Easter – United Yam

Is the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary a holy day of obligation this year? #Catholic Catholics celebrate the solemnity of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary each year on Aug. 15. The solemnity commemorates the Church’s teaching that Mary, at the end of her earthly life, was taken body and soul into heaven.In 1950, Pope Pius XII confirmed this belief about the Virgin Mary when he defined it formally — “ex cathedra” — as a dogma of the Catholic faith. In his apostolic constitution Munificentissimus Deus, it states “that the Immaculate Mother of God, the ever-Virgin Mary, having completed the course of her earthly life, was assumed body and soul into heavenly glory.”So, is this solemnity a holy day of obligation? It depends on what day it falls on.In the United States, Latin-rite Catholics are bound by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops’ (USCCB) canon law norms, which require Mass attendance on Sundays and six specific holy days of obligation. However, regional exceptions and calendar-based rule adjustments can apply depending on the day of the week a feast lands.The six holy days of obligations are: Jan. 1, solemnity of Mary, Mother of God; Thursday of the sixth week of Easter, solemnity of the Ascension; Aug. 15, solemnity of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary; Nov. 1, solemnity of All Saints; Dec. 8, solemnity of the Immaculate Conception; and Dec. 25, Nativity of Our Lord Jesus Christ.However, when Jan. 1, the solemnity of Mary, Mother of God; Aug. 15, the solemnity of the Assumption; or Nov. 1, the solemnity of All Saints, falls on a Saturday or on a Monday, the obligation to attend Mass is lifted.According to Canon 1246, paragraph 2, of the Code of Canon Law, “the conference of bishops can abolish certain holy days of obligation or transfer them to a Sunday with prior approval of the Apostolic See.”Since the solemnity of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary falls on a Saturday this year, 2026, Catholics are not required to attend Mass in addition to the regular Sunday obligation.

Ann Teresa O’Neill, healed in Seton canonization miracle, dies at 78 #Catholic Ann Teresa O’Neill, whose confirmed miracle led to the canonization of St. Elizabeth Ann Seton, died on July 17 at age 78.O’Neill, of Easton, Maryland, had leukemia as a child, and her cure was accepted for Seton’s path to sainthood in 1975.Archbishop William E. Lori of Baltimore will serve as the principal celebrant for O’Neill’s funeral Mass on July 25 at the Basilica of the National Shrine of St. Elizabeth Ann Seton in Emmitsburg, Maryland. Interment will follow on the grounds of the shrine.“Ann O’Neill spent more than seventy years answering questions about a miracle,” Rob Judge, executive director of the National Shrine of St. Elizabeth Ann Seton, said in a statement following her death. “Yet, if you talked with her for any length of time, you discovered she wasn’t really interested in talking about miracles.”“She wanted to talk about her mother’s faith. She wanted to talk about Mother Seton. Mostly, she wanted to talk about Jesus,” he said.

She wanted to talk about her mother’s faith. She wanted to talk about Mother Seton. Mostly, she wanted to talk about Jesus. That may be the clearest evidence of why God chose her life to become part of one of the most important stories in American Catholic history.”

Rob JudgeExecutive director of the National Shrine of St. Elizabeth Ann Seton

“That may be the clearest evidence of why God chose her life to become part of one of the most important stories in American Catholic history,” he said.“The saints are like our friends,” O’Neill said in an interview with the Archdiocese of Baltimore’s Catholic Review in 2025. “Mother Seton was my mother’s friend. She’s my friend. And because we’re Catholic, we have a lot of friends in heaven.”Born on Oct. 7, 1947, O’Neill was the daughter of the late Felixena OʼNeill and the late William Richard OʼNeill.She is survived by her children, Joseph Hooe, Gerard Hooe, and Mary Alice Zawodny, and several grandchildren and great-grandchildren, a funeral notice said. She was preceded in death by her son Robert Eugene Hooe Jr. The miracle that helped Mother Seton become a saintBorn in Baltimore, O’Neill developed advanced leukemia as a young girl in 1952. Despite doctors trying every treatment, she grew more sick and her case was considered hopeless.During Holy Week, it was expected that the 4-year-old girl would pass within a few weeks.While her family prepared for her loss, Sister Mary Alice Fowler, supervisor of the children’s ward at St. Agnes Hospital, gave O’Neill’s mother prayers for Seton’s intercession and had her give them to relatives and friends.She pinned a cloth that had touched Seton’s remains to O’Neill’s hospital gown. Family members, friends, and other religious leaders began a novena for O’Neill.On Good Friday in 1952, with her daughter’s condition deteriorating, O’Neill’s mother took her to Mother Seton’s resting place in Emmitsburg — where Seton started the Sisters of Charity of St. Joseph, the first community for religious women established in the U.S., and the first Catholic school for girls.Against doctors’ wishes, O’Neill’s parents drove her to Emmitsburg, laid her on Seton’s tomb in the cemetery, and took her inside Mother Seton’s house where the saint had died of tuberculosis in 1821.Once her mother returned O’Neill to the hospital, doctors performed blood work and testing. On Easter Monday her blood count was normal. Constant tests over the following years showed her health to be normal.O’Neillʼs cure was accepted for Seton’s path to sainthood. Pope Paul VI officially canonized Mother Seton on Sept. 14, 1975, the ceremony for which O’Neill attended in Rome.

unitedyam July 23, 2026July 24, 2026

As a young girl, Ann Teresa O’Neill’s miraculous cure from leukemia was accepted as a miracle to advance St. Elizabeth Ann Seton’s path to sainthood.

St. Mary Magdalene: The first witness to the Resurrection #Catholic Not much is known about the life of St. Mary Magdalene, whose feast day is celebrated in the Catholic Church on July 22. She first appears in the Gospel of Luke as a follower of Christ from whom seven demons have been cast out. In the Gospels, she is sometimes associated with two other women in Scripture: the woman who washes Jesus’ feet with oil and Mary, the sister of Martha and Lazarus.Her most prominent position in Scripture occurs in the Gospel of John, where she remains with Jesus at the Crucifixion, keeps vigil at the tomb, and is the first to see him on Easter morning. Differing traditions have her evangelizing in Ephesus, while others place her in Marseille, France.Her body has never been found.Apart from the Blessed Virgin Mary, perhaps no other saint alive during the time of Christ appears to have been as deeply moved by Jesus’ death as this saint.“How beautiful to think that the first appearance of the Risen One took place in such a personal way! That there is someone who knows us, who sees our suffering and delusion, who is moved by us, and who calls us by name,” said Pope Francis of the encounter in a 2017 general audience the year after upgrading her memorial to a feast day in 2016.After this shocking encounter, the joy of Christ’s resurrection imbued her with the courage to spread this good news joyfully. “I have seen the Lord!” she proclaimed to the apostles and the whole world. Once known as a sinful woman, Mary Magdalene becomes the Apostle to the Apostles, the first witness to the Resurrection, and the model of a personal encounter with Jesus Christ risen from the grave.“God surprises her in the most unexpected way,” Pope Francis opined. “So that woman, who is the first to encounter Jesus … now has become an apostle of the new and greatest hope.”This story was first published on July 21, 2021, and has been updated.