Typically the Ordinary Time liturgy supersedes any feast days that occur, but in certain cases, the feast day overrides the normal Sunday Mass.
Generally speaking the Sundays of Ordinary Time are uninterrupted from Pentecost Sunday until the feast of Christ in the King at the end of November.
Rarely does a feast that is not a holy day of obligation ever supersede the Sunday liturgy.
However, on this Sunday the Twenty-Fourth Sunday in Ordinary Time is replaced by the feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross.
This feast recalls the legendary discovery of the true cross by St. Helena. According to tradition, the cross St. Helena discovered was venerated in a solemn ceremony on September 14, 320.
The miraculous story is narrated in the Golden Legend:
Then Judas made himself ready and began to dig, and when he came to twenty paces deep he found three crosses and brought them to the queen [Helena], and because he knew not which was the cross of our Lord, he laid them in the middle of the city and abode the demonstrance of God; and about the hour of noon there was the corpse of a young man brought to be buried. Judas retained the bier, and laid upon it one of the crosses, and after the second, and when he laid on it the third, anon the body that was dead came again to life.
Feast of the Lord
The feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross is classified as a "feast of the Lord," and falls under a category that can override a Sunday liturgy in the Roman Rite:
- When a solemnity of the Lord, the Blessed Virgin Mary, or a saint falls on a Sunday.
- When a feast of the Lord falls on a Sunday (i.e. the Transfiguration or Exaltation of the Cross).
It is a lesser known feast among many Catholics, as it typically falls during the week. When it does fall on a Sunday, it is a rare opportunity to explore the history of this feast and to give glory to the cross of Jesus Christ.
