Today is All Saints Day (hence last night was Halloween–All Hallows’ Eve, a “hallow” being a saint).
Normally this means that one must go to Mass, as All Saints Day is a holy day of obligation.
But when it falls on a Saturday or a Monday, it isn’t.
Since today is Monday, you are not required to go to Mass (though doing so is still a great thing).
HERE’S THE RELEVANT LEGISLATION.
Author: Jimmy Akin
Jimmy was born in Texas, grew up nominally Protestant, but at age 20 experienced a profound conversion to Christ. Planning on becoming a Protestant seminary professor, he started an intensive study of the Bible. But the more he immersed himself in Scripture the more he found to support the Catholic faith, and in 1992 he entered the Catholic Church. His conversion story, "A Triumph and a Tragedy," is published in Surprised by Truth. Besides being an author, Jimmy is the Senior Apologist at Catholic Answers, a contributing editor to Catholic Answers Magazine, and a weekly guest on "Catholic Answers Live."
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I would specify, Jimmy, that this is true for United States Catholics…the legislation may be different for Catholics in other countries (and, given that your blog has global readership, it would be prudent to specify thus).
Here in England, the Bishops transferred the solemnity to Sunday so we celebrated All Saints Day yesterday and will celebrate All Souls tomorrow.
*Global Readership*???
I thought the only people reading this lived on my block!
(Seriously, thanks for the catch. Meant to work that in and forgot.)
Thanks for clarifying things.
Of course your clarification applies only to the current state of the law. Next year or the year after, when the U.S. bishops implement the new policy, your clarification will need revision.
The new policy, in case you haven’t heard, stipulates that All Saints Day is a holy day of obligation unless (1) it falls on a day of the week beginning with a vowel or (2) precedes a day which belongs to a week of no more than 7 days and no fewer than 7 or (2) you happen to be on another planet.
(Okay, I know the last point seems silly, but I have an essay I keep threatening to publish on the difficulties in calculating holy days of obligation on other planets. It isn’t as simple as it seems. The Martian Episcopal Conference has been working on this very problem. Opps! I’m getting ahead of myself and everyone else reading this message. Oh well, you’ll see.)