Ascension Sunday?

Today we celebrated the Feast of the Ascension as did most Catholic Churches in the United States and today I saw once again what a bad idea it was to move the Feast of the Ascension from its proper day on Thursday.

I know that the purpose of the transfer was to enable more lazy Americans an opportunity to celebrate the Feast of the Ascension or more lazy priests from actually celebrating the Ascension Thursday Mass at a time when working people could attend but the result is that today we celebrated both the Feast of the Ascension and Mother's Day and you can guess what won out during the homily.

This is not to say that the priest did not say some good words in his homily, but that they were not about the Ascension. This is because it is difficult to try to explain to people what the Feast of the Ascension means to them and it is much easier to talk about the importance of Mothers. Everybody has a mother and talking about the importance of women is always a good thing. So, we will just drop a few words about that day's Gospel and quickly move on to our "We love Mom!" talk.

So, this is my little voice in the desert crying out to move the Feast of the Ascension back to Thursday. After all, why not move other Feast days to Sundays as well like Christmas or the Annunciation so more people could attend? Why not just scrap the Ascension and just move strait to Pentacost - it's so much more enjoyable to talk about? Argh!!!