Q: Why is the feast of the Transfiguration on August 6th being treated this year as a solemnity, so much so that it takes over the Sunday readings. Typically, my understanding is that only a solemnity takes over the Sunday readings, not a feast. The Ordo names the Transfiguration as a feast and not a solemnity. Yet one bulletin that just came out calls it a solemnity.
Can you bring some clarity to the issue for me.
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A: The difference is that the Transfiguration is a feast “of the Lord” – which makes it different from another feast. See the Universal Norms on the Liturgical Year and the Calendar in the front of your missal. Paragraphs 5 and 13 explain that feasts of the Lord rank higher than Sundays in Ordinary Time. The Table of Liturgical Days makes the same point a few pages later. See #5 and 6.
This is not just a quirk of this year – it’s been the case since the revision of the calendar in 1969.