I Shall Oblige

What is a holy day of obligation? USCCB can give you an answer, and let me pitch in, too.

Holy days of obligations are special feasts that do not fall on Sundays that we are called to celebrate together. Sometimes it can be frustrating to have to get back to Mass a second time during the week, especially when it can be hard to get there on Sundays in the first place. Some of these special feasts have been translated to Sundays - Ascension and Epiphany sometimes - but this is less than ideal.

We go to these "extra" Masses to celebrate and reflect upon mysteries of our faith directly. Holy days of obligation allow the cycle of Sunday readings to continue uninterrupted and let us make a steady journey through the Scripture laid out for us by the carefully planned lectionary. It also gives specific space to these mysteries - All Saints, Immaculate Conception, etc. - to be considered and prayed over on their own.

Some of these causes for celebration do not come specifically from particular Scriptural narratives but from the understanding of faith that our Tradition affords us, so due reflection on them calls for a greater space than simply readings. Priests' homilies, the prayers of the Mass, and the petitions and personal prayers that follow help us focus on these great mysteries and reflect on the way they can especially illuminate our faith.

Another neat layer here is that the dating of many feasts in the Church come from Tradition that is based on careful considerations and deliberations, and, frankly, fascinating. The dating of Christmas and Easter in the early Church was a long, winding road (forgive the Wikipedia link); the 40 days of Easter before Ascension and 50 days before Pentecost draw milestones from Resurrection narratives, though Pentecost is also based in part on a pre-existing Jewish tradition; the dating of John the Baptist's and Jesus' feasts derive in part from reckoning the perfection of Jesus' life as a "perfect" 9-month pregnancy and John's gestation as one day askew - his birth is celebrated as being June 24, not June 25, though his mother is described as being in her sixth month when Mary visits with Jesus in her womb (one author's more thorough history here).

All are called to celebrate the Eucharist each Sunday, to do this in memory of Christ, as he asked - "this" meaning not just to receive Eucharist, but come together as a community, to be taken, blessed, broken, and shared, to become what we receive, to be sent forth to glorify God by our lives. However, not everyone is called to do this on a daily basis, to be a daily-Mass-goer.

The way to pray and worship for most rests, as usual, in the middle ground. You don't need to go every day, but you can't just go when you feel like it. Sundays are our memorialization of Christ's resurrection, in which we as baptized Christians celebrate the life, death, and rising of Jesus, in whose life, death, and rising we share. So we should all be doing that together and reveling communally in the awesomeness of all that.

While Sunday Eucharist fuels the heartbeat of our sacramental lives of faith, holy days add special depth. Sundays are like visits to your general physician who will give you the comprehensive check-up and can capably tend to any of your maladies; holy days are like specialists who can tend to specific ailings and parts of you.

Holy days call us to reflection upon more specific people and events - Mary, Mother of God, the Ascension of Christ, the communion of saints, the Immaculate Conception... Holy days give us the occasion, and with the help of the Mass, its prayers and readings, its priest and homily, and the community we share, the means by which we can reflect on the mysteries of faith.