Solemnity, Feast or Memorial?

Solemnity, Feast or Memorial?

Someone asked me once what it meant after a Saint’s name when I put “Memorial” or “Feast” or sometimes “Solemnity” there.  What follows is a long explanation just click back if you are bored or if you think I sometimes go on too long,   It will always be on the website if you want to come back to it someday.  

 The Church groups it’s celebrations in order of how important it is to the Global community and to specific diocese or religious orders.   Every day is at least three celebrations of some sort.  I always call the saint of the day “Today’s Feast” but in reality the saint of the day is usually a commemoration or optional memorial, see below.    There is a book called the Ordo, published every year for clergy.  The Ordo tells you what Mass to celebrate each day, what the Divine Office cycle it is, what color vestnments to wear, it gives you some pastoral notes, it tells you of clergy who have died in your diocese, and it tells you what type of feast every day is.   Anyhoo, from most to least importance here is what all those celebrations are:

SOLEMNITY A Solemnity of the Roman Catholic Church observes an event in the life of Jesus, Mary, and the saints.  These celebrations begin on the evening prior to actual date, like our Hebrew fathers in Faith did, in Hebrew the night before a big holiday is called “Erev.”    The word “Solemnity” is made up of Latin words solet and annus, meaning a yearly (annual) celebration. They are observed throughout the entire Church.   These are the most important feast days we have.  

Every Sunday in the church year is a solemnity which is why Saturday evening mass “counts” for Sunday.   It is also why no saint feast day is commemorated on Sunday; a solemnity is the top priority over all other celebrations.   If a big saint’s feast day would normally fall on a Sunday the feast is moved to another day, usually Monday, for that particular year.   For example in 2009 St. Luke’s Feast was moved from Sunday October 18th to Monday October 19th temporarily for the year 2009.  The Old Farmers Almanac usually is good about documenting these moves every month; they put a small superscript “T” next to the day if it is moved that year.        

Other Solemnities observed by the Roman Church:

·        January 1: Mary, Mother of God (formerly known as the Feast of the Circumcision)

·        Sunday between Jan 2 & 8: Epiphany, in United States only; elsewhere January 6

·        March 19: Joseph, Husband of Mary (a solemnity, enjoy your sfinge.  St Patricks is only a Memorial…see below)

·        March 25: Annunciation

·        March/April (varies): Easter Triduum

·        40 days after Easter: Ascension of the Lord

·        50 days after Easter: Pentecost

·        Sunday after Pentecost: Holy Trinity

·        Sunday after Holy Trinity: Body and Blood of Christ (Corpus Christi)

·        Friday after Body & Blood: Sacred Heart

·        June 24: Birth of John the Baptist

·        June 29: Peter and Paul, Apostles

·        August 15: Assumption of Mary

·        November 1: All Saints

·        November (varies, always Sunday): Christ the King

·        December 8: Immaculate Conception

·        December 25: Christmas

FEAST

Although we generally call all these daily saint celebrations “feasts,” a Religious Feast celebrates or commemorates certain concepts or events in the history of the church.  These are celebrated throughout the church all over the world with particular traditions and rituals.  The celebration of a Feast begins on the day the feast is celebrated, not the night before as with a Solemnity.   Some examples: The Apostles feast days are Feasts, the evangelists feast days are Feasts.    The eight days after big Solemnities, the “octive” each day is usually celebrated as a Feast.   So the week after Christmas every day, every year, is a Feast….poor Thomas Becket (feast Dec 28th) is always lowered to a commemoration and is never celebrated as a Memorial, although his celebration is classified as a Memorial…see below.   If you pray the Divine Office, on Solemnities and Feasts you use the psalms from Sunday week 1, no matter what day of the week it is,  with the interminable Canticle of Daniel.   

MEMORIAL (with a capital “M”)

In the Roman Catholic Church, a Memorial is a feast day of relatively low importance. However, all priests must recall the saint commemorated in their Masses and the Divine Office, praying the Hours on Memorials can be a big pain unless you have a lot of ribbons or bookmarks.   St Patrick’s Day, at least in the Archdiocese of New York City is only a Memorial….enjoy the parade.   Individual Dioceses can make certain celebrations Mandatory Memorials based on local customs and needs…St Christopher was a Memorial until the 1960’s.

Optional memorial (lower case “m”) and Commemoration.   

In the Roman Catholic Church, an optional memorial is the lowest class of the feast day. The priest or deacon is permitted to celebrate the feast day or not as he chooses. (See Memorial.) The saints or events celebrated in these feast days are considered to be of less universal importance to the Church. In addition, as long as no feast day of higher rank is foreseen for a particular day, a priest is permitted to celebrate a feast day that does not appear in his local calendar as an optional memorial, normally out of personal devotion to the saint.   The church made St. Christopher a commemoration , lower than an optional memorial, and that led to all the misconception there.   Remember he is still a saint…..

Ohh and not all Solemneties are Holy Days of Obligation but all Holy Days of Obligation are solemneties.  In the U.S. the Church likes to make life easy for us just like Agnes, and  Lawrence and all the other martyrs had it easy so we move a lot of solemneties to Sundays so you don’t have to take time from your busy life to go to church during the week in order to give thanks to your Heavenly Father.   So we celebrate the Epiphany on Sunday instead of on the 6th of January like the rest of the world…there are some dioceses that have moved Ascension Thursday to Sunday….can you figure that out?  Anyhoo….  the following are Solemneties that are Holy Days of Obligatiion:

·        January 1: Mary, Mother of God  (sober up and get to church New Years Day is a Holy Day of Obligation)

·        40 days after Easter or the following Sunday in more easygoing dioceses…..: Ascension of the Lord

·        August 15: Assumption of Mary 

·        November 1: All Saints

·        December 8: Immaculate Conception

·        December 25: Christmas