"This is the Charity of God, That We Keep His Commandments"

Part Three

by Thomas A. Droleskey

Whosoever believeth that Jesus is the Christ, is born of God. And every one that loveth him who begot, loveth him also who is born of him. In this we know that we love the children of God: when we love God, and keep his commandments. For this is the charity of God, that we keep his commandments: and his commandments are not heavy. (1 John 5: 1-3)

As the chief duty of man is the public worship of God, the Third Commandment makes it clear that we have a solemn obligation in the Divine positive law to render Him such worship on His day, Sunday:

Remember thou keep holy the Lord's day.

Sunday became the Lord's day when Our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ rose from the dead on Easter Sunday. Sunday is the first and the "eighth" day of the week, the day on which God first created the world and the day on which our re-creation, effected by Our Lord's death on the wood of the Holy Cross, is made manifest publicly. As the Catholic Church alone is repository of the entirety of Divine Revelation, including the Ten Commandments, she saw to it that the Day of the Resurrection, Sunday, was the day on which Catholics are obliged under pain of Mortal Sin to assist at the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, which is the unbloody re-presentation of the Sacrifice of the Cross itself. Each of us, therefore, has an obligation to keep Sunday holy, first of all by assisting at Mass and by spending more time in prayer and doing spiritual reading--and by making pilgrimages on some Sundays of the year with one's family to shrines to pay honor to the Mother of God and to the saints.

The obligations of the Third Commandment oblige us to plan our Sundays around Holy Mass, not on anything extraneous, such as sports or other leisure activities. Our assistance of Holy Mass must define our day on Sunday, not how our assistance of Mass can be "fit in" to accommodate other things that we would like to do. Thus, the first desire of our hearts for Roman Rite Catholics on Sundays, as it should be really on every day of our life as members of the Church Militant, must be to make the effort that we need to make to get ourselves to Immemorial Mass of Tradition, avoiding any and all contact with the synthetic novelty known as the Novus Ordo Missae. We must not want any part of a Mass that enshrines the spirit of Protestantism and incorporates the time-bound features of this passing world. We must seek the sure shelter provided by the Mass that was taught by Our Lord to the Apostles before He ascended to the Father's right hand in glory.

That is, we want to honor God with a worship that truly communicates the solemnity of Calvary and the eternity of Heaven. The Mass of Tradition impelled people to be on their best behavior and to dress in whatever was the best clothing they had, even they only had one good suit or one good dress to wear Sunday after Sunday. The synthetic concoction of the past decades has led to interior sloth and to exterior sloth. Most of he relatively low percentage of Catholics worldwide who go to the Novus Ordo Missae dress casually, if not indecently, and act as though they are in a theater rather than in church, talking, waving, looking at others. We must have nothing to do with the Novus Ordo Missae, lest we ourselves be caught up in the sloth it engenders--or, worse yet, became so agitated by its inherently Protestant nature and the ever-changing set of circumstances in which is offered that we lose the spiritual peace that is supposed to be with us on Sundays after assisting at Holy Mass.

Our observance of the Lord's day, the Day of the Resurrection, Sunday, must be prepared for with care, not approached as a casual afterthought. A family should read the Collects and Epistle and Gospel from Sunday Mass on Saturday evening. Children should be reminded to be on their best behavior in God's house, that He sees them and that they have an obligation to give good example to other children to help them to be better behaved during the offering of Holy Mass. Families should arrive in enough time to get to Confession, if confessions are not heard on Saturday afternoons, and to spend time before the Blessed Sacrament before Mass on Sundays. Each family member must be attired modestly and in clothing befitting their gender (meaning, obviously, no masculine attire for women). The chapel veil, indicative of a woman's submission to Our Lord as the Invisible Head of His Holy Church, or some other modest head-covering must be worn in a spirit of humility that does not draw attention to oneself. Just as everything must be perfect about the offering of the Mass by the alter Christus, so must everything be as perfect as possible in our interior dispositions and in our external manifestations.

Sadly, the the solemnity of Sundays has been undermined not only by the Masonic efforts to descralize the day with sports and commercial enterprises, the Church in her human elements has played a very central role in descralizing the Lord's Day, Sunday. A brief history is in order here.

