Optional Memorial is a Roman Rite liturgical rank permitting celebration of a saint or mystery on its assigned day according to the calendar and rubrics, while ordinarily allowing the weekday or another permitted optional memorial to be observed instead.
A rank governing liturgical observance
Optional Memorial identifies how a celebration is observed in the Roman calendar. It does not mean that belief in the saint's holiness, the doctrine expressed by the celebration, or respect for the saint is optional. Rank controls the Office and Mass choices and interacts with seasonal weekdays and precedence; it is not a scale measuring heavenly glory, historical importance, or popularity.
On an ordinary eligible weekday, the celebrant may observe the optional memorial, another optional memorial assigned that day, or the weekday within the rubrics. A community's proper calendar can make a universally optional celebration obligatory or raise its rank for a legitimate proper reason. The applicable territory, church, institute, and date must therefore accompany the bare rank.
Seasonal restrictions
During privileged portions of Advent and Christmas Time and during Lent, memorial observance is restricted and may take the form of a permitted commemoration rather than the full memorial. Holy Week, the Easter Octave, Sundays, solemnities, and feasts follow their own precedence. A saint remains commemorated in the Roman Martyrology even when not celebrated liturgically that year.
Proper and Common texts
An optional memorial often has a proper Collect and takes other texts from an appropriate Common or the weekday. Some later decrees provide readings, Hours texts, or additional Mass elements. The existence of a full formulary does not automatically raise the rank, and lack of a unique preface does not make the observance unofficial.
Calendar inscription and local variation
The Holy See can inscribe an optional memorial in the General Roman Calendar for universal availability. Episcopal conferences, dioceses, individual churches, and religious families maintain approved proper calendars according to competence. A saint can therefore be an optional memorial universally, an obligatory memorial in one country, a feast in a diocese of patronage, and absent from another proper without contradiction.[1][2]
Beatification permits cult within defined limits but does not automatically put every Blessed on every calendar. Inscription requires competent action and normally a genuine relation to the local Church or religious family. Devotional popularity, internet calendars, and the date of death cannot create a liturgical observance by themselves.
Accurate calendar presentation
A daily calendar should display Optional Memorial exactly and should not call it a feast. It must first compute the principal celebration by precedence and then identify whether optional observance is possible, impeded, or reduced to commemoration. The civil date, local time zone, calendar layer, rite, and year all matter.
An encyclopedia entry should name the decree or calendar, assigned date, universal and proper ranks, liturgical texts, translation status, and collisions. Saint of the Day may still feature another saint associated with the date when the principal liturgy uses the optional memorial, provided the relationship to the date is truthful and the two homepage elements do not redundantly duplicate one another.[3]
References
- 1.Mysterii Paschalis and the Universal Norms — Paul VI's apostolic letter promulgating the reformed General Roman Calendar and the universal norms governing liturgical days, ranks, precedence, calendars, and celebrations
- 2.Decree inscribing Saint John Henry Newman in the General Roman Calendar — A current Holy See example of a decree assigning an optional memorial and directing insertion of its texts into calendars, the Missal, the Hours, and the Roman Martyrology
- 3.USCCB, Liturgical Year and Calendar — A bishops' conference presentation of the Universal Norms, temporal and sanctoral cycles, General Roman Calendar, proper calendars, current ranks, and calendar application