Citizen Columns
Question
What is the significance of the Sabbath for your faith?
Answer
This is The Ottawa Citizen question for this week. My general reply is below, but I would add for our own parish what Archbishop Seraphim mentioned last Sunday. The Sunday celebration actually begins with Saturday evening vespers, according to the ancient Jewish principle that the day begins the evening before (hence the Jewish Sabbath starts at sundown on Friday). This gives us the opportunity to create the inner space we need�especially if we lead busy lives�to enter into the spirit of the Divine Liturgy on Sunday.
Since around the year 33AD there has never been a Sunday when Christians didn’t gather to remember and celebrate Christ’s death and resurrection. Jewish Christians continued to celebrate as well the Jewish Sabbath on Saturday, the seventh day of the week, remembering with gratitude God’s completion of creation. Moses had said that it was on this day that the Lord rested from all his works, “therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy” (Exodus 20:11). Eventually the Christian Sabbath became Sunday, the first day of the week, when Christ’s empty tomb was first discovered, signalling a new creation that overthrows death. Even in times of persecution, nothing was more important in Christian life than this gathering together on Sunday.
Witnesses testified to Christ’s death, burial and then his resurrection early in the morning “on the first day of the week”. All of this was understood as fulfilling what the Jewish prophets had promised in the scriptures. From the start, this was the central Christian message. As St Paul wrote less than 20 years later, “For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received, that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the scriptures, and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve. Then he appeared to more than five hundred brethren at one time, most of whom are still alive, though some have fallen asleep (1 Cor 15:3-5).”
The link between Jewish Sabbath and Christian Sunday is best seen on Holy Saturday, the eve of Easter. The Orthodox give special prominence to this day of rest between the crucifixion and the resurrection and link it explicitly to the creation:
“The great Moses mystically foreshadowed this day when he said: God blessed the seventh day. This is the blessed Sabbath. This is the day of rest, on which the Son of God rested from all His works.”
Father John Jillions
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