Pope Pius XII, recognizing the changes that had taken place in the world, gave permission in 1953 for evening Masses. This was done principally to make it possible for workers to get to daily Mass after they had finished their work for the day. These evening Masses were not "anticipation" Masses to satisfy the obligations for a Sunday or a Holy Day of Obligation. They were offered simply to make the Mass of a particular day available to Catholics beyond the normal canonical hours for the offering of Holy Mass, which are from 6:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. There are some priests I know who, quite rightly, insist on keeping the canonical hours. These priests recognize the validity of what Pope Pius XII did. They simply prefer to cleave to the traditional canonical hours for the offering of Holy Mass. As he did with the liturgical changes proposed by then Father Annibale Bugnini, C.M., in November of 1955 and thereafter, Pope Pius XII unintentionally opened the floodgates for his successors to change disciplinary rules that have helped to undermine the holiness of Sundays and Holy Days of Obligation.

In 1960, just seven years after the indult issued by Pope Pius XII for evening Masses, the Sacred Congregation for the Clergy issued an indult to the American bishops for Masses to be offered on the afternoon or the evening preceding a Sunday or a Holy Day of Obligation. The principle used in this instance is as follows: the Divine Office begins to celebrate major feasts of the Church on the evening before the feast itself. Liturgically speaking, therefore, Sundays begin with First Vespers on Saturday evening. One would be technically correct, therefore, if he chose, in a legalistic manner, to break a Lenten fast on Saturday night after sundown as, liturgically, Sunday has begun with sundown on Saturday evening. As the Church has sought to extend major feasts by anticipating them starting on the sundown before the day on which they are celebrated, the thought of the liturgical revolutionaries, who began their work under Pope Pius XII and were given greater encouragement by Pope John XXIII,was that it would be acceptable to to offer Holy Mass itself on a Saturday afternoon or evening--and on the afternoon or evening prior to a Holy Day of Obligation. This could, they reasoned, help those who had to work or travel on Sundays or on Holy Days of Obligation fulfill their obligations under the Third Commandment.

As we know, the results of this 1960 indult, which was renewed twice before the 1983 Code of Canon Law codified evenings before Sundays and Holy Days of Obligations as the time for "anticipation" Masses, have been disastrous for the life of the Church and for the life of souls. Those who were forced by dire economic necessity--or the nature of their employment (doctors, nurses police officers, firemen, transit workers, maintenance workers) to work on Sundays committed no sin in missing Holy Mass. Although the thought of making Mass available to them on Saturdays and the evening before a Holy Day of Obligation might have had some foundation in a concern for the souls of such people, the result was that large numbers of people who could attend Mass on Sundays and on Holy Days of Obligation now had an excuse to keep their days of obligation under the Third Commandment "free" for what they wanted to do. Sundays thus became days to "sleep in" or to watch the "talking head" interview programs to prepare for football or baseball games or for family outings.

The 1960 indult, which the late John Cardinal Krol, the Archbishop of Philadelphia from March 22, 1961, to February 11, 1988, resisted to his last day in office, came at a time when efforts were being made by America's corporate robber barons to end the Sunday "blue laws" that restricted the hours during which certain businesses could operate and banned entirely the sale of some goods altogether. Although those efforts would not be fully successful in a majority of states until the 1970s (acknowledging that some states and counties within states still keep certain stores closed on Sundays), when shopping malls were able to open on Sundays in many places throughout the country, the 1960 indult helped to produce generations of Catholics who think of Sundays as "days off" rather than the Day of Our Lord's Resurrection. The ending of the blue laws on Sundays in many states thus resulted in Jewish and Masonic merchants demanding that their employees work on Saturdays and Sundays, thus making it impossible for people to get to Mass at all. Please tell me that this is not all diabolical. As Catholics got more and more used to the descralizing of Sundays they gave little though to having their children participate in the Masonic "sports leagues" that vied with Sunday Mass for their attention. No thought was given, it appears, to the fact that any activity that takes away from the sacredness of Sunday is not worth our participation.

