Here continueth EASTERTIDE
The Incredulity of St. Thomas, Caravaggio
4 May. Third Sunday of Easter (Forty Martyrs of England and Wales suppressed)
10. St. Damien of Molokai (1840-1889), Priest, patron of lepers
11. Fourth Sunday of Easter, or Good Shepherd Sunday
13. Our Lady of Fátima, apparition of the Theotokos in Portugal (1917)
14. St. Matthias, Apostle and Martyr, patron of alcoholics, tailors, and those with smallpox
18. Fifth Sunday of Easter
25. Sixth Sunday of Easter (St. Bede suppressed)
26. Memorial Day [US]
27. St. Austin of Canterbury (?-604), Bishop, Apostle to the English
29. Solemnity of the Lord’s Ascension (widely transferred to the following Sunday)
31. Visitation of the Theotokos to St. Elizabeth
1 Jun. Seventh Sunday of Easter (widely replaced by the Solemnity of the Lord’s Ascension)
2. SS. Marcellinus and Peter the Exorcist (d. ca. 304), Priest and Martyrs
3. SS. Kaloli [Charles] Lwanga (1860-1886) and Companions, Martyrs, patrons of torture victims
5. St. Boniface (ca. 675-754), Bishop and Martyr, Apostle to the Germans
Here beginneth WHITSUNWEEK
Ikon of Pentecost (anonymous)
Photo by Wikimedia contributor Хомелка,
used under a CC BY-SA 3.0 license (source)
8. Solemnity of Whit Sunday, or of Pentecost
Here endeth EASTERTIDE, and continueth WHITSUNWEEK
9. St. Ephrem (ca. 306-373), hymnodist, patron of spiritual directors
11. St. Barnabas, Apostle and Martyr, patron of peacemakers and against hailstorms
13. St. Anthony of Lisbon (1195-1231), OFM, reputedly incorruptible in his tongue and vocal chords
NOTES ON THE CALENDAR
I. In General
This calendar follows the Ordinariate in the US, also called the Anglican Use: we are Catholics, in full communion with the Pope, but retain a heritage from the Church of England as the Anglican patrimony, i.e. a cultural expression of faith. Sundays, solemnities, and feasts are marked in boldface (solemnities are always stated to be such); distinctives of the Anglican patrimony are in blue; extra info is in italics.
Catholics normally must attend Mass on all Sundays and Holy Days of Obligation.* Holy Days in the US are normally as follows:
– Immaculate Conception, Dec. 8th
– Christmas Day, Dec. 25th
– Solemnity of the Mother of God, Jan. 1st
– Ascension, ten days before Pentecost (widely transferred to the following Sunday)
– Assumption of Mary, Aug. 15th
– All Hallows, Nov. 1st
Catholics also normally must do some form of penance on all Fridays of the year. Abstinence from meat (not including fish and shellfish) is the obligatory form of Friday penance in Lent (and, in the Ordinariate, on the Ember Fridays of September and Advent); outside Lent, the choice of penance is left to personal discretion, though abstinence is traditional. Penances of all kinds (both communal and personally chosen) are suspended on all Sundays and solemnities, even during Lent.
*The duty to attend Mass is waived for those with a serious reason to omit it: e.g. lack of transport, not wanting to spread illness, etc. (Contrary to common belief, Ash Wednesday has never been a Holy Day of Obligation.)
II. The Month of May
May hosts one of the better-known monthly Catholic devotions, that to the Blessed Virgin Mary; the custom of May crownings continues to be popular in Catholic parishes all over the world. This is striking, as it is not a month particularly rich in Marian festivals: Those of her own Conception and of her Son’s birth cluster mostly in December and early January, while that of her Assumption falls in August; her apparition at Fátima in 1917 fell in the middle of the month (but of course that has only been commemorated for about a century). The only notable Marian feast is that on the last day of the month, which memorializes her arrival in Jerusalem to see and congratulate St. Elizabeth (the mother of St. John the Baptist) and share her own news with her, and, presumably, to assist her elderly relative with the upcoming delivery. It’s possible that she composed the Magnificat over her journey there, which would have taken a week or a little less.
That aside, three apostles are honored this month: SS. Philip and James the Less (the one who wasn’t a son of Zebedee) on the 3rd of the month, and Matthias (the one who replaced Judas, and whom my youngest nephew shares a name with) on the 14th. It’s also a somewhat conspicuous month for the Anglican Use. The 4th, save when the observance is superseded (as it is this year), is normally the memorial of the Forty Martyrs of England and Wales, a group of Catholics executed at various times by the Tudor or Stuart monarchies or by Cromwell’s government; the group commemorated on this date is actually far larger than forty, embracing all the “Reformation martyrs” (though I think Forty Martyrs is a better-sounding name). Additionally, on the 19th, we honor SS. Dunstan, Ethelwold, and Oswald (bishops respectively of Canterbury, Winchester, and York), who were great luminaries of the late tenth-century Benedictine Reform of the English Church. This movement, inspired and influenced by the growth of the new Cluniac branch of the Benedictine Order, encouraged the practice of clerical celibacy, opposed simony, and promoted education (e.g., encouraging making a school a standard feature of all Catholic cathedrals).
III. The Season of Eastertide
This is the apex of the Church’s year—fifty days, from Easter Sunday to Pentecost inclusive. The first week of Easter is known as the Octave (or as Bright Week in the East), picking up on the old symbol that after the seven days of creation, we come to an eighth day that exhibits the first beginning of a new creation, a simultaneous continuation and fresh start. This is the origin of the Christian sabbath being observed on Sunday, and the solar symbolism used for the Resurrection aligns with the ancient custom of facing east to celebrate the Eucharist. Accordingly, every day of the Easter Octave is esteemed as a Sunday (up to and including the suppression of Friday penance).
Eastertide is split into two quite unequal segments: the first forty days, up to Ascension Thursday (which is the sixth Thursday after Easter Sunday), and the last ten, between Ascension and Pentecost. The latter is traditionally held to be the model of the novena: a nine-day sequence of prayers, generally associated with both some particular devotion and with some specified intention, or a set of closely-related intentions. (In the US, Ascension is usually transferred to the following Sunday, which to my mind is a great pity—both because the Ascension is, so to speak, “special” enough that I feel it merits us going out of our way to observe it, and it because it rather spoils the effect of the pre-Pentecost novena many people pray.)
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