Sanctifying your Sunday: sermon on the sixteenth Sunday after Pentecost

By a Dominican Friar   |   24 September 2025

“Is it lawful to heal on the Sabbath day?”

Have you ever wondered why our Lord Jesus Christ chose to rise again on the Sunday rather than on the Saturday? No doubt there were several reasons, such as to prove beyond doubt that He was really dead, or to allow the holy women the time to buy and prepare the spices which they would bring to the tomb. But another reason was that God wished to change the day on which His people would keep the Sabbath.

Sabbath means the day of rest, and in the Old Testament, as you know, the Sabbath was always kept on the Saturday. Why Saturday? It was in memory of the day on which God rested from His work of creation. So, Moses told the people, “Remember thou keep holy the sabbath day. Six days thou shalt labour, and shalt do all thy works. But on the seventh day is the sabbath of the Lord thy God. … For in six days the Lord hath made heaven and earth, and the sea, and all things that are in them, and rested on the seventh day.” That seventh day was Saturday. 

So, the sabbath of the Old Testament reminded the people of creation, and how God had made the world and all that is in it in six days. That was the lesson that the people of that time needed to learn.

In the New Testament, we don’t forget this lesson. But God also wished to teach His people a new one. As well as creation, there is resurrection, which in fact is a new creation. Just as the old Sabbath recalled how God had made all things from nothing by His almighty power, so the new Sabbath recalls how our Lord rose again from the dead by His almighty power. Just as creation is a miracle not to be forgotten, so is the resurrection. Moses said: “Remember how God made all things in six days”. The Church says: “Remember how your Saviour died and has come back to life.” After the Son of God, like the guest in the parable, had put Himself into the very lowest place by descending to the realm of the dead, the Father, like the householder in the parable, as it were said to Him, “My friend, come up higher.”

Our Sabbath, then, is like the old one but also different from it. It is like the old one since we rest, as far as possible, from laborious works, so that we will be able to take delight in what God has done for us. It’s true that our Lord said to the Pharisees: “Is it lawful to heal on the Sabbath?” He was referring there directly to the fact that one may indeed perform works of mercy like healing the sick or feeding the hungry on this day, as a Christian mother might do, for example, by preparing a meal for her family. But I think that by these words He was also teaching that God heals us on — and by‚ the Sabbath. If we give this day to God, He will heal us of the anxieties, preoccupations and worldliness that may have built up in our soul during the week.

Yet our Sabbath is also different from the old one. It doesn’t only look backward, but also forward. It is about the resurrection; and our resurrection lies in the future, not in the past. In the lives of the desert fathers, we read of a certain monk called St Arsenius. Every Saturday evening, he would take his stand at the door of his hut, facing east and stretch out his hands in prayers toward the heavens, preparing, says the chronicler, for the glory of the Sunday; and he would remain standing in that posture all night until the morning sun shone once more his face. Only then would he sit down. He knew that God wills each Sunday to be a foretaste of our own resurrection.

So what in practice does this mean for us?  Here are three simple suggestions for sanctifying your Sunday. First, clear a space for it: try to get all your household chores done, or your work emails answered, by Saturday afternoon. Secondly, enter into the grace of Sunday as soon as you can: why not begin already on the Saturday evening?  You could for example say a special prayer before your evening meal, or maybe even singing a psalm before eating, or, for families, you could like one family that I know take it in turns around the table to mention something you want to give thanks to God for, from the previous week. And thirdly, on the Sunday itself, as well as holy Mass, make some other offering of yourselves to God. For example, if you come to this Mass in the evening, you might pray some of the divine office, or the little office of our Lady, in the morning. If you normally go to Mass in the morning, why not pray a psalm or two in the evening?  We have God’s promise through the prophet Isaiah: “If thou call the sabbath delightful, and the holy of the Lord glorious, while thou dost not thy own ways, then shalt thou be delighted in the Lord, and I will lift thee up above the high places of the earth,” into heaven itself.