Three reasons why Sunday is our day
Three events in salvation history point to Sunday as a weekly holy day
May 27, 2007 -- Feast of Pentecost
By Fr. Michael Stubbs
It must be confusing to live in a country with significant populations of Moslems, Jews and Christians. They all observe different days of the week as the day of worship. For Moslems, it's Friday, for Jews, Saturday, and for Christians, Sunday. That makes for a long weekend.
Having a separate day of worship helps to establish a sense of identity for each religious community. At the same time, each community also supplies specific reasons for choosing its own day of the week.
We Christians base our observance of Sunday as a weekly holy day on three events in salvation history: the creation of the universe, the resurrection of Jesus Christ, and the descent of the Holy Spirit upon the disciples. References to all three events appear in Sunday's gospel reading, John 20:19-23.
The descent of the Holy Spirit should not surprise us. After all, we celebrate the feast of Pentecost on Sunday. The first reading, Acts 2:1-11, describes that event in familiar terms, with tongues of flame hovering over the disciples' heads and wind blowing through the room.
The chronology of Luke-Acts places the coming of the Holy Spirit 50 days after Easter, hence the term, Pentecost, which means 50 in Greek. On the other hand, the chronology of John's gospel places the same event on Easter Sunday.
John's gospel combines Jesus' resurrection, his ascension into heaven, the coming of the Holy Spirit, into one event. Since John views these as moments which touch eternity, the distinctions of time no longer matter.
The gospel reading opens with the phrase, "on the evening of that first day of the week." This is the day that Christians would eventually refer to as "the Lord's day." In English, we name it after the sun, but in many languages it literally means "the Lord's day, "so in Spanish we have "domingo," in Italian "domenica," in French "dimanche."
The risen Christ appears to the disciples, as a sign of his resurrection. He breathes upon them to bestow upon them the Holy Spirit. "Receive the Holy Spirit." So far we have identified two of the events which led to Sunday being set apart as a special day of the week, the resurrection of Jesus and the coming of the Holy Spirit. But what about the creation of the universe? That event appears to be absent from the reading.
If we look more closely, though, we will find allusions to that event in our gospel reading. The first creation account in the book of Genesis begins with God's Spirit hovering over the waters of chaos. Similarly, Jesus breathes the Spirit over the disciples, to share with them his peace. By his resurrection, Jesus establishes a new order of creation, parallel to that creation described in the book of Genesis. That is why St. Paul writes, "So whoever is in Christ is a new creation: the old things have passed away; behold, new things have come." (2 Corinthians 5:17)
It all happens on the first day of the week. And that is why we attend Mass on Sunday.
(Fr. Stubbs, a priest of the Archdiocese of Kansas City, Kansas, has a master's degree in theology from Harvard.)
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