To be sure, there were merchants in the days gone by whose businesses were open until after the last Mass ended around 2:00 p.m. on Sunday afternoon. Although grocery stores, such as Bohack, Grand Union, The Great Atlantic and Pacific Tea Company, Food Fair, King Kullen, Waldbaum's, and the Manhattan Food Store near Saint Aloysius Church on Middle Neck Road in Great Neck, New York, when I was in elementary school in the 1950s, were closed on Sundays, bakeries and delicatessens and pharmacies were open until after the last Mass. The Church, understanding the needs of the flesh, was particularly solicitous of the fact that her sheep would be thirsty and hungry after having observed a strict fast of anything taken by mouth, either food or water, from Midnight until after the conclusion of Holy Mass. Holy Mother Church did not consider it wrong for these bakers and delicatessen owners to open their shops to provide the sheep with a bit of nourishment after Mass. Such establishments were closed in the early afternoon, though. Only a few restaurants stayed open. Even most gasoline stations were closed. Do you remember those days?

Everything is open today, as we know. People congregate in the secular cathedrals known as malls and ball parks and movie theaters rather than performing their duties under the Third Commandment. Having rejected the true God they worship dutifully at the altars of all of their false gods, frequently spending so much time and energy doing so that the first part of their work week is spent in recovering from their worshipful indulgence at the altars of their false gods. Few priests see this as a problem. Fewer still see that the Novus Ordo Missae itself, having embraced the spirit of the world, has helped to throw people into the arms of the false gods who beckon them on Sundays to worship at their altars of greed and narcissistic self-indulgence.

Catholics who adhere to the fullness of the Church's liturgical tradition without any concessions to the novelties of one Annibale Bugnini must make sure to withdraw themselves from the concerns of the world as much as possible on Sundays. We must refrain from all servile work (no home improvement work on Sundays, that is) and spend our time in family prayer or with family members and friends engaging in spiritually uplifting activities and conversations.

Moreover, the Third Commandment requires us to keep holy all of the Holy Days of Obligation. These should be the true holidays. Indeed, the word "holiday" is derived from "holy day," a day upon which Catholic men and women refrained from their normal activities to celebrate a particular feast or saint. There are still Catholic men, who are meant to be the principal breadwinners of their families, who make sure to take off from their work on holy days and on certain feast days, especially those in honor of Our Lady, trying to keep alive the spirit of the Faith in a very Calvinist, materialistic world, where most people are concerned almost exclusively about their 401-K retirement programs and/or the corporate bottom line rather than the honor and glory of God and the good of their own immortal souls.

To keep holy the Lord's day for a Catholic, therefore, we must always put First Things first and Last Things last. The goal of each Catholic must be to live in such a way as to die a happy, holy death and thus to worship the Blessed Trinity in the glory of His Beatific Vision in an unending Easter Sunday of glory in Paradise. The way to get home to Heaven runs through our worthy and recollected assistance at the Holy Sacrifice of Mass, which is offered in all of its fullness and beauty and solemnity in the manner that has been handed down to us from the Apostles themselves, who had learned it from Our Divine Redeemer Himself. It should be our singular joy to keep Sundays and all Holy Days of Obligation holy. We can't get to Heaven if we don't.

May Our Lady, the Queen of All Saints, help us to keep her company with all of the angels and saints at Mass on Sundays and other days of obligations--as well as on all other days--as the means of helping us get home to her in the presence of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost.

Whosoever believeth that Jesus is the Christ, is born of God. And every one that loveth him who begot, loveth him also who is born of him. In this we know that we love the children of God: when we love God, and keep his commandments. For this is the charity of God, that we keep his commandments: and his commandments are not heavy. (1 John 5: 1-3)

Our Lady of Sorrows, pray for us.

Saint Joseph, pray for us.

Saints Peter and Paul, pray for us.

Saint Isidore, pray for us.

Saint John the Evangelist, pray for us.

Saint Mary Magdalene, pray for us.

Saint Philomena, pray for us.

Saint Lucy, pray for us.

Saint Agnes, pray for us.

Saint Agatha, pray for us.

Saint Bridget of Sweden, pray for us.

Saint Catherine of Sweden, pray for us.

Saint John of the Cross, pray for us.

Saint Teresa of Avila, pray for us.

Saint Therese Lisieux, pray for us.

Saint Bernadette Soubirous, pray for us.

Blessed Anne Catherine Emmerich, pray for us.

Blessed Francisco, pray for us.

Blessed Jacinta, pray for us.

Sister Lucia, pray for us.