A parish schedule is denser than it looks. This guide explains the vocabulary you will meet on a church profile here and on the parish's own website, and how the times on this site are calculated.
Vigil Masses
A Sunday Mass does not have to happen on Sunday. Canon 1248 §1 of the Code of Canon Law provides that someone “who assists at a Mass celebrated anywhere in a Catholic rite either on the feast day itself or in the evening of the preceding day satisfies the obligation of participating in the Mass.” That is why almost every parish has a Saturday evening Mass, usually called the vigil or anticipated Mass. The same applies to holy days: the evening before counts. This directory records 3,931 Saturday Masses among 20,221 Mass times overall, and shows them on the day they are actually celebrated rather than folding them into Sunday.
Holy days of obligation
Besides every Sunday, some solemnities oblige attendance — and the list is set by each country's bishops' conference under canon 1246 §2, so the United States and Canada differ.
United States. Six solemnities are observed as holy days of obligation: Mary, Mother of God (1 January); the Ascension; the Assumption (15 August); All Saints (1 November); the Immaculate Conception (8 December); and the Nativity of the Lord (25 December). Two complications are worth knowing. The Ascension is celebrated on the Thursday in some ecclesiastical provinces and transferred to the following Sunday in most others, so neighbouring dioceses can differ. And the application of the United States norm that lifts the obligation when certain dates fall on a Saturday or Monday has been the subject of a 2024 clarification from Rome, so practice in a given year is best confirmed locally. The authoritative texts are the USCCB complementary norm for canon 1246 and the annual USCCB liturgical calendar.
Canada. The Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops has reduced the list to two days beyond Sundays: Mary, Mother of God (1 January) and the Nativity of the Lord (25 December). Epiphany, the Ascension and Corpus Christi are transferred to the following Sunday. A Canadian diocesan restatement of the same rule is published by the Diocese of Peterborough. If you are travelling between the two countries, do not assume the day that obliges at home obliges where you are.
Divine Liturgy in Eastern Catholic churches
Eastern Catholic churches — Ukrainian, Melkite, Maronite, Syro-Malabar, Ruthenian and others — are fully Catholic but celebrate the Eucharist in their own rites, where it is normally called the Divine Liturgy rather than the Mass. Canon 1248 §1 speaks of a Mass “celebrated anywhere in a Catholic rite”, so attending a Divine Liturgy satisfies the Sunday obligation for a Latin-rite Catholic just as attending Mass does, and vice versa. Service names and the calendar differ, so read the parish's own schedule carefully. This directory stores Divine Liturgy as its own service type and treats it as equivalent to Mass throughout, including for stream eligibility. One church listed here publishes one; Eastern Catholic coverage is thin so far, and submissions are welcome.
Confession and adoration
Confession — the sacrament of penance, often listed as reconciliation — usually has a scheduled window, frequently before the Saturday vigil, and is very often also available by appointment when no time is published. Eucharistic adoration is a period of prayer before the Blessed Sacrament, sometimes weekly, sometimes perpetual. Both are recorded here as separate service types: 769 churches list confession times and 504 list adoration. A stream is only ever attached here to a Mass or a Divine Liturgy, never to confession or adoration.
Why schedules change
Parish schedules are seasonal by design. Summer often means a reduced timetable; Lent, Holy Week and Christmas replace the ordinary schedule outright; school-year Masses stop in June and resume in September. Funerals, weddings, clergy illness, weather and building work also move Masses at short notice, and clustered parishes rotate times between churches. This is why the site never presents a schedule as a promise. Where a parish publishes an end date for a schedule, we store it and stop showing that service once it has passed.
Reading the times shown here
Every church record carries the parish's own time zone — 17 distinct zones are represented here. Times are stored as church-local clock times, which is what the parish published. On the online Mass page you can switch the display between your own time zone, the church's local time and UTC; that changes only the presentation. Where a listing shows both, the church-local time is the authoritative one.
To find times near you, search the church directory, or browse by state and province or by diocese. Before travelling, confirm with the parish: the website and phone number are on every profile, and corrections are welcome via the contact page.