Sundays and Commemorations

COMMEMORATIONS 

Special commemorations, designated by either the Holy See or the Australian Catholic Bishops Conference, are regularly scheduled for celebration on Sundays.  Some examples around August and September include Social Justice Sunday, Safeguarding Sunday, and World Refugee and Migration Day. In between we have days of cultural importance such as Father’s Day on the first Sunday in September.   

Further, the United Nations designates many specific days and weeks with particular themes to promote the objectives of the organisation: International Day of Non-Violence or National Tree Day, for example.  But it is a very long list and parishes will need to be very selective. In addition, some parishes like to pray for their neighbours of other faiths at times when they are celebrating important festivals.  Faith Communities Councils provide calendars of the important dates.  

These commemorations are often referred to as Special Sundays, a name which stands in marked contrast to their liturgical designation as Sundays in Ordinary Time (that is, Sundays are counted by ordinal numbers).  These Sunday are ‘special’ not in the sense that they are more important, but in the sense that they propose a specific intention for our prayers.  

SUNDAY 

The Church’s norms on the liturgical year and calendar begins: Each week on the day called the Lord’s Day the Church commemorates the Lord’s resurrection.  This is reiterated in the first paragraph of Dies Domini, the 1998 apostolic letter of John Paul II: Sunday recalls the day of Christ’s resurrection.  It is Easter which returns week by week, celebrating Christ’s victory over sin and death, the fulfilment in him of the first creation and the dawn of the ‘new creation’. 

For this reason, every Sunday is indeed ‘special’ but I fear that in many ways we are straying from these principles regarding Sunday as set out in Dies Domini:  

♦ The Lord’s Day is the day par excellence when men and women raise their song to God and become the voice of all creation (Dies 15).

♦ The Sunday Eucharist expresses with greater emphasis its inherent ecclesial dimension and is the paradigm for other eucharistic celebrations (Dies 34).

♦ Among the many activities of a parish, none is as vital or as community-forming as the Sunday cele-brations of the Lord’s Day and his Eucharist (Dies 35).

♦ The truth that the whole community shares in Christ’s sacrifice is especially evident in the Sunday gathering, which makes it possible to bring to the altar the week that has passed, with all its human burdens (Dies 43).

Many of the themes or intentions that have been allocated to a particular Sunday in the year may well be ‘worthy causes’.  However, the Church assembles for Eucharist on Sunday to celebrate something much more profound and fundamental – the paschal mystery: the incarnation, life, death, resurrection and ascension of Christ. Certainly, our Sunday worship cannot be divorced from daily life and the realities of the world.  So special days or causes like those named above should find a place in our prayers, but they do not determine the character of the celebration as official feasts and seasons do.  Mother’s Day or Mission Sunday or Refugee Week, for example, are not on the same level as liturgical feasts such as Pentecost or Christ the King when it comes to their place in the public worship of the Church. 

When I was growing up, Sunday was different from every other day of the week. Most people did not work, shops and cinemas were all closed, no sporting events were held.  Church was really the only thing that happened, apart from the family roast lunch!  However times have changed and it is now much more difficult for Christians to keep Sunday as the Lord’s Day.  I was startled recently to hear a friend say that she no longer goes to Mass on Sunday as it is too busy, too hard to get a park, and anyway her family sometimes comes to visit.  So she goes to a weekday Mass instead.  But, I wanted to say, surely Sunday matters because it is Resurrection Day, the day the whole Church gathers to be the Body of Christ!  Maybe it is a sign of our consumer society that we want things when and how they suit us to fit in with our lifestyle. 

WHAT SHOULD A PARISH DO? 

1. The first challenge is to know what commemoration to keep.

A parish liturgy preparation team should first ask which of all these special causes are official Church celebrations.  There are twenty Special Commemorations that have been determined by the Holy See and the Australian Catholic Bishops Conference; they are listed in the back of the official Ordo.  They can be checked and marked on a calendar and will be the most important for the parish liturgy.  The other lists can be perused for days which might have special relevance to the local community. 

2. The second challenge is to access suitable resources.

Obviously agencies which designate a particular Sunday as their ‘special day’ see it as a good way to promote their cause.  Sometimes this means that parishes are bombarded with brochures, envelopes or collection boxes to put out on pews, posters 

to display, prepared homilies to deliver, and so forth.  At other times, especially when there is no church agency to take ownership of the day, no information or liturgy resources are received by parishes at all. 

This makes it hard for parish liturgy committees who try to do the right thing and raise awareness among parishioners about these issues.  In addition, there is the issue of unhelpful resources.  Liturgy planners need to be wary when searching the internet for material to incorporate in the liturgy on a designated special day.  In my experience, many suggested Prayer of the Faithful petitions are found to be quite unsuitable.  Some are far too long (like mini lessons); some are prayers addressed to God instead of an invitation to prayer addressed to the assembly (imperative verbs and the use of ‘you’ are giveaways!). 

3. The third challenge is to know how to make good choices.

A particular intention or appeal must never overshadow the character of the Sunday Mass or the Church’s liturgical calendar with its cycles of seasons and feasts, prayers and readings.  This is a disservice to both the liturgy and the community.  There are many ways in which a special intention can be recognised.  It may be mentioned during the Introductory Rites or connected to the homily on the readings; it may be the subject of one or two petitions in the Prayer of the Faithful; there may be an appropriate hymn which links to the commemoration; but to use all of these for a single issue on a particular Sunday would almost certainly be overload.  Information about special causes included in bulletin notices, handouts and displays might help free the liturgical celebration itself from the burden of communication. 

It is important for the liturgy preparation team to keep the big picture in mind.  Take for example, National Tree Day, established in 1996 for the beginning of August.  It has grown into the biggest community tree-planting and nature protection event in Australia (the aim this year was to plant one million new trees).  In light of the Laudato Si' call to care for our common home, it is a very worthy cause. But remember that 1 September is the Holy See World Day of Prayer for Creation which begins a six-week focus on creation.  Similarly, there is National Reconciliation Week at the beginning of June with National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Sunday soon to follow early in July. 

A general rule is that restraint is best.  Certainly most of the United Nations commemorations might suggest a topic for a petition in the Prayer of the Faithful but no more.  For days when no liturgy resources have been prepared by a church agency 

(older persons, creation, Christian unity, etc), help with appropriate prayers and blessings may be found in the Masses for Various Needs and Occasions section of the Missal or in the Book of Blessings. 

CONCLUSION 

The liturgy cannot carry the whole weight of responsibility for promoting the important issues that special commemorations highlight.  Sunday Mass participants cannot be seen as a ‘captive audience’ for getting a message out!  There are other ways of raising awareness about issues such as care for creation or social justice, including using the parish website or setting up groups in the parish to focus on them.  While many of these themes or commemorations may well be ‘worthy causes’, the Church assembles for Eucharist on Sunday to celebrate something much more profound and fundamental, namely the paschal mystery: the incarnation, life, death, resurrection and ascension of Christ the Lord. 

This article was originally published in Liturgy News ​Vol 52(3) September 2022. Reprinted with permission.