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Calendar for Extraordinary Form

The table below gives an outline of moveable dates and Holydays of Obligation for celebrations of the Extraordinary Form. The list of months to the right give access to the basic Calendar for the Extraordinary Form according to the Missale Romanum of 1962. The Latin Mass Society of England and Wales offers a more detailed yearly Ordo.

Holydays of Obligation

Following a request for information the Bishops' Conference of England and Wales submitted a dubium to the Pontifical Commission Ecclesia Dei which confirmed that in the Roman Rite, whichever Form of the liturgy is being celebrated, the Holydays of Obligation are held in common. Where the obligation has been removed and the Holyday transferred to the Sunday, the Epiphany of the Lord, the Ascension of the Lord and Corpus Christ, this is to be followed in both Ordinary and Extraordinary celebrations of Mass.

The Sunday Letter

In the first column of each month of the Calendar, against each day of the month will be found one of seven letters: A, b, c, d, e, f and g. These are known as the Sunday letters and they show which days of a particular year are Sundays. For example: the Sunday letter for the year 2011 is b; therefore each day which bears this letter will be a Sunday throughout the year 2011: 2, 9, 16 January, etc. A leap year has two Sunday letters, the first showing the Sundays as far as 24 February, the second one showing the Sundays from 25 February until the end of the year, and the Sunday letter f is used for both 24 and 25 February. (In the terminology of the old Roman Calendar both dates are called the Sixth day before the Calends of March.) For example: the Sunday letters for the 2011 are A and g. The first letters shows the Sundays up to 24 February: 1, 8, 15 January… 19 February; then the second letter, g, is used: 26 February, 4, 11 March, etc.

The Old Roman Calendar

In the second column of each month of the Calendar there will be found three fixed points, the Kalends, the Nones and Ides, with Latin numerals counting down to these, the day before each of the three foxed points being note as the Pridie or Eve. The old Roman practice was to count down to the fixed points, with the having the number I, the Eve being the second day before it, the day before the Eve being the third day before it, and so on. The Kalends was the first day of each month. Thus 1 January was called the Kalends of January. The Nones of March, May, July and October was the seventh day of these months as we reckon them; in the other months it was the fifth day. The Ides of March, May, July and October was the fifteenth day of theses months; in other months it was the thirteenth day. For example: 2 January was the fourth day before the Nones of January; 2 March the sixth day before the Nones of March; 14 February the sixteenth day before the Kalends of March; 8 March the eighth day before the Ides of March.