KEEPING THE LORD’S DAY HOLY
Bishop Paul S. Coakley
Every year we celebrate the feast of Easter with great joy and solemnity. But long before the liturgical development of this annual festival the Church observed each and every Sunday as a “little Easter.” As the Second Vatican Council recalled, “Every seven days, the Church celebrates the Easter mystery. This is a tradition going back to the Apostles, taking its origin from the actual day of Christ’s resurrection—a day appropriately designated ‘the Lord’s Day’” (SC 106).
For Christians the Lord’s Day, the first day of the week, replaced the Jewish Sabbath which is the seventh day, as the fundamental holy day. St. Jerome observed, “Sunday is the day of the resurrection, it is the day of Christians, it is our day.” In our thoroughly secular culture we are losing the sense of the Lord’s Day as “our day”. For many it has become a day like any other day on which few hesitate to conduct business as usual. If there is anything special about it, it may be a day to indulge in a little extra sleep.
As the day which recalls the victory of the Lord’s Resurrection and gift of the Holy Spirit, Sunday is set apart to worship God in faith and gratitude and to renew hope. It is a day of rest from labor which anticipates our eternal rest in God. Sunday rest keeps us from making idols of the work of our own hands and pursuits. We must admit that it is all too easy to become so thoroughly absorbed in our work and preoccupations that we neglect our serious obligations to others, to our families and to God. When Sunday loses its religious meaning it becomes merely part of a “weekend.” This loss flattens our horizons and robs us of the joy proper to Christian believers. Without the religious orientation of the Lord’s Day we easily lose an awareness of the deepest meaning of our lives: that we are created by God and that we are created for God.
“This is the day the Lord has made, let us rejoice and be glad in it” (Ps.118:24). The special quality of the Lord’s Day is joy. The Lord’s Day invites us to recall who we are in Christ: beloved sons and daughters, children of God. It is important to deliberately cultivate the Lord’s Day as a day of leisure and celebration. At the heart of this is the Eucharist. We have a serious obligation to participate in Mass every Sunday. Our participation in the Eucharistic assembly gives testimony of our belonging to Christ and to his Church. Nourished regularly by word and sacrament we are united more intimately with Christ and one another in the communion of faith and charity. We fulfill our duty in justice to worship God and our duty in charity to help strengthen one another.
The more we realize the central importance of the Eucharistic liturgy the more we will make every effort to participate fully and faithfully. This certainly includes making every effort to arrive on time, to dress appropriately, and prepare ourselves prayerfully. We will strive to unite our external actions with our interior dispositions. Both joy and reverence characterize the spirit of the Eucharistic assembly.
Keeping the Lord’s Day as a holy day means not only participating fully at Mass, but also refraining as much as possible from unnecessary servile labor. The Lord’s Day is a day for leisure, a leisure that renews the religious and human values that keep us mindful of our dignity as children of God. Leisure is for family and friends, for prayer and reflection, for enjoyment of creation, and for other humanizing pursuits. Sunday is also a day to be mindful of those whose lives, because of poverty and hardship, have no leisure. It is, therefore, a day for works of charity and for sharing with others.
As St. Jerome reminds us Sunday is “our day”. Our challenge is to reclaim this weekly observance of the Lord’s Day as the fixed point toward which and from which all of our energies flow.