A question about Sunday worship and Easter

Last updated on: December 30, 2014 at 7:08 pm by Mark Shea

A question about Sunday worship and Easter 2014-12-30T19:08:15-07:00 Mark Shea

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A reader writes:

Love reading your blog! Had a question – I am in a workout class with an instructor who is fundamentalist Christian. Lately he has been sending videos around by a guy named Larry Lasiter and he is saying that the Catholics invented worship on Sundays and the Bible says we are to worship on Saturday the Sabbath (so he is open on Sunday at his gym) and the latest one is that Easter was made up too and is linked to a pagan beginning.

He is pretty much attacking anyone who worships on Sunday saying that is not what God says in the Bible. Can you give me some Catholic background to discuss this with him? I reminded him that the Bible that he adheres to every word came from the Catholic Church in the 300s and most could not even read it until the 1500s. I am amazed how so many claim to be the Bible Pope and interpreter. Thanks for your help!

You can get info on the origin of Sunday worship here. The Lord’s Day (which is mentioned in Revelation) is distinguished from the Sabbath already in the New Testament, and Paul warns the Colossians against observing Jewish feasts and Sabbaths (“Therefore let no one pass judgment on you in questions of food and drink or with regard to a festival or a new moon or a sabbath. These are only a shadow of what is to come; but the substance belongs to Christ.” Colossians 2:16-17). This is in keeping with the Church’s insistence that the New Covenant fulfils and completes the Old. So just as baptism fulfills and accomplishes what circumcision could only signify, so the Lord’s day fulfils the Sabbath.

As to Easter, this is a rather silly complaint to which English speakers are prone because of a mere accident of language. “Easter” is a corruption of “Eostre” a Germanic pagan goddess whose name got attached to the Feast of the Resurrection because her rites happened to be celebrated at roughly the same time of year. English is a Germanic tongue, so the name stuck. But that doesn’t make Easter a pagan feast. After all, in most of the world, the Feast is called “Pascha” or some similar variation that derives not from German, but from the ancient word for “Passover”. For more info on this, go here.

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