The Queen Stands at Your Right Hand

I think it's a bit amusing that people have so much trouble with the Assumption. You got your Enoch and your Elijah going to Heaven the short way, so why not Mary?

....And to You, My Brothers and Sisters....

Confession time. If I weren't Catholic, I'd never go to church. Not that I don't like church services; I do. But I'm very forgetful, and I'd probably forget every week. Having the Sunday obligation engrained in me during childhood helped a lot. But there are still times when I find myself forgetting it's Sunday.

So it's probably no big surprise that Holy Days of Obligation really throw me off. I usually manage somehow during the fall and spring, but oh, those summer ones. So yes, I managed to totally forget to go to Mass for Assumption, in spite of the fact that it's my very favorite feast of the whole year. I followed this up by forgetting to go to Mass on Saturday so I could hit Confession beforehand. (Not for missing Assumption -- forgetfulness isn't a sin -- but for something else I would rather not specify. Sins are always so stupid and smallminded, which is why they're so humiliating. I really ought to be too embarrassed to do evil....) Then, I hit the trifecta by forgetting I was still in a state of sin and taking Communion. I of course remembered all these things as soon as it was too late to do anything about them.

At this point, all my non-Catholic friends will be giving me weird looks and wondering why this is bothering me. Beyond the fact that they aren't bound by these regs, we all know (as I've just pointed out) that forgetting isn't a sin. Yeah, but forgetting something means that something is left undone, and worse, that I haven't cared enough to make sure I did it. Would you forget a holiday in honor of your mother? Would you forget to apologize and sit brazenly at dinner in your father's house, parasiting off his hard work and sacrifice, after you'd done something nasty and offensive against him? If you're absentminded enough, maybe people would understand. But that doesn't make it a good thing to do.