Holy Days of Opportunity

And what to do when you half-resent the obligation

Photo by Shalone Cason on Unsplash. You don’t know how close I came to using a Liturgical Legos stock photo instead.

The title of today’s post is, I admit, probably inside baseball for Catholics.¹ But as I was sitting by myself in the 7:30pm Spanish Mass on the Feast of the Assumption, I couldn’t help but think of the cheeky little phrase that I heard (and used, cringe) in high school:

Don’t think of it as a Holy Day of Obligation - think of it as a Holy Day of Opportunity!!

Yikes.

For a little context as to why this was the flavor of my pre-Mass reflection, let me share an important fact with you: I do not speak a lick of Spanish. I want to. I deeply believe that I ought to, given that my mother is Hispanic and I live in Texas and there are countless free resources for learning a second language. But, alas, I do not.

Another important fact: I hate leaving my house after 7:00pm. The only occasion on which it doesn’t cause existential dread is date night with James, and even then, I’m usually stressed and tired and wishing we hadn’t made plans up until the moment we pull out of the parking lot.

And, just to beat a dead horse, I had been planning on attending the 5:30pm Mass with our toddler, while James watched the baby because I had accidentally scheduled a physical therapy appointment during the 8:30am school Mass. But, we triple-booked ourselves at 5:30 with Mass, James’ faculty meeting, and my sister-in-law coming over. So my Mass plans got shifted around. I considered the 12:10pm but decided against it as it would unquestionably ruin both girls’ long naps (and thus, all of our afternoon), and I opted for the latest option available nearby.

All that to say that attending (alone!) the 7:30pm Spanish Mass was not, as you might imagine, my idea of a good time. Certainly not an “opportunity,” as my cheeky high school self would have quipped. I was at Mass because the Solemnity of the Assumption is a Holy Day of Obligation, and as such, I am obliged to attend Mass on that day.² And I’m grateful for that obligation, because without it, I would not have gone to Mass. If I’m left to my own devices, I’m lazy, anti-social, unrecollected, and probably prone to separation anxiety when I’m away from my family.

As I sat in the literal back pew, half praying and half trying to calm my nervous system after a particularly long day, I thought back to that high school saying about obligation and opportunity. It was, if I remember correctly, intended to be a sort of “gotcha” from us righteous, practicing Catholic teenagers to the heathens who had the absolute audacity to complain about attending Mass an extra time that week. But that evening, I sympathized with the heathens much more than with my naïve, prideful teenage self.

Still, the echo and promise of opportunity called out to me. Before the Mass began, as my chest grew less tight and my breathing slowed, I wrote in my journal:

Obligation vs. Opportunity: Guard rails to keep us on track AND invitation to communion, mindset shift, silence, peace

In other words, it’s a case of the classic Catholic et…et… The good old both-and. To restrict ourselves to a mindset of either obligation or opportunity is to do ourselves a disservice. The reality is that we need both lenses through which to see these “extra” required Masses.³

So often, if we weren’t obligated to attend, we wouldn’t. We would miss out on the graces the Lord wants to give us on this particular feast, mediated through this particular Mass. We would allow things to take precedence over our relationship with Him that ought to remain lower priorities. As fallen human beings, we often tend towards disorder in our lives, and there is a special mercy in the Lord saying, at least a few times a year, “No, not today. Today is Mine.” He gives us bumper rails to keep us in line because He knows our frailty and knows what is truly good for us. Of course, if we don’t show up—if we don’t dispose ourselves to grace—He cannot work in our hearts. We must still choose whether we will attend Mass, skip it, or be physically present but mentally absent. After all, love, to be real, must be freely given and freely received. But if we have faith the size of a mustard seed—if we have just enough love to show up on a Holy Day even when it’s inconvenient and we would rather be anywhere else—then He can shower us with the grace he so desperately desires to give us.

And thus we see that to restrict these days to merely an obligation is, likewise, to miss out the Lord’s offer of grace. If we attend Mass sulking and resentful, distracted by the never-ending drum of our to-do lists, we will be unable to accept the invitation to stop, to recollect ourselves, to make an offering of self on the altar with Christ. While we might be physically present, if we are not coming from a place of love, we will not be able to participate in the exchange of Love that is the Mass. On Holy Days, we are given the chance to embrace a quiet moment of silence and peace in the midst of our daily lives, but it is up to us to choose it. And when we do, we begin to see that the obligation is fundamentally ordered toward our good. It is, truly, a beautiful opportunity.

Of course, as is so often the case with the Lord, He showed up in such a beautiful and unexpected way at that 7:30pm Spanish Mass. While I didn’t understand half of what was said, I was still able to participate in the liturgy, and perhaps even more so since I wasn’t distracted by the who and the how and the what of the Mass.⁴ The Feast of the Assumption, a Marian feast, brought up once again many of my long-standing questions and anxieties about my relationship with the Blessed Mother, and the familiar-but-foreign rhythm of the Mass proved fertile ground to bring those things to the Lord once again and ask for healing. The time to pray alone (away from my beloved and demanding daughters) proved to be a fruitful gift, even if it was not the gift I was expecting.⁵ The exhaustion and frustration from the day, rather than becoming amplified by distracted “free time” to ruminate on them, were washed away, leaving blessing in their place.⁶

There will always be another obligation, another task on our never-ending lists… and today, I’m begging the Lord for the grace to see those moments as hidden opportunities to become receptive to His Will and His Word.

What is your favorite Holy Day of Obligation and why? Have you experienced a time when the obligations of the faith were the only thing keeping you there? Have you experienced a time when the faith seemed like a tremendous gift, such that talk of obligation seemed almost unnecessary?

1. For my non-Catholic readers, a Holy Day of Obligation is, as you might expect, a particularly important feast, occurring on a weekday, when Catholics are obligated to attend Mass to celebrate. This obligation is the same as the Sunday obligation. You can learn more here.

2. For more information on the Feast of the Assumption, I’d highly recommend this post by my friend

Scoot

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3. The opportunity to attend Mass daily—to receive the Eucharist daily—is a particular grace of our day and age, and one that would have been shocking even a few hundred years ago. It saddens but doesn’t surprise me to see this attitude of “if I have to” when it comes to attending Mass, both in the Church at large and in myself. When faced with the witness of saints who risked their livelihoods, their reputations, and even their lives to attend even one Mass, I see how deeply I take the Mass for granted. Lord, have mercy on us.

4. If you’ve ever attended a Mass in the Extraordinary Form after mostly/only attending the Ordinary Form liturgy, the experience was quite similar. I know enough to follow what is going on, but I don’t know hardly any of the language enough to get distracted by the words. Rather, I am able to focus on allowing myself to become disposed to grace and on the movement of heart and soul toward the self-offering with Christ on the cross.

5. Normally when I attend Mass on my own, I still find it hard to silence my heart and still my body, as I discussed over the summer.

Return to the LORD your God,
for he is gracious and merciful,
slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love;
and he relents over disaster.

Who knows whether he will not turn and relent,
and leave a blessing behind him,
a grain offering and a drink offering
for the LORD your God?

- Joel 2:13-14 ESV

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