Third Sunday of Lent: Keep Holy the Sabbath

Some of you have recently heard me asking us to consider if it’s time to come back to Mass. The reality is that as people start to come back, space will be an issue. You’ll see upcoming communication explaining that in the coming weeks, we plan to be able to accommodate more people even as we are still only allowed to accommodate 25% of our seating capacity.

Many people want to come back. Many people want to attend every week and our struggling with the fact that they have to be on a rotation of sorts. Still, many people are struggling with a certain unease or fear about getting into the mix of a public setting. Thankfully, for those who have this unease, the Sunday obligation remains dispensed.

Today's first reading, the establishment of the 10 Commandments, and especially the 3rd Commandment—to “keep holy the sabbath day”—makes me think about what we have traditionally called the Sunday obligation.

I once heard an audio lecture by Dr. Tim Gray[1] on formed.org that pieced it together nicely. Just as today’s reading declares: “In six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea and all that is in them; but on the seventh day he rested.”

More than simply having rested, the Book of Genesis says, “God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it he rested from all the work he had done in creation” (2:3). 

But also, regarding the setting in which God was close to his creatures. We call it the Garden of Eden, but more than just a garden, it was intended to be a place live in and experience God’s beautiful order, fertile and in harmony, and even more, to experience God Himself. Said another way, it was a sanctuary. We know well how all that fell apart, and that humankind lost touch with that sanctuary. 

Let’s leap forward to the time of Moses. We know how God called him to liberate His people. After 400 years, they had virtually no sense of God any longer. They had become people of the Egyptian culture. And because they were slaves, their identity was primarily associated with their work.  

God told Moses to gather the leaders, and to tell them that He wanted them to take a break from their work, to get away for awhile and to encounter Him in an act of worship. In fact, he said to Moses, “…say to Pharaoh, ‘Thus says the LORD: Israel is my son, my firstborn…. Let my son go, that he may serve me’” (4:22-23). It’s worth noting, the word ‘to serve’ in Hebrew is avad. In this context it means to serve God, as in worship. In Greek, it’s translated as leitourgía (or ‘liturgy’, as we say it), and it’s conveys that work of the people is for God. 

But Pharaoh said no: “Why, Moses and Aaron, do you make the people neglect their work? Off to your labors!” (Ex 5:4)…..Increase the work for the men, so that they attend to it and not to deceitful words” (Ex 5:9). Again, for the word ‘work’, the Hebrew verb is avad, but in this context, it refers to actual labor. Pharaoh made the work even harder, to further distract the people from rediscovering their God and their self-identity as children of God.

God’s response was to attack the infrastructure upon which Egypt’s economy was built: the crops, the river, the livestock. The succession of plagues happened every seven days—the Lord made a point by attacking on the Sabbath, the very day He wanted His people to be able to serve Him. 

Eventually the people were freed to gradually rediscover their God and their identity: the Exodus. And He soon gave them the Commandments, among which was the 3rd: “Remember the sabbath day—keep it holy. Six days you may labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is a sabbath of the LORD your God…For in six days the LORD made the heavens and the earth, the sea and all that is in them; but on the seventh day he rested.” (Ex 20:8-11). More to the point: Keep it holy, guard it from mere self-interest and the work of the world. Preserve space in your life to remember your God, and therefore who you are.  

The Sabbath rest isn’t mere inactivity or idleness. It’s a call to make the day about the things that give one’s life true meaning and connection with God. We were given the Sabbath to give us the space we need so that we can remember and consider the truths about our God, and who we are—the things that Pharaoh didn’t want the Israelites to know, thus the reason he heaped more work upon them.

And might I suggest, these are the things are culture doesn’t want us to hear, and thus it expands our workload. It seduces us with—or imposes upon us—more things to eat-away at our Sabbath rest: more youth sports, constant connection to our work by means of technology, more forms of mindless entertainment on bigger screens with higher resolution, more platforms of social media that persistently beckon us.  

  Rather than Sabbath rest, we have something called the weekend. Again, the Sabbath-rest was intended to help us consider our transcendent reality, to get to the deeper truths that are part of what gives life meaning, not just to catch up on tasks. For sure, our six-days of work, our entertainment, and the things we enjoy can serve purpose for our lives. But if that’s all we have, if we don’t regularly go deeper and re-discover our identity as God’s children, we lose our sense of self. 

And the Sabbath is more than just fulfilling an obligation to go to Mass. God gave us that Commandment—keep holy the Sabbath—and thus the Church holds-up the obligation of Sunday Mass—to fulfill that command. The Mass is not the Sabbath, but it’s a vital part for sure. The church building, and what we do in it, is meant to recapture that sanctuary that Adam and Eve knew. I mentioned the word 
avad-leitourgía, to serve. Again, the word liturgy means “the work of the people”. It might sound odd to say that we come here to work, to serve, to offer ourselves back to God. But God says to the world around us, “Give my sons and daughters a break, that they might come and serve me”.

And what we offer God is not because He needs anything. It's because we need to remember who we are in relationship to Him. Perhaps as we emerge from the effects of this pandemic, as individuals and families; as we grind through this, ensuring that we’re safe, but also re-engaging, may we not be like the Israelites in Egypt—living mindlessly, soul-less, life only on the surface, life without engagement of the transcendent. 

Maybe you can’t immediately change the entire structure of your Sunday, but start to tweak it. First, recognize the need; secondly, have the desire for it; third, take it to prayer; and fourth, trust.

[1] Keep Holy the Sabbath by Dr. Tim Gray, formed.org