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THIRD COMMANDMENT
The third commandment says: "Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy: six days labor and do all thy work: But the seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord thy God: thou shalt not do any work, thou, nor thy son or your daughter, your manservant, nor thy maidservant, nor thy cattle, nor thy stranger that is within thy gates. For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth and sea and all that in them but rested the seventh day. Therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and hallowed it "(Ex. 20.8 to 11).
Saturday in the Hebrew word, means "cessation" then " or "cease" and "rest". On the seventh day he received the name of Saturday, just because, performed the cosmic universe, "God blessed the seventh day and sanctified it: because that in it he rested from his entire menial job working that had created" (Gen 2.3).
In this commandment we are given a prescription in a positive sense that is to remember the seventh day, to observe and to abstain from work for the sanctification of the Sabbath. According to biblical work is what men usually play, the reason for which God has placed them on earth. The Sabbath day was, and still is, for the people of Israel on the day consecrated to the Lord a day of complete rest to devote himself exclusively to the worship of God, with the reading of sacred texts and prayer. For Christians, the Sabbath is no longer on Saturday, but Sunday, because on this day, "the first after the Sabbath" (Jn 20:19), Jesus rose again and began a new era. The resurrection, in fact, is the victory of Christ over death, the defeat of Satan, the fulfillment of the Scriptures.
The essential reason for Sabbath is that it is a Holy day that belongs to God in fact the divine decision gives us the key to understanding the meaning of the Sabbath. This time it is necessary to put the center of our lives searching for a research relationship with God that gives meaning to everything else, and that allows us to break the yoke of bondage that binds us to the work of our hands.
God placed a call to our condition as creatures, an invitation to stop periodically and return to the Source of life because life contains a myriad of tantalizing possibilities: how to find the time to stop to have the detachment necessary to make a choice, to discover if we really want to do the things we do? Despite our pretensions, we are not the creators of the universe and there will come a day when it becomes obvious.
The Church of God carried the festive celebration of the Sabbath to Sunday, because on this day, for the first time, the light shone on the world and in it, through the resurrection of the Redeemer who opened the case open to eternal life, our life, freed from the darkness, was reduced in the regions of light. So the Apostles called him "Lord's Day". "Far from replacing the Saturdays, Sundays, it is therefore a complete fulfillment, in a sense, the extension and full expression, in reference to the path of salvation history, which has its climax in Christ" (John Paul II, Apostolic Letter "Dies Domini", May 31, 1998).
The Sunday gives us the opportunity to rediscover the meaning of the measure, to balance our life choices which lead to another and a commitment to do God's work and believe in Him whom He sent (John 6, 29). Against the temptation to love ourselves and to believe only lost every hour that is not dedicated to produce wealth and to satisfy the body, we are offered a break that gives us a way to think of God, to ourselves, to the family. In fact, as stated by Jesus in the Gospel, what matters in life is to save our souls: "What does it profit a man to gain the whole world and forfeit his soul?" (Mk 8:36).
Thus says the Lord: "In that day you do nothing: neither you nor your son or your daughter, your servant, or your maidservant, your beast and your guest in your house." With these words we are warned to avoid any that may impede the exercise of divine worship. One senses that it is forbidden any kind of menial job, not really because this is inherently evil and dishonorable, but only because it distances us from that divine worship which is the purpose of the precept. A fortiori, the faithful must avoid the sins that day, which not only distract from the spirit of divine things, but fundamentally separate us from the love of God!
Not waste time using the time for God, and has earned. God gave us life and gives us eternal life. He who loves God receives the divine wisdom that helps him not to waste time on useless things. We remember the words of Jesus: "Who of you by being anxious can add one cubit to his stature? So if you do not have power for even the smallest thing, why do you worry about the rest?" (Luke 12.25-26) "You have no power to make one hair white or black ... As for you, the very hairs of your head are all numbered, so do not be afraid: you are worth more than many sparrows! ... He that fended his life shall lose it: and whosoever will lose his life for my sake shall find it "(Mt 5.36; 10.30-31, 10,39).
