Dec. 7, 2006

‘Remember to keep holy the Lord’s Day’

Part Two

In the previous edition of The Catholic Sun, we began our reflection on the Third Commandment, looking briefly at the serious obligation of Sunday observance, and at how the Lord’s Day is a day for rest and a day of joy. Now, let us move on to a consideration of how the Sabbath observance was transferred to Sunday, when the Lord’s Day became “Christ’s Day” and the “Day of the Church.”

Christ’s Day

If any day belongs to Christ, it is certainly the first day of the week, the day that Our Redeemer rose from the dead. Every Sunday of the year, the Church invites the world to stop and gaze on the face of Christ, to ponder and relive the Easter event by which the world is saved. Above all other days of the week, on Sunday the Church celebrates, with solemnity, the Paschal Mystery of Christ that conquers sin and death.

When the Catholic community gathers on Sunday, it recalls all that Christ has done on this blessed day. It was on the first day after the Sabbath that Christ rose from the dead, that He appeared to the disciples on the way to Emmaus and to the Eleven gathered behind locked doors in the Upper Room. The gift of the Holy Spirit poured out on Pentecost took place on a Sunday, and on a Sunday the first preaching of the Gospel occurred and the first converts to Christ were baptized.

From Apostolic times, then, the observance of the Lord’s Day was moved from the Sabbath to the day following it, i.e. to Sunday. The Catechism of the Catholic Church gives this explanation (#2175f), “In Christ’s Passover, Sunday fulfills the spiritual truth of the Jewish Sabbath and announces man’s eternal rest in God. For worship under the Law prepared for the mystery of Christ, and what was done there prefigured some aspect of Christ… The celebration of Sunday observes the moral commandment inscribed by nature in the human heart to render to God an outward, visible, public, and regular worship… Sunday worship fulfills the moral command of the Old Covenant, taking up its rhythm and spirit.”

The transfer of the Lord’s Day remembrance from the Sabbath to the first day of the week, then, took place because of Christ, especially His rising from the dead. He is “the Lord of the Sabbath” (Mk 2:28), and His death and Resurrection changed time forever. To remember Him on the First Day of the week, then, is to recognize the awesome mystery of His Resurrection and to acknowledge the new creation that this victory of love has brought about.

The Day of the Church

Writing in the second century, St. Ignatius of Antioch observed: “Those who lived according to the old order of things have come to a new hope, no longer keeping the Sabbath, but the Lord’s Day, in which our life is blessed by Him and by His death.”

Sunday observance, as we can see, already in the second century began to shape the rhythm of life for the followers of Jesus. It set them apart from people around them. It fortified their identity as persons who love Christ and who share in His risen life. It was the communal expression of Christian faith.

In the fourth century, St. John Chrysostom reminded those he served as bishop that private prayer was not sufficient to nurture one’s faith in Christ. The Sunday Liturgy was an essential part of a Christian’s identity and responsibility. Let us consider again his words: “You cannot pray at home as at church, where there is a great multitude, where exclamations are cried out to God as from one great heart, and where there is something more: the union of minds, the accord of souls, the bond of charity, the prayers of the priests.”

Sunday worship not only nurtures us as individuals, but it builds up the Church as a whole. Living in a time and culture that exalts individualism at the expense of the common good, it is important to rediscover the necessary connection between love of Christ and love of the Church. More than 30 years ago, in Evangelii Nuntiandi (#16), Pope Paul VI spoke of this great need: “…not without sorrow we can hear people — whom we wish to believe are well-intentioned but who are certainly misguided in their attitude — continually claiming to love Christ but without the Church, to listen to Christ but not the Church, to belong to Christ but outside the Church. The absurdity of this dichotomy is clearly evident in this phrase of the Gospel: ‘Anyone who rejects you rejects me.’ And how can one wish to love Christ without loving the Church if the finest witness to Christ is that of St. Paul: ‘Christ loved the Church and sacrificed Himself for her’?”

A new appreciation of the Church, then, is badly needed today. While recognizing the foibles and sins of the Church’s members, we do well to recall that the Church is the Mystical Body of Christ, in which our Savior is truly present and where He feeds His people through the Sacraments and the inspired word.

From Sunday to Monday

What happens on Sunday prepares for Monday and the days that follow. As John Paul II writes in Dies Domini (#45), “The Eucharistic celebration does not stop at the church door. Like the first witnesses of the Resurrection, Christians who gather each Sunday to experience and proclaim the presence of the Risen Lord are called to evangelize and bear witness in their daily lives.”

Faithful observance of Sunday has become in our day a countercultural act, which witnesses to Christ in a public manner badly needed by our contemporaries. Whoever wisely makes Sunday more important than the weekend stands apart in our secularistic society, bearing witness to the love of God and to His holiness.

Families have a special role to play in bearing witness to the Lord’s Day. Efforts to celebrate the Eucharist together and to do other activities as a family on Sunday require sacrifice on the part of parents and children alike, because of the many secular events that get scheduled on weekends nowadays. But the effort is richly rewarded as the family grows in Eucharistic piety.

We Catholics evangelize the world by being true to our identity: i.e. by resting on Sunday, by celebrating the Eucharist, by keeping the Lord’s Day holy. God has given us this day to refresh our bodies and souls, to deepen our communion with Him and with one another, and to prepare us for eternal life.

Copyright 2006 The Catholic Sun.