Holy days of obligtaion in When

In the Catholic Church, all Sundays are holy days of obligation. But some holy days of obligation don’t fall on Sundays. You can use When to keep track of them.

=> When

Germany

The following days are holy days of obligation in all German dioceses. You can copy these lines into your ~/.when/calendar.

* 12 25 , Nativity (First Christmas Day)
* 12 26 , St Stephen (Second Christmas Day)
* 1 1   , Mary Mother of God
e=0-1   , Easter Monday
e=0-39  , Ascension
e=0-50  , Pentecost Monday

The following days are holy days of obligation in some German dioceses, but not all:

* 1 6  , Epiphany
e=0-60 , Corpus Christi
* 8 15 , Assumption of Mary
* 11 1 , All Saints

=> Holy days of obligation in Germany and elsewhere [en] | Holy days of obligation in different German dioceses [de]

Sundays

Note that I haven’t listed any holy days of obligation that always fall on Sundays.

If you want a reminder for all Sundays, you can use the following line:

w=sun , Sunday obligation

If you don’t want a reminder if one of the holy days of obligation listed above falls on a Sunday, you have to rewrite the ones with a fixed date as a pair of conditions (month and day). Then add a condition to prevent reminders on Sundays, like so:

m=12 & d=25 & w!=sun , Nativity (First Christmas Day)

You don’t have to add that condition for the ones listed above that depend on Easter (and thus don’t have a fixed date), because they always fall on a day that isn’t Sunday.

Liturgical seasons

The liturgical year in the Roman Rite consists of the Christmas cycle, the Easter cycle, and ordinary time between them. Both cycles consist of a period of preparation and a period of celebration. To have an overview, you can use the following lines:

w=sun & ((m=11 & d>=27) | (m=12 & d<=3)) , First Sunday of Advent
* 12 25                   , Christmas (beginning of Christmastide)
w=sun & m=1 & d>6 & d<=13 , Baptism of the Lord (end of Christmastide)
e=46                      , Ash Wednesday (beginning of Lent)
e=2                       , Good Friday (beginning of the Easter Triduum)
e=0                       , Easter Sunday (beginning of Eastertide)
e=0-49                    , Pentecost (end of Eastertide)

Note that some changes in season officially happen on the evening before the day listed here. That’s because the evening before a day belongs to the same liturgical day. For example, the end of Lent and the beginning of the Easter Triduum happens during the celebration of the Last Supper, on the evening before Good Friday, not on the day of Good Friday itself.

EOF