Deep in the dog days of August I abandoned trying to get any work done or to limit my children's screen time. I was unsure which day of the week it was and had just come in from a desultory tour of the garden, which was as dry, crispy and sun-bleached as the stubble fields beyond.
The air was oppressive and (with a nod to the weather) the children were watching Madagascar, which would at least, I reasoned, keep them from viewing verboten rubbish on YouTube for a couple of hours.
I flopped on my bed in the coolest room in the house and reached for my phone to doomscroll Instagram, the maximum exertion I could manage at that juncture of the summer holidays which, for working mothers everywhere, is classified as the"functioning breakdown" stage.
Ah, how lovely! My friend the Oratorian had posted an exquisite image of the fresco of the Dormition, the Holy Virgin falling asleep at the end of her life, from the monastery of St Benedict at Subiaco – because "Today is the great feast of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary."
Gah. I messaged a mutual friend. "Is today a day of obligation?"
"Yes, Assumption," she replied. It wasn't accompanied by the eye-roll emoji but it might as well have been.
I wailed back through WhatsApp: "But how do you cradle Catholics know?"
"We feel it in our bones," came the reply.
Being an excellent woman, she would have already been to the 8 a.m. Mass in her parish in London before work. I, on the other hand, in one of the farthest outposts of East Anglia, with its scattered and aged congregations and priests brought out of retirement to fill the gaps in the holiday rota, hadn't a clue where to find a local Mass at that time of day.
My only option was to rouse my torpid children and drive at speed across the miles and miles of stubble fields into the city for the 6 p.m. Mass at the cathedral ... but there wouldn't be anywhere to park within half a mile, so we would be late and by then the five-year-old would be hangry and oh! – it's all so unappealing and a world away from the serenity in that sublime fresco of Our Lady being embraced by her Divine Son.
I'd just have to vomit up my non-attendance the next time I go to Confession. As a convert, I've always struggled to get my head around the (to me) baffling days of obligation. Why is St Peter and St Paul a day of obligation, but not Good Friday? Why All Saints but not All Souls?
As for the Ascension of the Lord, yes, fair play, but when? The Thursday after the sixth Sunday of Easter, you say? Nurse, the screens!
For help, I message another cradle Catholic pal: a church organist and former seminarian."The dates are published in the diocesan directory and normally announced well in advance," comes the stentorian response. Point taken; had I been at Mass the previous Sunday, rather than flying back from a family holiday in Greece, I would have known.
And yet, when you consider that days of obligation are different in every country and in England we have the slightly odd rule that if the relevant day falls on a Saturday or Monday, then it gets moved to the adjacent Sunday (which, by the way, doesn't happen in Scotland), might we be cut a bit of slack?
"It is a bit brutal and can be hard to keep up if you're on holiday," one priest concedes kindly. He reminds me that they are listed in the old Penny Catechism, that valuable little volume on which I relied heavily during Instruction, so much so that it eventually disintegrated in the bottom of my handbag.
We also, he points out, get off rather lightly compared with our forebears and sends me the list for 1839. It includes The Circumsion (sic) on 1 January and St Andrew's Day (30 November) for Scotland.
Days of obligation are set by regional Bishops' Conferences, hence the variations. In the US, as in many places, 1 January is one – Mary, Mother of God, I wonder how many good intentions are thwarted by New Year hangovers? But as Canada only has a rather feeble two, apart from all the Sundays, in the whole year (the other being 25 December), perhaps they just suck up the scheduling.
In Ireland, St Patrick's Day is one of obligation, on 17 March. In Italy, many days of obligation are also public holidays, which removes the need to commit them to memory – though I'm told that Ferragosto for theAssumption has become a bit of a secular term, with large processions followed by boozing sessions in the village square thereafter.
It's all enough to leave one cross-eyed. But as a convert of nearly 20 years, I've decided I can no longer use "as a convert...” to excuse hopelessness.
So I've ordered a new copy of the Penny Catechism and on 1 January I shall sit quietly with my hangover and mark each Holy Day of Obligation, along with family birthdays, in red pen. See you there – unless it falls on a Saturday or Monday, of course.
Photo: by Arcadia
This article appears in the September 2025 edition of the Catholic Herald. To subscribe to our thought-provoking magazine and have independent, high-calibre and counter-cultural Catholic journalism delivered to your door anywhere in the world click HERE.
