Q. I understand that we are supposed to “keep Sunday holy,” but what does that actually mean? Does it just mean go to Mass?
A. To answer the question of what does keeping Sunday holy actually mean, it might be helpful to first consider the word “holy.” Holy (or sacred) means to be set apart, or consecrated, for God.
In the Church, we talk about holy spaces like churches or chapels. They are holy because they have been set apart for the purpose of worshipping God. Similarly, holy/sacred vessels are holy because they are used exclusively for the worship of God and nothing else. I don’t drink Diet Dr. Pepper out of my chalice because, ultimately, it’s God’s chalice. It is set apart for Him and Him alone.
When we speak about keeping Sunday holy or sacred, we mean the same thing. Sunday is a day set apart for God. It is, in this sense, truly The Lord’s Day, as in a day that belongs to God. This is the sense communicated by God resting on the Seventh Day of Creation. God takes the Seventh Day for Himself.
Because we have a loving God, God shares His day with us.
When handing on His Commandments at Sinai, God commands that humanity share in His day of rest. He does this because He knows that, as humans, we can always find excuses to work and, left to our own devices, we will not take the time we need to not just rest, but to rest in Him. So, like a parent calling a child out of school to spend the day with them, God calls us out of the busyness of our lives to spend a day with Him.
Christ’s Resurrection on Sunday fulfills the sacred character of Sunday. “In Christ’s Passover, Sunday fulfills the spiritual truth of the Jewish sabbath and announces man’s eternal rest in God… Sunday worship fulfills the moral command of the Old Covenant, taking up its rhythm and spirit in the weekly celebration of the Creator and Redeemer of his people” (CCC 2175-2176).
God invites us to enter into His day by entering into the Sacred Dialogue with the Father that is the Mass, commemorating the gift of His Son to humanity and bringing all of our anxiety, hurt, pain, and stress from the week to His altar, uniting it to the perfect sacrifice of the Mass so that it can be redeemed just as Christ redeemed our Humanity.
Getting back to the original question, Mass is a big part of keeping Sunday holy. The obligation to attend Sunday Mass (or an anticipated Mass on Saturday evening) is the Church’s way of getting us to stop defining our lives by work and other similar activities and take the time to be with God. It is like a boss giving his employees the day off to go be with their families.
As humans, we are not always going to make that choice for ourselves because we are so good at convincing ourselves we are just too busy to make time for God. So the Church makes the choice to go to Mass for us because, without the obligation, sometimes we wouldn’t go, and if we don’t go, we will lose out on the grace that God seeks to give us and that we need for the week ahead.
In addition to Mass, we should keep Sunday holy by having all of our activity that day be in accord with a day that is set apart for God. As previously discussed, God wants us to rest. This does not mean being inactive, but doing things that are truly recreation in the sense of re-creating/renewing/refreshing ourselves.
Sunday is a day for hobbies, for taking time to do the things we convince ourselves we are too busy to do that are life-giving, even if they require “work,” like gardening or working on an old car or cooking a big family dinner. Sunday is not the day to catch up on chores, but the day to catch up on the things that actually bring us true rest, especially being with family.
The command to keep Sunday holy demonstrates that, because of our fallen humanity, human beings will rebel against anything. When we really think about the command to keep Sunday holy what is that command? ‘Take an entire day to simply relax and be with family and do the things that renew you and take an hour to spend in worship of the Father in which you will receive God; Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity.’ What a terrible burden.
But we can so easily see Sunday as an imposition instead of gift. Perhaps we can, all of us, ask God for the grace to rejoice in the fact that He commands us to share His day with Him.
This question was answered by Father Caleb La Rue, chancellor of the Diocese of Lincoln. Write to Ask the Register using our online form, or write to 3700 Sheridan Blvd., Suite 10, Lincoln NE 68506-6100. All questions are subject to editing. Editors decide which questions to publish. Personal questions cannot be answered. People with such questions are urged to take them to their nearest Catholic priest.
