Sunday

What are your childhood memories of Sunday? Was it a day that began with worship? Was it a time set aside to spend with family and friends? Were there special meals or other family rituals?

Sunday for my family meant going to Mass first thing in the morning. Since my hometown was largely populated by Italians, Sunday was the day we ate pasta. I can still smell the aroma of homemade tomato sauce which filled our house on Sundays. In the afternoon, we would sit out on the front porch or we would “go for a ride” to visit relatives or visit the graves of our loved ones at the cemetery. Then we would stop at McDonalds or go for an ice cream. It was a special day, sacred in fact, because we did things on Sunday we didn’t normally do during the rest of the week.

Whatever your childhood memories of Sunday, chances are that your current experience is different. Times have changed. These days, most people use Sundays to catch up on all the work that didn’t get done the rest of the week. Sundays have become filled with scheduled school and sports activities, leaving little time to observe the special nature of Sunday, as directed in the book of Deuteronomy:

“Observe the Sabbath day, to keep it holy, as the Lord your God commanded you. Six days you may labor and do all your work; but the seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord, your God. No work may be done then, whether by you, or your son or daughter.” (Deuteronomy 5:12-13)

The word for Sabbath in Hebrew is Shabbat, which is a name for God. The Sabbath is a day to praise God for God’s goodness and to make the day holy as God did in creating the Sabbath.

“When God created the seventh day, he blessed it, and he rested from all the work he had done.” (Genesis 2:3)

Scholars of the Talmud say the reason the Sabbath was created was not because God needed rest but in order to make rest holy, to demand rest of us so that by regularly resting in God, we could ourselves become new people. We are encouraged to keep the day by setting aside weekly routines, and giving ourselves permission to relax, be still, and partake in only those things which refresh our spirits. Our work, after all, will never be complete. But Sunday is not meant to serve merely our own renewal. Sunday frees us to fulfill the Lord’s command to “love one another” in ways we normally pass up during a busy week. Our very celebration of the Sunday Eucharist calls us to this service. As Pope Saint John Paul II exhorts:

“The Sunday eucharist commits the faithful even more to all the works of charity, of mercy, of apostolic outreach.” Dies Domini 69