Why is Our Sabbath on Sunday?

one could say the Holy Spirit made the change...

by Bill Dodds

Tou’ve heard the accusation: Catholics don’t observe the Sabbath. Those critics have a point, of course. The Sabbath is the seventh day of the week. Sunday is the first ... or the eighth.

So what happened to Christianity, so firmly rooted in Judaism? Was the Temple already booked on Saturday? Did early Christians want the whole weekend off?

The story of Creation in Genesis makes it clear that God rested on the seventh day, the Sabbath (from the Hebrew for “rest” or “cease”). Over time, the Lord’s Day came to be governed by all kinds of restrictions from sundown Friday to sundown Saturday.

One could argue it was Jesus and the Holy Spirit who actually initiated the change for Christians. Jesus rose from the dead on Sunday. And it was on that day — Pentecost — that the Holy Spirit blew through the Upper Room.

After those landmark events, the first day of the week had new significance. The early Christians began thinking of each Sunday as a “little Easter.”

For them, it was also “the eighth day,” the first day of a new creation.

The Hebrew Sabbath, however, was still important. In apostolic times, those Christians who had been devout Jews all their lives went to the Temple on Saturday and to the Lord’s Supper on Sunday. In Acts 20:1, Luke says, “On the first day of the week, when we met to break bread....”

Lord’s Supper and The Breaking of the Bread were two of the early names used for the eucharistic celebration. (Mass would come much later.)

But it wasn’t as if Jesus had told the Apostles to get together on Sunday. Or that Peter had asked for a show of hands. (“OK, Saturday is bad. How many could make it on Sunday?”) Rather, this was a custom that developed rather quickly, one that made sense to those who followed The Way.

St. Ignatius of Antioch (who died around 107) pointed out that Christians were “no longer observing the Sabbath, but living in the observance of the Lord’s Day.”

Didache, written in the second century, advised: “On the Lord’s Day, come together and break bread. And give thanks, after confessing your sins, that your sacrifice may be pure.”

“We all gather on the day of the sun,” wrote St. Justin Martyr (100—165), “for it is the first day when God, separating matter from darkness, made the world; and on this same day, Jesus Christ our Savior rose from the dead.”

It was the third-century theologian Tertullian who first mentioned that Sunday ought to be a day of rest, as the original Sabbath had been.

In the sixth century, St. Caesarius of Arles claimed the early theologians had said the Christian Sunday should be just like the Jewish Sabbath, with all the regulations and restrictions. Later, his interpretation was discounted as ... less than accurate (to put it politely).

Still, this new Sabbath was celebrated from sunset to sunset in some places until the 17th century. And even in our own time, the Saturday evening vigil Mass is based on the Jewish method of observance.

Bottom line: Catholics do still “keep holy the Lord’s Day,” believing it’s the day on which Jesus rose from the dead.

Bill Dodds is co-author of Your One-Stop Guide to the Mass (Servant Publications). You can find him online at www.BillDodds.com