Votive Mass
mass offered for a special intention
In the liturgy of the Catholic Church, a votive Mass (Latin missa votiva) is a Mass offered for a votum, a special intention. Such a Mass does not correspond to the Divine Office for the day on which it is celebrated. Every day in the year has appointed to it a series of canonical hours and (except Good Friday) a Mass corresponding, containing, for instance, the same collect and the same Gospel. On most days, the Mass will correspond to the Office, but on occasion, other Masses may be celebrated. Votive Masses appear in the Roman and Gallican Rites. The Suffrage Mass is a type of votive Mass that is celebrated in favour to some dead people.
History
The principle of the votive Mass is older than its name. Almost at the very origin of the Western liturgies (with their principle of change according to the Calendar) Mass was occasionally offered, apparently with special prayers and lessons, for some particular intention, irrespective of the normal Office of the day. Among the miracles quoted by Augustine of Hippo in his seminal "De civitate Dei contra paganos", XXII, 8, is the story of one Hesperius cured of an evil spirit by a private Mass said in his house with special prayers for him—essentially, a votive Mass for his cure.
The first sacramentaries contain many examples of what would now be called votive Masses.
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This entry incorporates text from “Votive Mass” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.