So, I took this morning off today, thinking it was a Holy Day of Obligation. (Apparently it’s not, anymore. We just do Ascension Sunday now…)
We get the kids ready, and Sophie is grumpy (she’s sick, making her more ornery than usual) and Ivan is shrieking non-stop. It turns out he’s screaming because he’s hungry. So hungry in fact that he downs a cup of milk, a container of yogurt, some eggs, and then more milk.
We go drop my car off at the train station so I have an exit strategy when I get to work. I realize I’ve left my phone at home, and we go back, because in this city and with my commute, not having it can be a big problem sometimes. Finally, we get on our way to Mass, which is an hour away (and we have 50 minutes on the clock.)
Ten minutes later, Ivan, who has begun downing more milk, Barfs. Everywhere.
We don’t have a change of clothing, because he never barfs or overfills his diapers. He’s fairly consistent. Sophie is the one who makes messes. But now he’s coated, the car is filling with a dairy-enhanced vomit scent, and I officially give up and turn around.
We call a nearby school that has a TLM on Thursdays, then remember that they also get Holy Days off. We go home, defeated. We aren’t making it to Mass. My wife mentions that there’s a 7:30PM Mass about 15 minutes from home (we can’t do the one downtown in DC or we don’t get home until after 10PM) but I’m not sold. I’ve spent several hours of my morning trying to get to Mass, with no success.
The idea of spending the rest of the day at work, only to get home at 7:20 and have to head straight over to this other Church, only to get home at 9 or 9:30PM and then FINALLY get to eat something is not so appealing. Not when it’s not even a holy day any more. Not when I have an out.
Now, maybe I am just lazy. Maybe I am a heathen. I wanted to go this morning. I really did. But there’s this part of me - this really weasely part of me - that’s glad right now that we have wussified the Church and moved the Ascension to Sunday.
Sigh.
May Day, the holiday of proletarian internationalism, was ever a Holy Day of Obligation … who knew??
Actually, the older rules were more forgiving by far than the wussified modernist church. I’ve been going over this issue a lot lately, since all there is in the village is a Mass that makes me want to throw Glory n’ Praise books at the locals, no buses on Sundays and a nine mile walk (one way) to Chester.
I’ve been getting some good advice on it and in the olden days, people understood that there were all sorts of perfectly acceptable reasons not to go to Mass on Sundays and H. Days of O. It doesn’t mean that you don’t do something to “remember the Sabbath day and keep it holy”, but that the Church has always understood that sometimes it just isn’t possible in ordinary terms.
It’s not just if you’re too sick to get out of bed.
Nursing mothers didn’t have to go (thus putting to bed the old argument about bringing screeching kids to Mass). People who work on the day don’t have to go. Sometimes it was understood that if you didn’t have the proper attire, you didn’t have to go. Even peasants kept a set of Sunday rags, I guess, but if you only had one set, you didn’t have to go.
The obligation is to keep the sabbath holy. The ordinary way that is done for Catholics is to go to Mass. But if you can’t, you can’t.
Hilary,
That’s helpful to know. Sometimes I put myself through the wringer, thinking, “Well who gives a damn if I don’t get to eat dinner until past my bedtime, just offer it up!”
But the feeling, frankly, sucks. And it makes me feel a bit resentful sometimes.
I love common sense. I wish it were more common.
My best Ascension Thursday story was back in 1996, when only goofy places on the west coast were moving it to Sunday. I was living in the DC suburbs, and it was still an HDO there. But I had an early morning flight to Los Angeles from DC for business — so early there were no Masses before the flight. I’d lived in LA before, and had a church all planned out for Mass once I arrived. But the flight ended up delayed for hours, and I didn’t get to LA until after my planned Mass was over. But then I remembered: It WASN’T an HDO in LA! I hadn’t missed my obligation, because I didn’t have one. Interesting that I totally missed Ascension that year, because once back home in DC…the feast obviously hadn’t been transferred to Sunday. Kind of like how those airline pilots who fly across the international date line in the middle of the night end up missing Christmas.
Steve, I’ll try to work up some sympathy for you. Promise. But I’m still stewing over the traffic ticket I got today on the way to Ascension Thursday Mass. I was nabbed by a highway patrolman for doing a “California stop” before pulling onto the highway, just a quarter mile from home. My last ticket? Last year on the feast of the Assumption, on the way to Mass again. There must be a message in this somewhere …