As everyone knows, I have been distressed beyond distress ever since the bishops with no real good reason, other than novelty, decided to turn Sunday into a Thursday when they transferred Ascension Thursday to the following Sunday and thus created out of thin air the miracle of making a Sunday, Thursday and Ascension Thursday at that. But there are two miracles involved, not only changing Sunday into Thursday but maintaining the number of days from the Resurrection to the Ascension, which of course any lay person knows, is 40 days. So even though it is three days later it is still 40 days after the resurrection. Only bishops could perform this kind of miracle.
But all sarcasm aside, why in the Name of God and all that is Holy don't our bishops understand the importance of making days during the week into a "Sunday" by maintaining Holy Days of Obligation and adding more to them? The sanctification of time is important in these secular times.
When I was in a public high school, we Catholic kids had permission to arrive at school later in the day because of our obligation to attend a holy day of obligation Mass. It was always cool to arrive late and tell the teacher I had to go to Mass and I had permission to come late.
Thus, my suggestion to our esteemed bishops is to add extra holy days of obligation on the proper day:
Epiphany, January 6!
Annunciation, March 25
Ascension Thursday
Saint Joseph, Spouse of the Blessed Virgin Mary, March 19
Assumption, August 15
All Saints, November 1
Immaculate Conception, December 8
Any others?
4 comments:
Heck, I am still celebrating Christmastide proper which ends with the octave of Epiphany, by my old education. And then it is the Christmas Cycle past that to Septuagisima/Season of Lent, under whatever other locally used phrase you might have for that Cycle time.
The current US calendar has always confused the heck out of me, am talking the actual calendars as used by many households still.
Where they had to invent names for days on the calendar since they had no names before for the additional weekdays in a season prior now added until a following Sunday, while other days simply vaporized when a season formerly ended on a weekday, and where 40 days and 12 days are no longer 40 and 12, and Christmas ends at Epiphany, except it doesn't, but instead has some strange 1st/2nd/3rd day after Epiphany on a calendar then abruptly ending and Christmas fizzles soundlessly to an end.
Utterly destroying suchlike the actual 12 days of Christmas even though the song still known to most everybody in the English speaking world. It is confusing even to discuss without head being turned inside out, where 12 is no longer 12 and 40 days not 40 days, and crucial events celebrated in the life of Jesus no longer match the time spans listed in holy scripture.
Just more cutting us off at the root of our Faith and then scratching head and wondering why the faith of the faithful in the Faith seems to be dying. When nothing matches up or makes sense anymore, what do you expect, duh?
back to that matching up of scripture and tradition, it effects greatly any ability to explain the Faith now to others.
It can all start off grand, how Holy Church has preserved Apostolic teachings for 2000yrs and ancient worship and feasts for 1000-1500yrs and some practices to within the lives of those who knew the Apostles, and even the Apostles themselves, and folk looking for the real deal are fascinated....
But then, when they start looking, they start finding out so much going on today which does not match up, and often the very first thing they spot is the calendar while trying to follow it, and older devotional and spiritual and educational classics and how not much matches what was going on 50-500yrs ago, dates all wrong, practices utterly ignored...
Leaving the explainer trying to make excuses as to all the changes, as the person sees the Church is NOT that constant bulwark as advertised, and the seekers pretty much shut down right there.
And frankly, I get tired of trying to make the excuses, too. So much is actually inexcusable except with only the most finessed of semantics, where a robust and true Faith is apparent, logical, and quite simple.
The Faith I have no trouble explaining, but am to the point as for explaining the Church as it is today and what is going on with it?.....when it does not know, itself? ....pffft....
A couple of things.
When I was growing up, it took a while to get the difference between the Ascension and the Assumption. I think how will kids and people today learn these theological realities? One year you have to go. The next year you don't. The next year you might. It is all so confusing.
I and my siblings were in public school in the early years of grade school. We and others would come to school late as well (with permission). We just loved doing that and explaining why and what we were observing.
Less and less people observe Christmas on the proper day.Many observe the Vigil, but not the day itself. I remember as a child, our pastor, reminding us every year, that the word Christmas means the Mass of Christ. Some parishes, even large ones, have only one mass on Christmas Day.
Ascension is still on Thursday in the Northeast and in Nebraska.
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