The Third Commandment
In the Third Commandment, we are asked by God to spend six days ‘doing’ and one day just ‘being.’ That is the essence of what we will be exploring today, God’s third Commandment: Keep the Sabbath Holy. While most of us will consider this the imperative the Catholic Church uses to demand attendance at Sunday Mass under penalty of sin (something many generations call our Sunday obligation), this request from God is perhaps THE most humane request an all-powerful, transcendent God can give us. The origins of this day being declared holy goes back way before Christianity commanded attendance at Sunday Mass. This commandment was given to Moses as the God of the Hebrews formed his relationship with his people. In addition to offering laws on cleanliness, work, and food consumption, God ordered that his people rest as well. Mimicking the “Day of Rest” God took after six days of creation, honoring the Sabbath meant not only a respite from work.
Did God need a day of rest after working so hard to create the universe? Certainly not, and with this understanding we can look at the request for a “day of rest” not just as a break from work, but as a devotion of gratitude. God rested on the seventh day to, in a manner of speaking, stop asserting his mastery over our world. In our six days of work we are, in a sense like God, exerting our mastery over our world. On the seventh day we are asked to relinquish that effort to the true master, God. In addition, we are honoring and celebrating, “letting nature happen.” Unabated by our interference, we are allowing God’s plan to unfold. So honoring the Sabbath comes not as a ‘rest stop,’ but as a memorial to emulate through imitation, when God stopped creation for a day. In doing this, we are “to remember” what God has done for us in the past and what he does for us now. The Third Commandment is a commandment against vanity.
For us Catholics, recalling that Jesus rose from the dead "on the first day of the week," our “Sabbath” becomes the “eighth day” of the week, and for us the first of all days (CCC#2174). Whereas the celebration of Sabbath was Saturday for the Jewish faith, this “eighth day” becomes Sunday for us. This Sunday celebration also offers something new, and it was given to us by Jesus himself, “Do this in memory of me.” Without going into theological detail, our Sunday celebration is a participation of the unending sacrifice of the Mass. The Mass is NOT a “symbolic remembrance of the Last Supper.” Rather, the Sunday Mass, every Mass, is a participation in the unending sacrifice and encounter with Jesus, a sacrifice that breaches the chasm between heaven and earth. In this sense, the Mass is a live encounter with God through Jesus in a great mystery. St John Vianney said of the Mass, “If we really understood the Mass, we would die of joy.” The Mass is the closet event we have next to seeing God face to face on this earth. So attending Mass is not an obligation by its nature, it is a supernatural gift extraordinaire.
So, attending Mass is just the beginning of a day of celebration and accommodation to the great gift we have received in Christ. Just like you spend time recalling some experience of great importance in our lives, so we offer each Sunday as a chance to stop doing and just relish in being a child of God. And what can we offer to God in return for his great gift of his son? We can offer him time. You may say how much time. What is the value of time? In a poem from an unknown author, we have a reminder of times’ value:
- To realize the value of ONE YEAR, ask a student who has failed his final exam.
- To realize the value of ONE MONTH, ask a mother who has given birth to a premature baby.
- To realize the value of ONE WEEK, ask an editor of a weekly newspaper.
- To realize the value of ONE DAY, ask a day laborer who has eight children to feed.
- To realize the value of ONE HOUR, ask a couple waiting for the wedding ceremony.
- To realize the value of ONE MINUTE, ask a person who has missed a train.
- To realize the value of ONE SECOND, Ask a person who survived an accident.
- To realize the value of a millisecond, ask the person who has won a silver medal in the Olympics.
We all exist in a “time paradox” where we know time is chasing us like a rabid hound, and yet, most often we act as if we have all the time in the world. This paradox dissolves when we prioritize this day of rest as a day of ‘being’ rather than ‘doing.' When we just “be," there is no time lost, no time goes by. When we just “be” God gives us the opportunity to “enter his world” of being, a world in which there is no time. What are we to “do” in this world of God’s? We are offered to create quality experiences devoted to our family, our community, and to God. So any “work” that needs be done on Sunday is anything which supports ‘being.’
This last Sunday, I helped my daughter rake her leaves. It was work, but it was fun doing a service for her, playing with Moses, Millie, and baby Eli…and ‘being’ with my extended family. Being with your family on Sunday lets our children see that our relationship deserves at least one day of total attention. In short, this day give us an appreciation for life, with a right re-orientation of our values and gratitude to the one God who has made us. The Sabbath is not about time ‘off,’ it is about being ‘on’ sacred time.