“Holy Days of Obligation” raise questions of congruency and truancy among Catholics. Some folks resist these Church mandates for Mass attendance as random intrusions on our workaday world. Many merely ask to be reminded whether and why a particular feast is “still a holy day.”
This uncertainty is understandable, although it’s uncomfortably close to our secular culture’s broadly casual approach to holiness on any given day. Church leaders have allowed leeway on the scheduling of solemnities, but we laypeople dare not lose our all-purpose respect for solemnity.
We need concrete dates to aid our efforts toward disciplined discipleship. As French priest Teilhard de Chardin (1881-1955) reportedly said, “We are not human beings having a spiritual experience; we are spiritual beings having a human experience.” Our faith and reason rely on a mindfulness of values, participation in community and communion, and an infrastructure of duties.
An imminent date on the 2024 liturgical calendar—November 1, the Solemnity of All Saints—is a doorway to important insights about the Holy Days of Obligation. We can explore how our plans to attend Mass on that Friday fit together within regular life patterns that nourish us as followers of Jesus and responsible members of society.
Bridge Between the Earthly and the Transcendent
For those inquiring into Catholic thinking on these matters, we’ll build a bridge between the earthly and the transcendent by asking two questions.
- What are some days throughout the year that your family considers obligatory moments for celebration or at least attentive participation?
- What are some secular holidays established by law or tradition, which you typically set aside with particular practices or relived memories?
The first question might yield answers like birthdays and anniversaries, which occur annually on a specific date. This list could also include days we observe on an ad hoc basis: weddings and funerals. Not surprisingly, the list may include holy days too, such as Christmas and Easter Sunday.
The second question will prompt mentions of the Fourth of July and New Year’s Eve. Again, the Venn diagram of social customs will show intersections; we might feel distinctly spiritual ties to Memorial Day, Veterans Day, and Thanksgiving.
In both of these areas, we give ourselves occasional permission to make a holiday a movable feast—if, for example, travels and other exigencies require the family’s big Christmas meal to be moved a day forward or backward or the annual visit to a relative’s grave must occur on a different date. Of course, other important events, joyful or sorrowful, will be penciled in spontaneously.
It’s the thought that counts—in our homes and our hearts. The thought ultimately “counts” when we put it into action. Our calendars, posted officially and customized with our personal notes, set forth the full range of mileposts and reminders, constituting a well-balanced picture of meaning. We can collect in one place the basic actions that represent being a family, a nation, and a Church.
That’s a useful way to link our “homey” obligations to a Christian calendar. It reflects a heavy emphasis on historical consistency and coherence across the years but also ample room for adjustments. These aren’t capricious or random, though they can cause Easter to “arrive late this year” or the Fourth Week of Advent to be truncated.
Holy Days of Obligation, which embrace Mass as the summit of Catholic prayer, illustrate how serious protocols can co-exist with appropriate modifications. Two factors describing these special convocations will end any uneasiness and make us feel right at home.
What are Holy Days of Obligation?
The term “Holy Day of Obligation” applies to every Sunday of the year, as per the Ten Commandments. Catholic Bible translations cite the third Commandment: Keep holy the Sabbath Day.
Theologians embody this in the five “Precepts of the Catholic Church,” which summarize for the faithful “the indispensable minimum in the spirit of prayer and moral effort.” The first precept calls Sunday “the foremost holy day of obligation in the universal Church.” (Catechism of the Catholic Church, paragraph 2142)
The Catechism, in para 2177, expands the explanation. It goes on to list ten additional days for obligatory celebration: Mary, Mother of God (January 1); the Epiphany (January 6); Saint Joseph (March 19); the Apostles Peter and Paul (June 29); Mary’s Assumption into heaven (Aug. 15); All Saints (November 1); Mary’s Immaculate Conception (December 8); Christmas (December 25); Christ’s Ascension into heaven (a Thursday in spring); and the Body and Blood of Christ (“Corpus Christi,” a Thursday in summer).
These memorials concerning Jesus, Mary, and the saints celebrate people and events at the core of the Church’s identity, so they are built into the liturgical calendar.
Holy Days of Obligation in America
Over time, bishops and their nationwide conferences around the world have been permitted to make adjustments. For one thing, as America magazine points out, they can “transfer days of obligation from a weekday date to a Sunday, where appropriate.”
In the United States, bishops have also opted to make feasts (other than Christmas) non-obligatory if they fall on a Saturday or Monday, America explains.
In Hawaii, the days of obligation are limited to Christmas and the Immaculate Conception—this Dec. 8 feast honors Mary, conceived without sin, as the patron saint of the United States—because of “travel issues in these tropical islands,” says America.
We might say our country is an “obligation minimalist,” to use the magazine’s phrase.
The bottom line for America is that 2024 brings only three distinct Holy Days of Obligation—the Assumption, All Saints, and Christmas. (Several clusters of dioceses chose to celebrate the Ascension with a Mass obligation on May 9.)
Teaching Holy Days of Obligation
What about the patronal day of December 8? America points out that it falls on a Sunday this year, and Sundays in Advent take priority over feast days as a liturgical protocol. Hence, the nation’s bishops have moved the Immaculate Conception Day to Monday and made it non-obligatory.
Let’s face it: Such shifting is not unique to liturgical planners; these are the adjustments we see in families—and in our country, where various major holidays are tweaked to create three-day weekends.
Again, it’s the teaching that counts; certain feasts and their meanings consistently stand out for their crucial relevance to our paths toward eternal life, regardless of how or when we celebrate them. Families and communities of all sizes, including religious communities, are wise to preserve their history and understandings “on the books” in this way.
We’re especially fortunate that All Saints Day, whose meaning led to All Hallows Eve (Halloween), remains as an opportunity for Mass recovery from the materialism and secular messaging increasingly rampant on October 31.
Catechetical Discussion About Holy Days of Obligation
The biggest takeaway from any catechetical discussion about Holy Days of Obligation harkens back to the word “hallows.” This call to “hallow” aspects of our lives—to make and keep them holy, to apply the principle of hallowing God’s name, which we assert in the Lord’s Prayer—is an excellent lesson to spread ad infinitum.
All Saints Day points us to the Apostle’s Creed, in which we affirm belief in “the communion of saints.” That’s a good name for the Church as Christ’s mystical body, consisting of all the faithful people of God, on earth and beyond, whose lives are joined with Jesus in an intercessory family that prays together and stays together.
“Since all the faithful form one body, the good of each is communicated to the others,” says the Catechism in paragraph 947.
We’re still working on our own sainthood. Thank God we can find amid the Church’s panoply of canonized, recognized saints—and its assortment of holy days—particular role models or patrons with special inspiration for us. That helps us make our best connections to the family, nation, and world, feeling “much obliged” to give each other the gift of alertly reliving what’s really important.
We can be orderly and spontaneous in honoring our “homey” days of solidarity. Meanwhile, the Christian calendar is at hand to hallow our secular routines, inviting God’s family into a year-round habit: making dates with holiness.
