Keeping the Sabbath

It’s time to take a little break from history and go in a different direction. So today, we’ll begin to discuss a certain trend in the history of the Church that we in modern times, and especially in America, have forgotten: Sunday.

Yes, we do still have Sundays in America. But they’ve lost some of their former glory. These Sundays used to be days of rest and worship, instead of the days of football and cramming for homework that they’ve turned into, a celebration of the end of the weekend. So what’s Sunday supposed to be?

Well, first off, Sunday is the day of the week which bears the commandment to rest and keep holy. Yes, the Bible does say the Sabbath. Yes, those of the Jewish faith do still celebrate the Sabbath on Saturday. But to the Christian (with the exception of a few denominations), the Sabbath is no more. Worshipping on Sunday is not simply moving the Sabbath from Saturday to Sunday. Instead, it’s a totally new institution. Sunday is not simply a day for rest and for God. It is instead, “the Lord’s Day.” Sunday is a celebration of Easter every week. That’s right, Easter comes back every Sunday for Catholics. Why do we do this? Well, because of how important Easter is. We continually come back to the celebration of the Resurrection because it is the entire focal point of our faith. It’s the Church trying to show what is truly important.

This used to be common

It takes a certain art to appreciate this, though. To rediscover the lost art of the Lord’s Day, we’ll need to look at where we have come from in order to see where we must go. So we’ll start with the Sabbath in history.

The Sabbath is the day that the Israelites in the Old Testament would gather to worship. They did this because of God’s commandment that every seventh day be kept holy (This is number 3 or 4 depending on your list). Why did God command it, though? Well, the easy answer is the Genesis account of creation, which speaks of God’s rest on the Seventh day (Genesis 2:2) (for the record, God doesn’t literally rest (He can’t), but that’s a story for another time). Before God’s rest, though, every time he looks upon something, he sees it as “good,” until he gets to man, which is “very good.” It is then that God rests. This isn’t God saying “well, guess I’m done here. Time to take a break before the next project.” No, God doesn’t need a break. Instead, God is taking the time to gaze intently at and contemplate the glory of the man he has just created.

How did the Israelites take this commandment? It literally became a defining mark of their relationship with God. The Sabbath became so important to them that by the time that Jesus was born, there were dozens of limitations on the amount of work one could do and the distance one could travel in order to keep the Sabbath. This respect for the Lord, though not necessarily the rules that came with it, were brought even into the Church in the first few centuries. This is something that we as modern Christians have lost.

Everything we have and even time itself comes from God. As the Jesuits say, all this should be turned back to God, for His greater glory. God chose the Sabbath to be a day specifically dedicated to Him. It is specifically a day for rest. Why? Because when we have true rest, we are reminded of how much we depend on God. We are to remember it every week. You know, “remember” is a really funny word in the Old Testament. The Israelites were told to “remember” the Passover. How do they remember it? By celebrating it, as if it were the first time it happened. The Jewish Pasch actually uses the words “I” and “me” and “we” in the celebration, as though those participating in the feast were actually present. This Sabbath, then, is a day to be remembered. What are we remembering with the Sabbath? We are remembering the rest that God took on his first day. So we must celebrate this rest of God. However, we don’t simply rest as God did. We are called to rest in God, and bring everything we have in front of Him to rest, as though we were taking a nap with our parents as a toddler.

The main takeaway point from the Sabbath, though, is that it isn’t simply interrupting work. It’s a celebration of the good that God has created. It is the rest of joy and awe that comes from creation and celebrating beauty.

Next time, we’ll take some time to look at how we moved from celebration of Sabbath to the celebration of Sunday, and some of the things about it that changed.