St. Isidore Parish

Weekly Message:

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Now is a good time to remember that Bishop Hying has asked us to work on four things:  a daily prayer life, more frequent Confessions, keeping Sunday holy, and keeping Friday penitential.  On this back page, we have talked about prayer and Confessions, so now let us turn to why Sunday should be kept holy and how we can keep it holy.

We must first turn to the Ten Commandments, the laws given to us by God to follow.  The third commandment states: “Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy.  Six days you shall labor, and do all your work; but the seventh day is a sabbath to the Lord your God; in it you shall not do any work.”  Jesus mentions the sabbath in the Gospel of Mark: “the sabbath was made for man, not man for the sabbath; so the Son of Man is lord even of the sabbath.”  In the Jewish religion, Saturday is the sabbath, the last day of the week.  For Christians, the sabbath is Sunday, the Lord’s Day, the day of His resurrection.  Every Sunday is a little Easter.  We can read in the earliest Christian documents, like the Didache and the letter to the Hebrews, that from the first generation, Sunday was the holiest day, a day when all Christians were called to attend Mass.

We can learn more about the importance of Sunday in the Catechism, paragraphs 2168-2195.  For instance, “the Sunday celebration of the Lord’s Day and his Eucharist is at the heart of the Church’s life.”  We are reminded that on Sundays and holy days of obligation, all Catholics must attend Mass, either on the day itself or the vigil the evening before, unless they cannot attend for medical or other valid reasons.  “Those who deliberately fail in this obligation commit a grave sin.”

The reason why we join together on Sunday is as a testimony of our unity in the Body of Christ.  While certainly God is everywhere, the community of faith celebrating together is a special commemoration and sign of our love for God and each other.  Remember that Christ Himself said, “for where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them” (Matthew 18:20).

We join together most importantly for the commemoration of the Eucharist.  There is no substitute for the Sunday Eucharist.  Watching Mass at home is sometimes necessary, but it cannot be accepted as a substitute.  This has been one of the dangers of the past few years.  Live-streaming Masses has been a double-edged sword.

It is clear, from the Bible and from tradition, that Sunday is a special day where God calls us together.  Besides Mass, there are other ways to keep the day holy and set apart, which we will explore in future weeks.

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