Principal Mass

What is a "Principal Mass"?
Throughout the history of the Church, She has developed a beautiful and elaborate form of worshiping God. She developed particular elevated practices that set aside worship as something truly beautiful. These practices are things like chanting, polyphony, incense, Latin, and other practices that helped to enflesh our worship in sacred sensible signs, as Christ became man and enfleshed the divine mystery. These beautiful practices became the expectation at all important liturgies. However, practically it became difficult to expect all of these elevated practices at every mass, so churches started picking a particular mass, usually one of their most attended masses, to have all of these accouterments. This is the "Principal Mass." It is the one mass on a given weekend or feast day that a church has designated as a place where all the elaborate liturgical practices are to be expected. It is not a guarantee that the liturgy will always have all of these elements, but it is where one could expect to find them.

When are the Principal Masses at St. Thomas Aquinas?
We have designated our 8:30am mass as our Principal Mass for consistency on the weekend. If we are going to do any elevated liturgy on a random weekend, it would be at the 8:30am mass. Below is a list of all the Principal Mass liturgies for feasts during the 2022-2023 school year. The ones in "red" indicate that there are multiple principle masses on a specific weekend. Please take a look at this list of liturgies, and if you want to try to make any of them, or avoid any of them, please plan accordingly.