Sunday

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Sunday (Day of the Sun), as the name of the first day of the week, is derived fromEgyptianastrology. 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 (seeCALENDAR). During the first and second century the week of seven days was introduced intoRome fromEgypt, 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 Teutonicdeities. Hence thedies Solis became Sunday (German,Sonntag). Sunday was the first day of the week according to the Jewish method of reckoning, but forChristians it began to take the place of the JewishSabbath in Apostolic times as the day set apart for the public and solemn worship ofGod. The practice of meeting together on the first day of the week for the celebration of the Eucharistic Sacrifice is indicated inActs 20:7;1 Corinthians 16:2; inApocalypse 1:10, it is called the Lord's day. In theDidache (14) the injunction is given: "On the Lord's Day come together and break bread. And give thanks (offer the Eucharist), after confessing yoursins that your sacrifice may be pure". St. Ignatius (Ep. ad Magnes. ix) speaks ofChristians as "no longer observing theSabbath, 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 eighth day (i.e. the first of the week) with joyfulness, the day also on whichJesus rose again from the dead".

St. Justin is the firstChristian writer to call the day Sunday (I Apol., lxvii) in the celebrated passage in which he describes the worship offered by the earlyChristians on that day toGod. The fact that they met 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 theLord'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 thedevil" ("De orat.", xxiii; cf. "Ad nation.", I, xiii; "Apolog.", xvi).

These and similar indications show that during the first three centuries practice and tradition hadconsecrated the Sunday to the public worship ofGod by the hearing of the Mass and the resting from work. With the opening of the fourth century positive legislation, bothecclesiastical and civil, began to make theseduties more definite. The Council of Elvira (300) decreed: "If anyone in the city neglects to come to church for three Sundays, let him beexcommunicated 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 theApostles. The express teaching of Christ andSt. Paul prevented the earlyChristians from falling into the excesses of JewishSabbatarianism in the observance of the Sunday, and yet we find St. Cæsarius of Arles in the sixth century teaching that theholyDoctors of the Church had decreed that the whole glory of the JewishSabbath had been transferred to the Sunday, and thatChristians must keep the Sunday holy in the same way as theJews had been commanded to keep holy theSabbath 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 toVespers and spend the rest of the day inpious reading andprayer. As with the JewishSabbath, the observance of the Christian Sunday began with sundown on Saturday and lasted till the same time on Sunday. Until quite recent times sometheologians taught that there was anobligation under pain of venialsin of assisting at vespers as well as of hearingMass, 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 atVespers on Sunday, there is no strictobligation 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 theMiddle Ages the reckoning from midnight to midnight has been followed. When theparochial system was introduced, thelaity were taught that they must hear Mass and the preaching of the Word ofGod on Sundays in theirparish church. However, toward the end of the thirteenth century, thefriars began to teach that the precept of hearingMass might be fulfilled by hearing it in their churches, and after long and severe struggles this was expressly allowed by theHoly See. Nowadays, the precept may be fulfilled by hearingMass in any place except a strictly private oratory, and provided Mass is not celebrated on aportable altar by a privilege which is merely personal.

Theobligation of rest from work on Sunday remained somewhat indefinite for several centuries. A Council ofLaodicea, held toward the end of the fourth century, was content to prescribe that on the Lord's Day thefaithful 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 thelaw of the JewishSabbath to the observance of the Christian Sunday. The Council held atOrléans in 538 reprobated this tendency as Jewish and non-Christian. From the eighth century thelaw began to be formulated as it exists at the present day, and the local councils forbade servile work, public buying and selling, pleading in thelaw courts, and the public and solemn taking ofoaths. There is a large body of civil legislation on the Sunday rest side by side with theecclesiastical. It begins with an Edict of Constantine, the firstChristian emperor, who forbade judges to sit and townspeople to work on Sunday. He made an exception in favour of agriculture. The breaking of thelaw of Sunday rest was punished by the Anglo-Saxon legislation inEngland like other crimes and misdemeanours. After theReformation, underPuritan influence, manylaws were passed inEngland whose effect is still visible in the stringency of the EnglishSabbath. Still more is this the case inScotland. There is no federal legislation in theUnited States on the observance of the Sunday, but nearly all the states of the Union have 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 ofEurope in recent years there have been severallaws passed in direction of enforcing the observance of Sunday rest for the benefit of workmen.

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