ROME URGES SUNDAY REST

July 26, 2011

“Sunday should be a day for worship, rest and time with family and friends,” said Monsignor Miquel Delgado Galindo, under secretary for the Pontifical Council for the Laity.

“The Church teaches us to set aside this day, the first day of the week on which we remember the resurrection of Jesus Christ, for divine worship and for human rest,” the monsignor recently told CNA.

Note that it is the church, not the Bible, according to the Monsignor, teaches Sunday observance. This is an important point. Protestants want to suggest that the Bible (i.e. Christ or the Apostles) teaches Sunday rest and worship. At least Rome honestly tells us that it is the church that does this.

Nevertheless, while advocating and defending Sunday laws in the public arena, the Catholic Church says Sunday laws serve a secular purpose, yet she declares that Sunday is the time for divine worship, thus tying the two together in the minds of most people.

“On Sundays Catholics should participate in the Holy Mass, the unbloody renewal of Christ’s sacrifice on the cross” and “the greatest expression of worship and adoration that man can offer to the Lord our God,” he said. Sundays should also be a day “devoted to rest with family and friends,” he added.

The Mass is another invention of the church, which is not found in the Bible. Christ was crucified once for all. He does not need a “renewal” of His sacrifice.

Sunday rest is “a human necessity,” continued the Monsignor. God said that the seventh day of the week is the Sabbath, or the essential rest of mankind. But Rome has transferred it to Sunday by her own authority.

Catholics should not see rest as “doing nothing,” but rather as time in which they devote themselves to activities that require less physical or intellectual effort such as going on a family outing, reading a good book, playing sports or watching a worthwhile film.

Sunday keepers do not view Sunday as sacred, at least not in the way Sabbath keepers understand the sacredness of the Sabbath. The Bible teaches that secular pursuits are not to be done on the Sabbath. The Sabbath still stands as a memorial to the work of creation and redemption against the prevailing agenda to transfer its solemnity to Sunday.

Galindo continued; John Paul II’s apostolic letter “Dies Domini” says “the Lord’s Day—the term used to refer to Sundays since apostolic times—has always had a privileged place in the history of the Church because of its close relationship to the very nucleus of the Christian mystery.

This is as false today as when it was written by John Paul II. Sunday has not been referred to as the Lord’s Day since apostolic times. John uses this term to refer to the Sabbath, since Jesus Himself said he was the Lord of the Sabbath. Using the term Lord’s Day to apply to Sunday came about much later than apostolic times and was an invention of the Catholic Church.

“And he shall speak [great] words against the most High, and shall wear out the saints of the most High, and think to change times and laws…” Daniel 7:25.

CNA Article

http://www.ktfministry.org/en/news/2154/rome-urges-sunday-rest