Article I: General Things

— Appendix XVII belongs to this section. I. Historical. Cf. Appendix XVII.

II. Nature of the precept. The precept of sanctifying feasts is natural, insofar as it requires that some time be spent in worshiping God; insofar as it imposes some participation in the sacrifice of the New Law, it is of positive divine law; insofar as it prescribes Sunday and festive assistance at Mass and cessation from labor, it is of ecclesiastical law. For the divine law itself of the Old Testament concerning hebdomadal rest was abrogated by the promulgation of the New Law. And the positive part and negative part of the precept stand in an inverse manner in each Testament. In the Old Testament the principal obligation was of sabbatical cessation; in the New Testament the positive sanctification of feasts holds the first place with the Church and the faithful.

— By what power feasts are governed. Today, there is reserved to the supreme ecclesiastical authority not only the institution and abrogation, but also the translation of festive days, whether common to the universal Church or special; and it is conceded to local Ordinaries only that by way of an act they may command a feast day for their dioceses or places (c. 1244).

It is also sometimes indulged to them that they transfer the solemnities of certain feasts which are not of precept to the nearest following Sunday (except in a year when the feast falls on a Sunday), which is conceded by c. 1247, §2 itself concerning the feasts of patrons (of the kingdom and of the place).

— Feasts to be sanctified. "Feast days under precept in the universal Church are only: all and individual Sundays, the feasts of the Nativity, Circumcision, Epiphany, Ascension, and Most Holy Body of Christ, of the Immaculate Conception and Assumption of the kindly Mother of God Mary, of Saint Joseph her spouse, of the Blessed Apostles Peter and Paul, and finally of All Saints" (c. 1247, 1).

The legislator, however, did not will that, without the Holy See having been consulted, anything be innovated in places where some feast from those enumerated has been legitimately abolished or transferred. Meanwhile those regions will preserve their own particular discipline (c. 1247, §3).

With attention to the declarations of the Pontifical Commission, you would say that one must understand only particular discipline introduced by concordats, indults, or custom, but not that which resulted for the universal Church from the Motu Proprio Supremi disciplinae of Pius X, July 2, 1911. For by the said Motu Proprio, Pius X had abrogated the feasts of the Most Holy Body of Christ and of Saint Joseph, whose universal celebration nevertheless the Commission sufficiently urges by its responses.

The same Commission, by its various responses, regards as abrogated the proper feasts of regions not contained in the said catalogue, so that the words "in the universal Church" seem to be joined rather with the following word "are" than with the preceding words "under precept."

Therefore the signification is not: "With attention to the general law, only these must be observed," but rather this: "No others, in the universal Church, wherever you may be, are feast days under precept."

— Force of the precept. On feast days of precept, Mass must be heard, and besides, one must abstain from various works or acts. On the same days sacred ordinations can then be made for a grave cause (c. 1006); proclamations of banns also are made; and Mass must be celebrated by pastors for the people. By a response, however, of February 17, 1915, for Mass for the people, the catalogue of Urban VIII was restored, of which afterward a new quasi-promulgation was made by the Sacred Congregation of the Council, December 28, 1919 (A.A.S., XII, p. 42).

Therefore for that obligation of pastors these feasts are to be added: Monday and Tuesday after the Sunday of Easter and Pentecost; Finding of the Holy Cross; Purification, Annunciation, Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary; Dedication of Saint Michael; Nativity of Saint John the Baptist; days of the Holy Apostles Andrew, James, John, Thomas, Philip and James, Bartholomew, Matthew, Simon and Jude, Matthias; day of Saint Stephen; day of the Holy Innocents; day of Saint Lawrence; day of Saint Sylvester; day of Saint Anne; day of the holy patron of the place.

— Computation of the feast day, excepting the acquisition of indulgences (c. 923), is made from midnight to midnight.

— Gravity of the precept. The obligation of observing feasts is grave, as is also established from proposition 52 condemned by Innocent XI, and it binds all and only the baptized who enjoy the use of reason and have completed seven years (c. 12).