Holy Days . . .

As well as having decided to reinstate the practice of abstaining from eating meat on Friday to fulfill the obligation of Friday Penance, our Bishops have also discussed the restoration of two of the three Holy Days of Obligation which were transferred to Sundays in 2006.

Hooray!

The two Holy Days in question are the Feast of the Epiphany and the Feast of the Ascension

Admittedly, they're going to spend 6 months thinking about it but it's a step in the right direction. Let's hope we get our Holy Days back on the 'right' days after the next plenary meeting of the Bishops in November.

It felt very odd to have celebrated the Feast of the Epiphany before 'Twelfth Night' this year!

Funnily enough we'll be in Brugges on 2nd June (Ascension Day, proper :-) ) this year visiting friends and family so we may well end up celebrating the feast twice; once on Thursday and then again on the following Sunday in England.

Anna Arco has an interesting article on this subject on the Catholic Herald's website here if you'd like to read more.

Exciting times . . . !

What an exciting time it is at the moment! Since the reception of the three former Anglican bishops into Full Communion with the Catholic Church, followed soon afterwards by their ordination into the newly established Ordinariate of Our Lady of Walsingham, it's just been an incredible start to the New Year.

Now today we have the news from the Bishops' Conference of England and Wales that the long-awaited translation of the new Missal will be in use in parishes from September of this year.

"The bishops, following the Holy Father’s encouragement that this new translation is an opportunity for ‘in-depth catechesis on the Eucharist and renewed devotion in the manner of its celebration’, have decided that from September 2011 the Order of Mass in the new translation will be used in parishes in England and Wales. " Read more here.

Now, I'm looking forward to seeing what sort of catechesis will be available for us in our parishes to introduce the new translation of the Missal. No doubt there will be many who are not pleased but it is a great opportunity to think about the liturgy of the Mass and what it actually means.

I'm so excited I don't know where to put myself!