Catholic Encyclopedia: Sunday
Sunday (Day of the Sun), as the name of the first day of the week, is
derived from Egyptian astrology. The seven planets, known to us as
Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, the Sun, Venus, Mercury, and the Moon, each had
an hour of the day assigned to them, and the planet which was regent
during the first hour of any day of the week gave its name to that day
(see CALENDAR). During the first and second century the week of seven
days was introduced into Rome from Egypt, and the Roman names of the
planets were given to each successive day. The Teutonic nations seem to
have adopted the week as a division of time from the Romans, but they
changed the Roman names into those of corresponding Teutonic deities.
Hence the <dies Solis> became Sunday (German, <Sonntag>). Sunday
was the first day of the week according to the Jewish method of
reckoning, but for Christians it began to take the place of the Jewish
Sabbath in Apostolic times as the day set apart for the public and solemn
worship of God. The practice of meeting together on the first day of the
week for the celebration of the Eucharistic Sacrifice is indicated in Acts,
xx 7; I Cor., xvi, 2; in Apoc., i, 10, it is called the Lord's day. In the
Didache (xiv) the injunction is given: "On the Lord's Day come together
and break bread. And give thanks (offer the Eucharist), after confessing
your sins that your sacrifice may be pure". St. Ignatius (Ep. ad Magnes.
ix) speaks of Christians as "no longer observing the Sabbath, but living in
the observance of the Lord's Day, on which also Our Life rose again". In
the Epistle of Barnabas (xv) we read: "Wherefore, also, we keep the
eight day (i. e. the first of the week) with joyfulness, the day also on
which Jesus rose again from the dead".
St. Justin is the first Christian writer to call the day Sunday (I Apol.,
lxvii) in the celebrated passage in which he describes the worship
offered by the early Christians on that day to God. The fact that they
ment together and offered public worship on Sunday necessitated a
certain rest from work on that day. However, Tertullian (202) is the first
writer who expressly mentions the Sunday rest: "We, however (just as
tradition has taught us), on the day of the Lord's Resurrection ourght to
guard not only against kneeling, but every posture and office of
solicitude, deferring even our businesses lest we give any place to the
devil" ("De orat.", xxiii; cf. "Ad nation.", I, xiii; "Apolog.", xvi).
These and similar indications show that during the first three
centuries practice and tradition had consecrated the Sunday to the public
worship of God by the hearing of the Mass and the resting from work.
With the opening of the fourth century positive legislation, both
ecclesiastical and civil, began to make these duties more definite. The
Council of Elvira (300) decreed: "If anyone in the city neglects to come to
church for three Sundays, let him be excommunicated for a short time so
that he may be corrected" (xxi). In the Apostolic Constitutions, which
belong to the end of the fourth century, both the hearing of the Mass and
the rest from work are prescribed, and the precept is attributed to the
Apostles. The express teaching of Christ and St. Paul prevented the early
Christians from falling into the excesses of Jewish Sabbatarianism in the
observance of the Sunday, and yet we find St. XXXXXX of Arles in the
sixth century teaching that the holy Doctors of the Church had decreed
that the whole glory of the Jewish Sabbath had been transferred to the
Sunday, and that Christians must keep the Sunday holy in the same way
as the Jews had been commanded to keep holy the Sabbath Day. He
especially insisted on the people hearing the whole of the Mass and not
leaving the church after the Epistle and the Gospel had been read. He
taught them that they should come to Vespers and spend the rest of the
day in pious reading and prayer. As with the Jewish Sabbath, the
observance of the Christian Sunday began with sundown on Saturday
and lasted till the same time on Sunday. Until quite recent times some
theologians taught that there was an obligation under pain of venial sin
of assisting at vespers as well as of hearing Mass, but the opinion rests
on no certain foundation and is now commonly abandoned. The
common opinion maintains that, while it is highly becoming to be
present at Vespers on Sunday, there is no strict obligation to be present.
The method of reckoning the Sunday from sunset to sunset continued in
some places down to the seventeenth century, but in general since the
Middle Ages the reckoning from midnight to midnight has been
followed. When the parochial system was introduced, the laity were
taught that they must hear Mass and the preaching of the Word of God on
Sundays in their parish church. However, toward the end of the
thirteenth century, the friars began to teach that the precept of hearing
Mass might be fulfilled by hearing it in their churches, and after long
and severe struggles this was expressly allowed by the Holy See.
Nowadays, the precept may be fulfilled by hearing Mass in any place
except a strictly private oratory, and provided Mass is not celebrated on
a portable alter by a privilege which is merely personal.
The obligation of rest from work on Sunday remained somewhat
indefinite for several centuries. A Council of Laodicea, held toward the
end of the fourth century, was content to prescribe that on the Lord's Day
the faithful were to abstain from work as far as possible. At the beginning
of the sixth century St. Caesarius, as we have seen, and others showed an
inclination to apply the law of the Jewish Sabbath to the observance of
the Christian Sunday. The Council held at Orleans in 538 reprobated
this tendency as Jewish and non-Christian. From the eight century the
law began to be formulated as it exists at eh present day, and the local
councils forbade servile work, public buying and selling, pleading in the
law courts, and the public and solemn taking of oaths. There is a large
body of civil legislation on the Sunday rest side by side with the
ecclesiastical. It begins with an Edict of Constantine, the first Christian
emperor, who forbade judges to sit and townspeople to work on Sunday.
He made an exception in favour of agriculture. The breaking of the law
of Sunday rest was punished by the Anglo-Saxon legislation in England
like other crimes and misdemeanours. After the Reformation, under
Puritan influence, many laws were passed in England whose effect is
still visible in the stringency of the English Sabbath. Still more is this the
case in Scotland. There is no federal legislation in the United States on
the observance of the Sunday, but nearly all the states of the Union have
statues tending to repress unnecessary labour and to restrain the liquor
traffic. In other respects the legislation of the different states on this
matter exhibits considerable variety. On the continent of Europe in
recent years there have been several laws passed in direction of
enforcing the observance of Sunday rest for the benefit of workmen.
VILLIEN, <Hist. des commandements de l'Eglise> (Paris, 1909);
DUBLANCHY in <Dict. de theol. cathol.>, s. v. DIMANCHE (Paris,
1911); SLATER, <Manual of Moral Theology> (New York, 1908); the
moral theologians generally. T. SLATER Transcribed by Scott
Anthony Hibbs
Taken from the New Advent Web Page (www.knight.org/advent).
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