Rediscover Sunday

As we live these years of Eucharistic Revival in the United States, we are invited to rediscover the basics of our Eucharistic faith and experience them anew. 

Most Catholics know about the Sunday obligation, the fact that we are bound by the law of the Church to participate in the Sunday Eucharist. This obligation finds its roots in the Third Commandment in which we are instructed to keep holy the Sabbath. 

After completing the work of creation in six days God himself rested on the seventh day and in so doing blessed it and made it holy. According to the creation account of Genesis 1, Sunday was the first day of the week and the day in which God began creation by saying, “Let there be light.” On the seventh day, God rested. For this reason, the people of the Old Covenant memorialized the Sabbath on Saturday.

The early Church shifted the day of rest and worship from the seventh day of the week to the first day of the week; from Saturday to Sunday. This was done because it was on the first day of the week that the Lord Jesus was raised from the dead. In the observance of Sunday as the Lord’s Day, the early Church saw the celebration as a weekly Easter, “leading the faithful each week to ponder and live the event of Easter” (Dies Domini, 19).

The early Church recognizes Jesus’ victory on Easter Sunday as the beginning of a new creation.

The first creation began on a Sunday and the new creation began on a Sunday. There is even an ancient tradition in the Church of calling Sunday the Eighth Day of creation: “Sunday is not only the first day, it is also “the eighth day,” set within the sevenfold succession of days in a unique and transcendent position, which evokes not only the beginning of time but also its end in “the age to come” (Dies Domini, 26).

We gather as the Church on Sunday – as the Body of Christ – to celebrate the first and the eighth day of creation. We certainly gather to rest and worship, but also to be immersed again in the mystery of the resurrection of Jesus and the new creation that has been inaugurated in Him. 

“Hence the Lord’s Day is the original feast day, and it should be proposed to the piety of the faithful and taught to them so that it may become in fact a day of joy and of freedom from work” (Sacrosanctum Concilium, 106).

In this light, we see that the precept to be present for the Mass is not merely a Church law, but it is about centering our lives on the groundbreaking proclamation that Jesus is alive, that death has been defeated and that a new creation has begun! We have been intimately united to Christ in baptism; baptized into his passion, death and Resurrection. We have been made members of his body.

We gather on Sunday because we need each other and belong to each other. It is not only in the incarnate body and eucharistic body that the resurrection has occurred and is taking place, but also in the ecclesial body of the Church. 

The Sunday obligation is less about simply doing what you’re supposed to do or doing what a “good Catholic” does as it is about being who and what we are – an integral member of the Body of Christ.

It is a tragedy that so many baptized and confirmed Catholics routinely and even casually absent themselves from the Eucharistic assembly. Our celebration of the Paschal Mystery in the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass is impoverished when any one of the members, much less so many, have absented themselves. 

Being present and spiritually participating in the Holy Eucharist is not simply the Church’s version of civic duty but is living the truth of who we are as members of a body.
 
Eucharistic revival also must be a time of Eucharistic mission – of bringing not only new converts to the altar of sacrifice but especially reconnecting those Catholics who have grown indifferent or no longer participate in the celebration of the Sacred Mysteries.

There are many reasons why regular participation in the Sunday Eucharist has diminished in recent decades, but I would like to focus briefly on one. 

Saint John Paul II suggested that the notion of Sunday as the Lord’s Day has been replaced by “the weekend.” The saintly pope laments that Sunday loses its fundamental meaning when it simply becomes part of the weekend. The weekend provides opportunities for important forms of recreation and leisure necessary for human flourishing. 

Nevertheless, when these replace the significance Sunday has as the Lord’s Day, they have robbed us of the most authentic form of rest. I invite families and individual disciples to consider how Sunday is lived in our homes. Is it the Lord’s Day, a day of worship and rest, or is it simply another part of “the weekend?” Saint John Paul II’s challenge for each of us is to “rediscover Sunday” (Dies Domini, 4-7).
    
I leave you with the words of our Holy Father, Pope Francis, from his recent teaching on the liturgical formation of the People of God. It is a timely message for the Church as we continue the Eucharistic Revival and prepare for the National Eucharistic Congress this summer.

“As the time made new by the mystery of his death and Resurrection flows on, every eighth day the Church celebrates in the Lord’s Day the event of our salvation. Sunday, before being a precept, is a gift that God makes for his people; and for this reason the Church safeguards it with a precept. 

“The Sunday celebration offers to the Christian community the possibility of being formed by the Eucharist. From Sunday to Sunday the word of the Risen Lord illuminates our existence, wanting to achieve in us the end for which it was sent (Cf. Is 55:10-11). From Sunday to Sunday communion in the Body and Blood of Christ wants to make also of our lives a sacrifice pleasing to the Father, in the fraternal communion of sharing, of hospitality, of service. From Sunday to Sunday the energy of the Bread broken sustains us in announcing the Gospel in which the authenticity of our celebration shows itself (Desiderio Desideravi, 65).