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. 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 20:6 – 7
“But we sailed from Philippi after the days of the azymes [Passover] and came to them to Troas in five days, where we abode seven days. And on the first day of the week, when we were assembled to break bread, Paul discoursed with them, being to depart on the morrow. And he continued his speech until midnight.”
1 Cor. 16:1 – 2
“Now concerning the collections that are made for the saints: as I have given order to the churches of Galatia, so do ye also. On the first day of the week [the day on which Christians were accustomed to come together to observe the Christian sabbath], let every one of you put apart with himself, laying up what it shall well please him: that when I come, the collections be not then to be made.”
St. Paul enumerates the Sabbath among the Jewish observances which are not obligatory on Christians in
Col. 2:16 – 17
“Let no man therefore judge you in meat or in drink or in respect of a festival day or of the new moon or of the sabbaths, which are a shadow of things to come: but the body is of Christ.”
“But when the fulness of the time was come, God sent his Son, made of a woman, made under the law: that he might redeem them who were under the law: that we might receive the adoption of sons. And because you are sons, God hath sent the Spirit of his Son into your hearts, crying, “Abba, Father.” Therefore, now he is not a servant, but a son. And if a son, an heir also through God. But then indeed, not knowing God, you served them who, by nature, are not gods. But now, after that you have known God, or rather are known by God: how turn you again to the weak and needy elements which you desire to serve again? You observe days and months and times, and years. I am afraid of you, lest perhaps I have laboured in vain among you.
In the Didache (“Didache ton dodeka apostolon”, i.e. “Doctrine of the Twelve Apostles”, ch. 14 – date of composition unknown, but cited with Sacred Scripture as an authoritative source by Eusebius Pamphili, Bishop of Cæsarea in Palestine, the "Father of Church History", b. about 260; d. before 341) 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 of Antioch, a bishop who lived in the time of the Apostles (b. AD 50, martyred in Rome – possibly even before the death of St. John the Evangelist – i.e. between AD 98 and 117) in his Epistle to the Magnesians, ch. 14 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 (attributed to St. Barnabas, disciple of St. Paul, and written around AD 130), in chapter 14 is read: "Wherefore, also, we keep the eighth day (i. e. the first of the week) with joyfulness, the day also on which Jesus rose again from the dead".
In this Epistle, St. Barnabas goes far beyond St. Paul the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews, and St. Ignatius of Antioch. Not content with regarding the history and institutions of the Jews as containing types of Christianity, he casts aside completely the transitory historical character of the Old Law. According to many scholars he teaches that it was never intended that the precepts of the Law should be observed in their literal sense; that the Jews never had a covenant with God; that circumcision was the work of the devil, etc. Thus he represents a unique point of view in the struggle against Judaism.
It might be said more exactly that he condemns the exercise of worship by the Jews in its entirety because, in his opinion, the Jews did not know how to rise to the spiritual and typical meaning which God had mainly had in view in giving them the Law. It is this purely material observance of the ceremonial ordinances, of which the literal fulfillment was not sufficient, that the author holds to be the work of the devil; and, according to him, the Jews never received the divine covenant because they never understood its nature (chs. 3:3 – 11; 11:7; 10:10; 14).
St. Justin (b. AD 100, the year St. John the Evangelist died; martyred AD 165) is the first Christian writer to call the Sabbath day Sunday (1 Apol. 67) in the celebrated passage in which he describes the worship offered by the early Christians on that day to God. The fact that they met together and offered public worship on Sunday necessitated a certain rest from work on that day.
Prior to chapter 67, in the same work (chs. 10 – 30), in his dialogue with Tryphon (himself a Jew) Tryphon reproaches the Christians for not observing the Mosaic Law. St. Justin replies that according to the Prophets themselves the law should be abrogated, as it had only been given to the Jews on account of their hardness of heart. Superiority of the Christian circumcision (Baptism) is also cited as necessary even for the Jews. The eternal law laid down by Christ subsumes rather than abrogates the purely temporal Old Law.
However, Tertullian (AD 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 ought 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." 23; cf. "Ad nation.", 1:13; "Apolog." 16). These and similar indications show that during the first three centuries custom and tradition [not the Bible which did not yet exist] had consecrated 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 the obligations of fulfilling the third Commandment 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" (ch. 21). 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.
Although the express teaching of Christ and of St. Paul prevented the early Christians from falling into the excesses of Jewish Sabbatarianism in the observance of Sunday, yet we find St. Cæsarius 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 (seventh) 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 also 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.
N.B. To this point, the canon of Sacred Scripture (the Bible) had not yet been defined. This was first done in at the Council of Hippo in AD 393, and later confirmed by the Council of Carthage in 397. Therefore, the sources of all Christian doctrine, to that point, were entirely the Traditions of the Apostles and of the sub-Apostles (i.e. those who lived during the first generation following the death of the last Apostle – St. John – in AD 100). In point of fact, therefore, the Bible itself is entirely the product of and subordinate to sacred Tradition, i.e. the Tradition of the Apostles received from Jesus Christ and handed on (tradita) by them.
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 Saturday sunset to Sunday 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.
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 to the 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 current federal legislation in the United States on the observance of the Sunday, but nearly all the states of the Union once had (no longer) statutes 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
The Catholic Encyclopedia, Volume
XIV
Copyright © 1912 by Robert Appleton Company
Online Edition Copyright © 2003 by Kevin Knight
Nihil Obstat, July 1, 1912. Remy Lafort, S.T.D., Censor
Imprimatur. +John Cardinal Farley, Archbishop of New York
Nota Bene: while the bulk of the preceding treatment was taken from the topic “Sunday”, cited as drawn from The Catholic Encyclopedia, Volume XIV, this has been augmented by other citations from the same work, as well as from early Apostolic and sub-Apostolic works as noted; and of course from Sacred Scripture itself.