Shel­don V Branche

Sab­bath rest. Is this even con­tem­plat­ed in the hus­tle and bus­tle of to­day's so­ci­ety? Week­ends are filled with ac­tiv­i­ty. Shop­ping and lim­ing on a Sat­ur­day; Mara­cas on a Sun­day. More­over, the di­vine rest is a thing of the past and on­ly ob­served by our grand­par­ents. True, yes?One of the man­dates of Syn­od 2009 speaks to 'Catholic Cul­ture and Iden­ti­ty: My Church, My Parish, My Fam­i­ly'. One as­pect of our Catholic cul­ture in Trinidad and To­ba­go is rest­ing from work and par­tic­i­pat­ing in Holy Mass on Sun­day-"The Lord's day."This prac­tice is linked to the cel­e­bra­tion of the cre­ator's work and can be epit­o­mised in this one thought: The di­vine rest of the sev­enth day en­joys the beau­ty of what has al­ready been achieved.

It does not al­lude to an in­ac­tive God, but em­pha­sis­es the full­ness of what has been ac­com­plished (Dies Do­mi­ni No 11). Even God ap­pre­ci­ates the "very good" work (Gen­e­sis 1:31) which his hand has wrought. We too, must em­u­late our Cre­ator, sit back and en­joy the life which he has giv­en to us and what we have ac­com­plished through His Di­vine Prov­i­dence."The king­dom of heav­en is like trea­sure hid­den in a field, which some­one found and hid; then in his joy, he goes and sells all that he has and buys that field." (Matt 13:44).

So you are not "re­li­gious". Per­haps you like the idea of call­ing your­self "spir­i­tu­al". For ar­gu­ment sake, let us as­sume you are ei­ther ag­nos­tic or pos­si­bly athe­ist. What­ev­er your be­lief sys­tem, mod­ern med­ical gu­rus praise the ben­e­fits of some form of week­ly rest. Ac­cord­ing to these same ex­perts, it takes just about 24 hours for phys­i­cal re­new­al. Isn't this the pur­pose of the Sab­bath? Maybe so, but there is greater val­ue oth­er than the phys­i­cal ben­e­fit which is de­rived from the di­vine rest.The Psalmist writes: "The law from your mouth is more pre­cious to me than thou­sands of pieces of sil­ver and gold." (Psalm 119:72).As such, we must ad­here to God's law when he in­struct­ed us in the Third Com­mand­ment: "Re­mem­ber the Sab­bath day, to keep it holy." (Ex­o­dus.20: 8)

It is im­por­tant to note that the pre-con­di­tion for keep­ing a day holy for the Lord is to re­mem­ber a sig­nif­i­cant work that God has done. In Ex­o­dus 20:11, we are told to re­mem­ber God's work of cre­ation and there­fore keep holy the day of the Lord.Deuteron­o­my 5:15 tells us to re­mem­ber that God freed his peo­ple from slav­ery in Egypt and for that rea­son keep the Sab­bath day holy. When Christ rose from the dead on East­er Sun­day, the first Chris­tians kept the day af­ter the Sab­bath, the Sun­day, holy, to re­mem­ber the great work God had done through Christ on that day.

So by keep­ing Sun­day as the Lord's day, holy, we set aside time to re­mem­ber and cel­e­brate with great joy, the free­dom from sin and the hope of eter­nal life with God. This great work of sal­va­tion was pro­vid­ed for all mankind for all time, through the life, death and res­ur­rec­tion of Je­sus Christ.God wants us to en­joy His Day! Je­sus made it clear that the Sab­bath was made for man's ben­e­fit (Mark 2:27) so we have to be pru­dent in the choic­es we make and bal­ance our ac­tiv­i­ties on the "day of the Lord".So de­light in the Lord with his peo­ple on the day of di­vine rest and you can still make some time for cel­e­brat­ing at Mara­cas.

Shel­don V Branche

Sin­gles for Christ