Did You Miss Mass on the Immaculate Conception?

Did you meet your obligation to attend Mass on the Feast of the Immaculate Conception, or were you frantically searching on-line for a local 11 PM Mass yesterday, December 9? And I would lay heavy odds that if you went to Mass yesterday, you may be rightfully confused about exactly what you celebrated. Two problems: the definition of a “holy day of obligation” in general and the precise meaning of the feast of the Immaculate Conception.

Let’s start with holy days. The Boston Pilot, Beantown’s Catholic newspaper, carried a detailed piece on November 27 explaining the Roman Catholic list of feasts to be observed universally as days of common worship at Mass [aside from Sundays, the primordial feast days.] It is an interesting list:

Canon 1246 of the Code of Canon Law tells us that "the Lord's Day, on which the paschal mystery is celebrated, is by apostolic tradition to be observed in the universal Church as the primary holy day of obligation" -- that is, a day where the faithful are obligated to attend Mass. "In the same way, the following holy days are to be observed: the Nativity of Our Lord Jesus Christ, the Epiphany, the Ascension of Christ, the feast of the Body and Blood of Christ, the feast of Mary the Mother of God, her Immaculate Conception, her Assumption, the feast of St. Joseph, the feast of the Apostles Sts. Peter and Paul, and the feast of All Saints."

As you may notice, Canon Law’s list of special days of obligatory Mass attendance is longer than our current American list of obligatory observances—the Epiphany, the Feast of the Body and Blood of Christ [Corpus Christi], St. Joseph, and the Apostles Peter and Paul are not obligatory in the U.S. But let’s read the law further: “[T]he same canon goes on to add: "However, the Episcopal Conference may, with the prior approval of the Apostolic See, suppress certain holy days of obligation,” meaning that the U.S. Conference of Bishops has some authority to remove the “obligation” from Mass attendance from some feasts. For example, the Feast of St. Joseph on March 19 does not carry a Mass obligation.

Over the last several decades the USCCB has received permission to transfer certain feasts to the closest Sunday. Thus, in the U.S., the Epiphany is always on a Sunday, as is the Ascension [in most dioceses], and The Holy Eucharist [Corpus Christi]. Some of you may remember when most U.S. dioceses moved Ascension Thursday back to the next Sunday, permanently. It caused no little stir because most of us were raised on St. Luke’s Gospel, which reported that Jesus remained on earth for forty days after the Resurrection. Moving the feast seemed to imply that Jesus remained on earth forty-three days, though in truth Luke is the only Evangelist who mentions “forty days.” But some dioceses, including Boston, still observe the Ascension on Thursday.

Margaret and I got caught in a peculiar situation traveling to Boston from Orlando. The Orlando Diocese, like most in the U.S., celebrates the Ascension on the Sunday before Pentecost, or the Seventh Sunday of the Easter Season. Consequently, we were not obliged to attend Mass on Thursday, the day before our trip. But Boston observed the Ascension on Thursday. So, when we attended Saturday evening Mass in Marblehead, Massachusetts, the missalettes were set to the Seventh Week of the Easter Season, as Boston had celebrated the Ascension several days before. We missed the observance of the Ascension for that year.

This year the feast of the Immaculate Conception fell on a Sunday and was transferred to Monday, December 9. The Second Sunday of Advent takes precedence in such cases. In years past, the obligation to attend the Feast of the Immaculate Conception transferred to Monday was dispensed in such circumstances, but the Vatican recently ruled that all the faithful are obliged to attend Mass on Monday when the transferred feast celebrates a mystery of Jesus or Mary. In Ordinary Time—i.e., outside of Advent, Lent, and Eastertide--holy days can be observed on Sunday if they fall on Sunday. All Saints, for example, always trumps a Sunday in Ordinary Time.

Truth compels me to admit that, obligation or not, the Holy Days have never been well attended, Christmas being the obvious exception. As I understand it, the concept of a “holy day of obligation” engendered more enthusiasm from early medieval times when the serfs were given a holiday from their farming to attend Mass in town and then feast and enjoy “morality plays.” In surveying the online literature about holy days, one constant about them is “freedom from work.” There were as many as 36 holy days until the Industrial Age and modern banking and commerce made that number prohibitive when factoring in the bottom line of corporate profits.

Consequently, the social reinforcement element of holy days—holidays! -- is no longer there. In fact, the opposite has resulted: the faithful find themselves scrambling to attend Mass around the pressures of their job and family obligations. A weekday Mass is now, ironically, work. To add to our current dilemma, there is not exactly a groundswell of energized piety around some of the current holy days. Today’s feast, “the Immaculate Conception,” is an excellent case in point, as it commands considerable reflection to sort out what exactly we are celebrating.

Wikipedia provides a good summary of the history of the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception, which was not declared until 1854 when Pope Pius IX stated:

We declare, pronounce, and define that the doctrine which holds that the most Blessed Virgin Mary, in the first instance of her conception, by a singular grace and privilege granted by Almighty God, in view of the merits of Jesus Christ, the Saviour of the human race, was preserved free from all stain of original sin, is a doctrine revealed by God and therefore to be believed firmly and constantly by all the faithful.

The development of this doctrine is a logical result of St. Augustine’s fifth century teaching all humans born on this earth are the biological inheritors of the guilt of Adam’s sin. Consequently, sexual intercourse between a husband and wife was viewed as a conduit of sin, which is why we rushed newborns to baptism. Christians, as far as we can tell, always believed that Mary was sinless in her own conduct, but as Augustine’s thinking took root, one had to admit that Mary was not sinless since she inherited original sin at the time of her conception.

It took about fifteen hundred years to address this contradiction to the satisfaction of the universal Church: the idea that God intervened and exempted Mary from the reality of original sin [“a singular grace and privilege granted by Almighty God”]. Mary was conceived in the natural act by which all of us came to be, but God protected her alone from inheriting the sin of Adam, given her destiny to become the Mother of God. The Church came to the formulation of this doctrine, the Immaculate Conception, through prayer, logic, and popular devotion to Mary, a good example of the continuing work of the Spirit in the life of the Church. The doctrine and feast of the Assumption, another Marian holyday of obligation celebrated in August, is not recorded in the Scripture, and found expression from the organic life of the Church.

There is no literal Scriptural reference to the reality of the Immaculate Conception, and as a result, the Church has had to use another Gospel text for December 8: St. Luke’s account of the conception of Jesus, when Mary gave her “yes” to the Angel Gabriel to mother the child of the Holy Spirit. As one might expect, when most Catholics hear the term “Immaculate Conception,” they tend to think of Mary’s marriage to Joseph and the conception of Jesus. As Luke makes clear, the Holy Spirit is the father of Jesus in every sense of the word. Wouldn’t it be pastorally more meaningful to call December 8 [or March 25] “Incarnation Day,” a celebration of the mysteries of God becoming man which would embody Mary’s exemption from Original Sin and the Annunciation?

Holy Days will always be plagued by the reality that we do not fully understand the fact or the piety of the meaning of the day. As one author put it, holy days are marked but not celebrated by the wide body of the faithful. “All Saints” is celebrated on November 1, but imagine if the Mass obligation were applied instead to November 2, “All Souls Day?” I would bet that Mass attendance would be quite respectable because we all have loved ones who have died. Moreover, imagine if some of those Masses were offered on the grounds of Catholic cemeteries? The emotions of grief and hope would form a visceral engagement to Eucharist and the community of the universal Church.

We still have work to do.