From a reader…
QUAERITUR:
If we are keeping the 9 first Fridays, with the Votive Mass of the Sacred Heart, how do Good Friday (April 3) and St. Joseph (May 1) impact them?
I get your point: rulz iz rulz, right?
However, I think Jesus with His Most Sacred Heart, loves His earthly father St. Joseph. I think that Jesus’ Most Sacred Heart, pierced on that first Good Friday, will understand the interruption of the formalities.
Later on, give the First Friday’s a try again, but plot it out with the liturgical calendar.
Meanwhile, it is hard for me to imagine that in the case you described, your efforts are vain.
Unless the question was from a priest who wanted to do a private devotion of offering nine consecutive votive masses for whatever reason, I don’t understand what would be the problem here. Fulfilling the First Fridays devotion in honor of the Sacred Heart of Jesus _only_ requires receiving Holy Communion on nine consecutive Fridays in a spirit of reparation for sins and offenses against Our Lord in the Blessed Sacrament, so Good Friday and St. Joseph the Worker present no problem of any sort in terms of being able to receive. There’s not even any requirement to attend mass at all, certainly not a specific mass, as long as one is able to receive Holy Communion somehow (distributed outside of mass, or even in a hospital bed).
Sadly I am quite unfamiliar with First Friday devotions, but I did a little research: it seems, in its purest form (America Needs Fátima, locutions to St. Margaret Mary Alocoque) that the sole precept is to receive Holy Communion on these days.
Most sources stress the importance of actually attending Mass on those days but they don’t really specify “which Mass” should be attended or celebrated.
Holy Communion can definitely be received even without Mass, on Good Friday. In the current General Roman Calendar, St. Joseph the Worker is an “optional memorial” so I do not even see an obstacle to substituting a votive Mass here, though I am far from being a priest, traditionalist, or expert liturgist.
In fact, if we want to get pedantic, and of course we do: the Paschal Triduum is a “triple day” or “one liturgy” that spans Thursday-Friday-Saturday, so wouldn’t you fulfill the First Friday precept by receiving Holy Communion at basically any time during that sacred Triduum? It’s like a bonus free pass!
Lastly, it seems that if First Friday Devotions are mostly of a personal nature, and not set in liturgical stone, that the faithful are free to basically observe them in a quite flexible way, much as you would pray the Rosary privately, and that doesn’t invalidate your faith and devotion whatsoever.
Well, the First Fridays devotion consists in Communicating worthily on them. Also, it is customary to pray the Litany of the Sacred Heart. Having the Votive Mass is an afterthought and not integral.
So, St. Joseph is no problem at all (and neither would be Sts. Philipp&James).
Nowadays, you usually can Communicate on Good Fridays as well. When that was not the case, I guess the answer was „there‘s a reason it‘s some 9 consecutive Fridays in one‘s life and not every Friday; just start again“. I also think God might accept the 10th Friday for the omitted Good Friday if one went to the Liturgy then.
I have never tried to do the first Saturdays or the first Fridays, but have noticed that observing them seem to be more popular at parishes that offer the VO. Since I no longer make the long drive to the nearest parish that regularly offers the VO including extra masses on all first Fridays and Saturdays, I have noticed that the practices are hardly mentioned, if at all in the bulletins for my two local parishes. But one parish almost regularly offers a 10 AM Saturday Mass and both offer daily Masses every Friday so one could easily satisfy the requirements of these devotions.
At the parish I used to regularly attend, there were always special VO masses for the first Fridays and Saturdays. It seems to me that this tells us something about how accepting popular piety (and cooperating with it) can help a priest with his desire (which I hope he has) to help his congregation achieve salvation. The fact that, as a result of his cooperation with popular piety, congregants are offered more opportunities for confession and attending additional Masses, and that more Masses than otherwise are being offered, clearly at least some congregants (and perhaps others) are receiving more graces than otherwise. The popular piety part of this is important because many people find it easier to pray at Church than at home. If a small group at a parish persuades their priest to offer additional masses for these devotions, then eventually others will join and so graces will abound even more. Because more masses are being offered, and more confessions being heard, there are additional benefits even to those who don’t formally meet the requirements for these devotions.
That is, if I attend 10 additional masses (5 first Fridays and 5 Saturdays), say 5 times every year, but never get to 6 in a row, I still have more graces either for me or, say, the poor souls than if I had not assisted at any additional masses at all.
Most sources stress the importance of actually attending Mass on those days but they don’t really specify “which Mass” should be attended or celebrated.
Not to get technical, but there’s no Mass on Good Friday to attend. There are those traditionalists who will absolutely not receive communion on Good Friday because it used to be that only the priest received on Good Friday. I don’t really understand why they wouldn’t want to receive our Lord if they are properly disposed and able, but to each their own.
FWIW: I have a small booklet from Tan Books about Devotion to the Sacred Heart and observing the nine First Fridays. It talks about the shift workers who would receive communion outside of Mass at short communion services that priests held for shift workers using the ritual from the Roman Ritual. This was back when Mass could only be offered in the morning.
It is a slight problem if you are at a pre-1955 Good Friday as communion is not distributed to the faithful.
> Not to get technical, but there’s no Mass on Good Friday to attend.
Not to get super-duper ultra-technical, but there’s actually a mega-Mass-liturgy to attend. It’s called “Triduum”.
Now I’m just a simple unfrozen country layman, and I don’t understand what transpired for y’all between the 16th Century and 1965, but I do know that the Magisterium today considers the three days: Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, and Holy Saturday Vigil, to be one entire and complete, unbroken liturgy. There is no dismissal after the Mass of the Lord’s Supper nor after the Celebration of the Lord’s Passion, and there is neither Introductory Rite nor “opening Sign of the Cross” on Friday or Saturday evenings.
Therefore, if the “obligation” or “precept” of “First Friday Devotions” truly demands that we attend Mass, then I would contend that this precept is completely fulfilled by attending the Triduum, because it really is the pinnacle of Masses for the year.
Just because there is “no consecration/no Mass” on Friday doesn’t change the spiritual reality: that the Mass hasn’t ended on Thursday night, and it won’t end until the Leonine Prayers and/or veneration of the altar of sacrifice, very late in the darkness of the Holy Night.
So, if someone gets really jammed up and discovers that one of nine consecutive Fridays lands on Good Friday, surely, surely, truly they could attend the Triduum, in whole or in part, and I don’t know any liturgist or cleric who would try and argue that they “haven’t attended Mass on Friday”.