Ask a Catholic: What Day is the Sabbath?

Ask a Catholic is a weekly feature on the Shibboleth where I try to answer a question from you, the reader, on any burning religious question you might have. Check out the Ask a Catholic page for more information.

For the first Ask a Catholic post, Shey Smith sent in a question via FriendFeed:

Is it true that the Catholic church acknowledges the biblical Sabbath as the 7th day of the week (Saturday), yet continue to observe it on Sunday? Even though they are the ones who are responsible for changing it?

There are a few different elements to this question, so I’ll try to answer them in part. As a disclaimer, I try to specifically refer to Catholics for things that are chiefly Catholic practices, and to Christians as a larger whole for aspects of my answer that relate to the larger community. It’s not to say that all Christians believe what I say, but that many, if not the majority, do.

1. Do Catholics acknowledge Saturday as the biblical Sabbath?

The answer to that is yes. Paragraph 2169 of the Catechism of the Catholic Church recognizes the “7th day” of the week as the sabbath, as referenced in Exodus:

Six days there are for doing work, but the seventh day is the sabbath of complete rest, sacred to the LORD. (Exodus 31:15)

2. Do Catholics observe the sabbath on Sunday?

The answer to this depends on your definition of “observe”. Colloquially, we tend to use observation with respect to important dates as the more convenient day to recognize them: even though Martin Luther King, Jr. Day is supposed to mark his birth, because his birthday falls on different days in the year, we “observe” it using a scheduled Monday so people can have a three-day weekend. In this case, the observation replaces the original date: all the news reports and public schools center around the Monday instead of the real date.

Catholic observation of the sabbath is a little different: Catholics recognize the sabbath day as the 7th day of the week, and as an important indicator of an irrevocable covenant God made with the Israelites. Sunday is not a replacement day for the sabbath: it’s a different day, the Lord’s day, that combines a couple different concepts and practices:

1. Firstly, it allows Catholics to fulfill the moral command of the sabbath (as prescribed by the third commandment): to recognize God’s rest, to do no work, and to keep it holy, and
2. Secondly, it allows Catholics to observe “the moral commandment inscribed by nature in the human heart to render to God an outward, visible, public, and regular worship ‘as a sign of his universal beneficence to all.’” (Catechism, paragraph 2176)

Being Put to Death and the Old Law

Generally, the main objection to this is the second part of Exodus 31:15; “Anyone who does work on the sabbath day shall be put to death.” So why do Christians think they get a free pass on this? Christians recognize three different types of laws as prescribed in the Torah:

1. Ritual/Ceremonial law: when I read the first few books of the Bible, I was surprised how much of the codified law dealt with ritual and ceremony. This aspect of the law contains things like the practices for ritual cleansing, what the temple’s supposed to look like, who’s allowed in the temple, which tribe should be the priest class, what the priest class can wear, what types of animals are acceptable for sacrifice, and so on. These laws, together with the punishments outlined in the civil law, are the stuff people love to cite when trying to nitpick the Bible. However, this aspect of the law is superseded by God’s new covenant wit man through Jesus.
2. Juridicial/Civil law: these laws are ones where God provides a punishment or a resolution (in many cases, death or exile). Laws like putting to death by stoning any fortune-tellers or mediums (Leviticus 20:27), or the restitution amounts for stealing an ox (Exodus 22). Like the ceremonial law, Christians identify this aspect of the law as being superseded by God’s covenant through Jesus, and specifically with Jesus’s sacrifice and subsequent resurrection. Jesus took the heat, as it were, for all the punishments prescribed in the Old Law so that we’d all have eternal life (John 3:16).
3. Moral law: this is the red meat; your ten commandments kind of stuff. Moral law is different from the other two in that it’s not prescribatory: that is, it’s a description of moral truths mostly everyone believes in. Murder is wrong, stealing is wrong, helping your neighbor is right, and so on. These laws are timeless, and continue from the Mosiac tradition into the Christian tradition.

With that brief explanation of the law, let’s get back to Exodus 31:15: that the 7th day is the sabbath, that it’s holy, and that anyone who does work on it should be put to death. In this passage, you can see a microcosm of the distinction in the law: the 7th day is the sabbath is part of the ritual law, that it’s holy is part of the moral law, and that anyone who does work on it should be put to death is part of the juridical law. So, because the juridical and ritual aspects of the law are superseded by the new covenant, Christians only focus on one part: that the sabbath day is holy.

The Lord’s Day

So, based on this, Christians do take one day out of the week to observe the holiness of the sabbath day on Sunday, the Lord’s Day. There are still the same prescriptions: you can’t do any work, and you should spend your time worshipping God. But in addition, there are a few more particularly Christian observances:

1. Jesus’s resurrection was on a Sunday, the first day of the week, and the Lord’s day is a reminder of that.
2. Christians celebrate the Eucharist on Sundays together, as a community.
3. Christians use Sunday as a day of outward, visible worship, in addition to inward reflection and meditation.

The Lord’s day is also a day to focus on one’s family and loved ones, as it may be hard to do so during the week.

Wrapping Up

So, while Catholics do explicitly recognize the 7th day as the sabbath day, the covenant between God and man through Jesus supersedes the specifics of its observation. A new day, based on Jesus’s resurrection, was created to not only recognize the holiness of the sabbath day, but to celebrate Jesus and the new Covenant. It’s important to note that it doesn’t mean Christians observe only the parts of the laws they like, but that parts of the laws no longer apply given the Covenant. If God prescribes eternal life for all who believe in Jesus and His resurrection, He can’t very well be punishing people by death, can He?

As a footnote, I tried to be as plain English as possible in this response, but to understand specifically what Catholics believe, as well as several references for that belief, be sure to check out the Catechism’s section on the sabbath.