Liturgical Savings Time

I was thinking yesterday how celebrating Epiphany on the 2nd has really thrown off my liturgical time clock. I really dislike Liturgical Savings Time. Everything seems so compressed without the time to take in and process the liturgical season.

If the USCCB is actually serious about ‘National Eucharistic Revival’, they might think about this mixed message.

1. The Mass is the source and summit of our faith.
2. Yet we wouldn’t want you to have to endure Mass two days in a row or be forced to go during the week.

Plus we talk about how great it would be if we could share the same date for Easter with the Orthodox. We can’t even share the same date for Solemnities within the Church around the world.

If we try to make Catholicism more convenient, people will just find it is even more convenient not to be Catholic or practice their faith.

This morning I get an email from the head of our schola that we will be having a Low Mass on Epiphany. Apparently, Fr. Briggs Hurley must have felt the same way I did, since this Mass had not been previously scheduled. I am so thankful for him in many ways.

I feel some joy in anticipation of this. This Mass will be during my work hours in the morning—so this is a good excuse to take a day off and spend some time in Adoration. I think about the Magi who“fell down and worshipped him”, and I will follow their lead as best as I am able.

As Brant Pitre references in his commentary:

Now this is extremely important because the word used here for worship, proskyneō, literally means to bow down prostrate before someone. It actually means to get down like a dog before another person. So you bow down before them prostrate.

And in some contexts the word proskyneō can be used for the kind of homage that you pay to just an ordinary king, but in the Gospel of Matthew he uses this term for the kind of expression of adoration and veneration that you give to God and God alone.