daily care and diligent meditation, that which rightly occupies our first thoughts is that the blessed Virgin and most holy Empress be honored by us with very great love, and praised as becomes the veneration due to her. For it is our duty to glorify her; and we, who raise the eyes of our soul to her on high, know what an incomparable protectress she is to all, how powerful a mediatrix with her blessed Son, for those who honor her with a pure heart … Wherefore, wishing to excite our faithful people to solemnize the said feast, as we ourselves propose to do by God’s assistance every year of our life, we send this Office to your devotion, in order to increase your joy.”
November 30 – Saint Andrew, Apostle
This feast is destined each year to terminate with solemnity the cycle which is at its close, or to add luster to the new one which has just begun. It seems, indeed, fitting that the Christian year should begin and end with the cross, which has merited for us each of those years which it has pleased the divine goodness to grant us, and which is to appear, on the last day, in the clouds of heaven, as the seal put on time.
We should remember that Saint Andrew is the Apostle of the Cross. To Peter, Jesus has given firmness of faith; to John, warmth of love; the mission of Andrew is to represent the Cross of his divine Master. Now it is by these three, faith, love, and the Cross, that the Church renders herself worthy of her Spouse. Everything she has or is, bears this threefold character. Hence it is that after the two Apostles just named, there is none who holds such a prominent place in the universal Liturgy as Saint Andrew. .
. . . Andrew, the Apostle, born at Bethsaida, a town of Galilee, was brother of Peter, and disciple of John the Baptist. Having heard his master say, speaking of Christ: Behold the Lamb of God! he followed Jesus, and brought to him his brother also. When, afterwards, he was fishing with his brother in the sea of Galilee, they were both called, before any of the other Apostles, by our Lord, who, passing by, said to them: Come after me; I will make you to be fishers of men. Without delay, they left their nets and followed him. After the passion and resurrection, Andrew went to spread the faith of Christ in Scythia in Europe, which was the province assigned to him; then he travelled through Epirus and Thrace, and by his teaching and miracles converted innumerable souls to Christ. Afterwards, having reached Patræ in Achaia, he persuaded many in that city to embrace the truth of the Gospel. Finding that the Proconsul Ægeas resisted the preaching of the Gospel, he most freely upbraided him for that he, who desired to be considered as a judge of men, should be so far deceived by devils as not to acknowledge Christ to be God, the Judge of all.
Then Ægeas being angry, said: Cease to boast of this Christ, whom such like words as these kept not from being crucified by the Jews. But finding that Andrew continued boldly preaching that Christ had offered himself to be crucified for the salvation of mankind, he interrupts him by an impious speech, and at length exhorts him to look to his own interest and sacrifice to the gods. Andrew answered him: “I offer up every day to almighty God, who is one and true, not the flesh of oxen, nor the blood of goats, but the spotless Lamb upon the altar; of whose flesh the whole multitude of the faithful eat, and the Lamb that is sacrificed, remains whole and living.”