Ordinary Time - Week 09b
Keeping the Sunday holy
(From Conversation with God, Fernandez Carvajal)As we read in the First Reading of today's Mass, it was God himself who instituted the feast days of the Chosen People and who encouraged the observance of them. Observe the sabbath day; keep it holy as the Lord your God commanded you. Six days you shall labour, 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. As well as the Sabbath, the Jews had other principal feast days - Passover, Pentecost, the Feast of Tabernacles - days on which they renewed the Covenant and gave thanks for benefits they had received. The Sabbath which followed six days of working at their own occupations was the day dedicated to God, the Master of time, in recognition of his sovereignty over all things. The observance of these days was to be one of the features that distinguished the Jewish people from the Gentiles.
In Our Lord's day many abuses of a rigorist nature had crept in, which gave rise to confrontations between Jesus and the Pharisees such as the one we read about in today's Gospel. The disciples were passing through a cornfield on a Sabbath day: As they made their way his disciples began to pluck ears of grain. And the Pharisees said to him, 'Look, why are they doing what is not lawful on the Sabbath?' Christ reminds them that the prescriptions as to the Sabbath rest did not have an absolute value and that He, the Messiah, is Lord of the Sabbath.
Jesus Christ had great regard for the Sabbath and the other great Jewish festivals even though He knew that with his coming all those dispensations would be abolished and replaced by the Christian feast days. Saint Luke, for example, has left it in writing for us that the Holy Family went up every year to Jerusalem for the Passover. Jesus continues to celebrate this anniversary each year with his disciples. We can see too how, with his presence, He sanctifies the happiness of a wedding feast. In his preaching He frequently makes use of examples drawn from domestic festivities - the king who celebrates his son's wedding, the banquet for the son who had left his father's house and who returns home. The Gospels are imbued with a festive joy, which is a sign that the bridegroom, the Messiah, is already amongst his friends.
Our Lord himself wanted us to celebrate important feasts, when, leaving aside our usual occupations, we can turn to him with greater calmness and attention. We can dedicate more time on these days to our families and give our body and soul the necessary rest. The Holy Mass is the centre of the Christian life. Without the Mass nothing else would have any meaning. Everything would be like a body without a soul - like a corpse. Truly, Sunday is the day that the Lord has made; let us rejoice and be glad in it. And it is in the Holy Mass that we always find the Fountain of happiness and of never-ending joy and peace.