Today I wish you a Happy feast of Saint Patrick, Bishop and Confessor.

But wait, that’s on Monday.

Well, for the vast majority of the world it is, but in an interesting application of “The Rules” that a GA Junkie would appreciate, if you are “observant,” then today is the day to celebrate.

You may have heard that in predominantly Roman Catholic areas there is a problem because Holy Week starts tomorrow and nothing trumps Holy Week in the church calendar.  To be specific, this is all laid out in a set of rules known as the General Rubrics (GR).  On the Roman calendar this Monday, March 17, would be the feast of St. Patrick except that is a third class feast day and since Monday of Holy Week falls on the same day this year and it is a movable feast of the first class with very high precedence [GR 91] then St. Patrick’s day is “commemorated or omitted altogether” [GR 95].  It gets a bit more complicated on the church calendar since there is an allowance for saints that are patrons of a particular city or nation making the feast day one of the first class in those places [GR 57(a)].  However, this is still not good enough to trump Holy Week since the patron’s day comes out twelfth in the order of precedence and Monday to Wednesday of Holy Week are in seventh place.  (For reference, Christmas, Easter and Pentecost are highest precedence and Ash Wednesday is also in the group that is seventh.)  In this whole precedence and rules thing, the rule would be to celebrate the feast of Saint Patrick on April 1. (Quick version: Rescheduled feasts are to be pushed after the day that displaces them but both Holy Week and the week following Easter Sunday have higher precedence (the week following Easter just barely) and then there is another displaced feast of higher rank to be celebrated first on March 31.)  There are a couple of variants floating around which would move it earlier, but technically it should go later.

Well, you can’t just omit St. Patrick’s day in some parts, and April 1 was too long to wait, so a compromise was reached by the Irish bishops with the approval of the Vatican to celebrate it today.  See, the PC(USA) is not the only ones with “creative polity.”  And of course, secular celebrations will go on virtually unaffected.

I personally find feast days helpful as a spiritual exercise, but not in a veneration or patron saint sense.  As regular readers know, I welcome All Saints Day (November 1) as an opportunity to remember those that I have know who have been a spiritual inspiration to me and are now part of the Church Triumphant.  In the same way, I appreciate the historical saints, beatified by a particular church or not, who are a witness to the faith and can encourage us in our “running the race” and “fighting the good fight.”  May we be found faithful as well.  Sola Dei Gloria