The first word of the formula is "Remember" and the religious worship and obedience to God, as expressed in this commandment, it springs from the law of nature, being the very nature that prompts us to dedicate a few hours to the worship of God is a healthy control, for both the body and spirit, to give a little 'time to be refreshed in spirit to the thought of God, which is why the Apostles settled among the first seven days were devoted to the worship of God and called him the day Lord.
The full value of the commandment requires that people put all his energies to the days scheduled, out of business and work material, can wait to the pious and the mystic cult of the Lord rest, in which we celebrate the rebirth of the new man to new life. Those who were enveloped in darkness are now light in the Lord, and proceed along the paths of goodness, justice, truth, as children of light, refrain from participating in unhealthy works of darkness.
The cares of earth, when excessive, may create a hazard and are having an increasingly negative. It is imprudent to want to force the business to continue to earn more and more, Jesus said to respect a man avaricious and materialistic: "Thou fool, this night your life will be required. And what you have prepared whose will? So is who lays up treasure for himself, and not rich toward God "(Luke 12.20-21). This is the wisdom that God teaches us through his wise and loving Word. His commands do not limit our freedom, but rather to expand and leads you in the right direction, towards the source of life, love, peace, joy.
Sunday is especially the "Lord's Day", to be sanctified by prayer, listening to the Word, personal reflection, fraternal charity, worship of the Mass, the nourishment of the Eucharist? It is the day that celebrates the resurrection of Christ, the solemn day of the Christian when Jesus breaks bread with us and still gives us his love. It is the encounter with the person we love and by whom we loved, because in the Eucharist Jesus gives us truly his body, his blood, his Word, his Spirit, his soul, his divinity. It is the day of the faith we understand what we must do to inherit eternal life.
The festival is a great gift of God to man. God rested the seventh day, so the man, who reflects the image of God, is called to do the same and must undertake to ensure that even the poor can enjoy the deserved rest from everyday activities. The party is a protest against the servitude of work and worship of money.
And 'then the party must return to being not just a day off from work but the day on which it places great emphasis on gratitude to God and that life regains the beauty that is inevitably on weekdays mortified, because of hard work, study, due to the problems of everyday life.
On Saturday heaven then, according to the commentary of St. Cyril in step apostolic "And let another Saturday to the people of God" (Heb 4.9), consists in that life, in which, living with Christ, we will enjoy all the goods, it is now extirpated each root of sin, as the saying goes: "There are lions, wild beasts will go there, but there will be a pure and holy way" (Isaiah 35, 8s). Actually follows the spirit of the holy in the sight of God all the goods. Sanctify means to enter the party in the earthly life of the infinite and boundless celebration a cut of paradise that never sets on the Sunday that commits us to sow the feast of heaven in the furrows of our human experience.
On holidays, Christians must go to church to attend Holy Mass, for the joyful meeting with the Lord and through the word of the Gospel find themselves as the disciples of Emmaus, which was burning in his heart to hear about Jesus, too, when we can Mass meet the Lord Jesus, for he makes us listen to his Word, and as he did with the fishermen of the lake, with Levi and the rich young man, invites us to leave everything and follow him.
Just think about the fact that this divine commandment can be fulfilled without any sacrifice. God has not imposed arduous labors to be addressed in his honor: he only wanted that we spent her holidays free from earthly cares. It is therefore no evidence of blatant recklessness, refusal to obey?
Let us remember the horrific tortures to which God subjected the violators of the command, which are narrated in the book of Numbers. To not run into this grave offense against God, will be well to repeat mentally and very often the warning "remember" and keep constantly before the eyes of the outstanding benefits we have said to spring from the observance of holidays.
It's up to us to decide and choose whether to accept the invitation and follow Jesus with a heart full of joy, or reject and leave sad, like the rich young man, because so many other things attract us more than God.
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Saint Francis
