Resumed Sundays After Epiphany?

From the Pastor:    Resumed Sundays After Epiphany?

       It has been quite a few years since I wrote about the “Resumed Sundays After Epiphany.” In fact, I can’t find an article about them in all of my Epiphany bulletin article archives, so it may have been before the TLM came here that I last wrote about it. These “resumed” Sundays show up in our 1962 liturgical calendar near the end of the Church year if needed. What? If needed?  What in tarnation does that mean? I’m glad you asked! The Church year begins with the First Sunday of Advent. Advent leads to Christmas. Christmas to Epiphany, which is still part of the Christmas Season (at least until January 13—The Baptism of the Lord, or February 2—His Circumcision and His Mother’s Purification, depending on which author you read). The “Time After Epiphany” includes 6 Sundays pointing us toward Lent, which prepares us for Easter, which is a movable feast that can fall between March 22 and April 25. That variation means that Lent, based on Easter’s date each year, sometimes overlaps with the weeks After Epiphany. In the old calendar, the Season of Lent includes three Sundays (Septuagesima, Sexagesima, and Quinquagesima) before Ash Wednesday. At the beginning of this liturgical year, Septuagesima fell on January 28, the date upon which the Fourth Sunday after Epiphany would have fallen had Easter been later than it was. So we “skipped” the 4th, 5th, and 6th Sundays After Epiphany. But the total number of weeks in a year hasn’t changed, so the early Lent means that we run out of Post Pentecost Sundays before we run out of calendar!
       This conundrum is fixed by “resuming” where we left off in Epiphany time. Since Lent, Easter, Pentecost (50 days after Easter) and the Sundays After Pentecost were three weeks “early” we simply celebrate those skipped Sundays near the end of the year, although the final Sunday is always the 24th And Last Sunday after Pentecost. That last Sunday falls on November 24th this year, so, counting backward, the Resumed Sixth Sunday after Epiphany falls on November 17, the Resumed Fifth Sunday after Epiphany falls on November 10, and the first one skipped, the Fourth Sunday after Epiphany, shows up on the calendar this week, on November 3. But wait! There is a “catch” this year. November 3 we are celebrating the External Solemnity of our Diocesan Patron Saint, St. Jude, whose actual feast day (along with St. Simon) fell a few days ago, on October 28. The old calendar allows us to celebrate “External Solemnities for special feasts on either the Sunday before the actual date of the feast or on the Sunday immediately following it. These special Feasts include the Patron Saint of the Diocese, as just mentioned, the Patron Saint of the parish (in our case, not a Saint per se but a Feast in and of itself, Epiphany), and other special days that you have already experienced, such as Our Lady of the Rosary, the Sacred Heart of Jesus, and Corpus Christi.
       Of course, just celebrating a Mass whose readings and prayers were chosen and composed specifically for the time after Epiphany would leave us without a proper continuity of the Post Pentecost theme. So Holy Mother Church, without consulting me about it (for I would have probably said to just “make up” a few extra Masses to fit these slots, while She chose the “waste not want not” approach) decided many centuries ago that for the Resumed Sundays, we would use the same Collects, Epistles, Gospels, Secrets, and PostCommunion prayers of the skipped Masses after Epiphany but that we would use the Introit, Gradual, and Communion antiphon of the 23rd Sunday After Pentecost in place of the “normal” ones each Resumed week, thus “recycling” the Masses but changing the “theme” enough that it more appropriately fits the “end of the year/life” theme of this last part of the cycle. Does that make your head spin? Try finding it in your hand missal and you may be truly confused, for it sends you back to pages that send you to still other pages which also send you to other pages, which you keep turning until you get frustrated and just set the missal down! The Angelus Press missal (the small black one in the pews) gives a handy chart to explain all of this on page 814. If you can figure it out by following the chart to the pages of the pages of the pages it sends you to, you are a genius-level missal master! As for the rest of us, we are grateful for the External Solemnity of Sts. Simon and Jude so that we have one less Resumed Sunday to deal with!
       And, while we are on the subject of confusion, we have just had an update on the Sunday, December 8 Holy Day of Obligation (The Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary) that was transferred in the new calendar this year to Monday, December 9, and which our USA Bishops then told us is not a Day of Obligation because it falls on a Monday: Rome just stated that it is indeed a Day of Obligation even if transferred to Monday and that the US Bishops should follow Canon Law instead of making up their own rules. I’ll explain more about that later, as it affects both old and new liturgical calendars this year.

With prayers for your holiness,
Rev. Fr. Edwin Palka