The living liturgy

Living our obligations
ONE of the subjects to be discussed by our Bishops at their next meeting is the questions of the Holydays of Obligation to be kept in this country, as a result of the revision of the Code of Canon Law,
There would seem to be four choices facing them: • To leave the present holydays of obligation as they are;
• 'l'o increase their number to include such days as Mary, the Mother of God (1 January), Immaculate Conception (8 December), and Saint Joseph (19 March);
• To reduce the number; • To transfer some of the existing holy days of obligation to the following Sunday
Perhaps, before looking at these options, it might be worth while considering the basic question — why do we have Holydays of Obligation at all? We know that we have an obligation to attend Sunday Mass, and this obligation has a venerable tradition.
Even in the early days of the Church, when attendance at Sunday Mass was not laid down by law, it was a normal and expected requirement for a Christian to assemble on the Lord's Day with his fellowChristians to celebrate the Resurrection in the best way possible in the Eucharist.
Each of our Sundays is a little Easter and really we should not be obliged to go to Mass by law — we should be eager to go, to join with our brothers and sisters and with Jesus himself in offering this great prayer of thanksgiving and praise to the Father and to offer the sacrifice of the Mass.
At first Christians only celebrated Easter as a special feast day, but gradually other feasts were added, with Christmas appearing in the Calendar sometime in the 4th century. Other feasts of Mary and the
Saints were added.
Eventually the Calendar was formalised and certain feasts were celebrated in a more solemn way. These are known In our present Calendar as Solemnities; lesser feasts are Just called Feasts, and there is
a third type which are known as Memorials which are either obligatory throughout the Church, or optional which may be celebrated at the discretion of the local priest.
Within the solemnities certain days are designated as Holydays of Obligation, when we are bound to go to Mass. These holydays vary from country to country so that it is possible to commit a sin in Scotland by missing Mass on Si Joseph's day, but not in England and Wales.
The idea of making certain days of obligation was to emphasise the importance of these days, but it must be said that if we look at the solemnities In the Calendar and then at the holydays of obligation, the choice would seem to be rather haphazard and it is difficult to discern any particular logic.
One glaring omission, often commented on, is that while we arc obliged to go to Mass on the Solemnity of the Body and Blood of Christ, there Is no such obligation to go to Mass on Holy Thursday, the day on which we celebrate the actual institution of the Eucharist, and the evening which begins the most sacred three days of the Church's year.
There is no obligation on any Catholic to attend the Solemn Liturgy on Good Friday, or indeed the Vigil of Easter, the most sacred night of the year.
Probably the Church considers that any Christian worthy of the name would attend these services if he possibly could, and there is therefore no reason to make them of obligation. Nevertheless, the numbers attending these services is by and large a good deal fewer than those attending the Sunday Masses.
Of course we should he faced with another problem if all our massgoers did attend these services — our church could not cope with the numbers! But wouldn't that be a pleasant problem to solve?
While we can argue about what days should or should not be holydays of obligation, one area of concern is that when they fall on weekdays their celebration is bound to be rushed — In fact celebration is hardly the right word for it.
Only too often, it does appear to be just a case of fulfilling the obligation in the shortest possible time. To counter this, sonic feasts such as Epiphany. Ascension and Corpus Christi have been transferred to the Sunday in some countries so that the parish can really celebrate them properly and it must be admitted that the idea has some attractions.
It does have the unfortunate effect of upsetting the cycle of Sunday readings which is so central to the Lectionary for Mass.
Whatever our bishops do decide, we must hope that they will emphasise above all the need for parishes to celebrate these special days properly, with well-planned and well celebrated celebrations for the whole community.
There are great opportunities to involve the schools in the daytime Masses and In the evening to have at least one solemn celebration. In this way, the days really will be special and we will come to Mass not just because of the obligation but because we wish to celebrate with our fellow Catholics the great events and personalities of our faith.