Sunday, July 29
Liturgical Color: White
Today is the Memorial of St. Martha. She
was the sister of Lazarus and Mary of
Bethany. Upon the death of Lazarus it
was to St. Martha that Jesus proclaimed,
"I am the Resurrection and the Life."
How does Jesus deal with the Sabbath?
Jesus observes the Sabbath, but at the same time he deals with it very liberally, as one who has complete command over it: "The sabbath was made for man, not man for the sabbath" (Mk 2:27).
The fact that Jesus claims the right to heal on the Sabbath and to interpret the Sabbath laws mercifully poses a dilemma for his Jewish contemporaries: Either Jesus is the Messiah sent by God, which makes him "Lord even of the sabbath" (Mk 2:28), or else he is merely a man, in which case his actions on the Sabbath are a sin against the Law.
Why do Christians replace the Sabbath with Sunday?
Christians replaced the celebration of the Sabbath with the celebration of Sunday because Jesus Christ rose from the dead on a Sunday. The "Lord's Day", however, does include elements of the Sabbath.
The Christian Sunday has three essential elements: (1) It recalls the creation of the world and communicates the festive splendor of God's goodness to the passage of time. (2) It recalls the "eighth day of creation", when the world was made new in Christ (thus a prayer from the Easter Vigil says: "You have wonderfully created man and even more wonderfully restored him."). (3) It includes the theme of rest, not just to sanctify the interruption of work, but to point even now toward man's eternal rest in God. (YOUCAT questions 363-364)
Dig Deeper: CCC section (2173-2176) and other references here.