O first and last day, radiant and splendid day, of Christ’s triumph
This phrase is taken from a hymn from the Liturgy of the Hours in Easter Time. Continuing our reflection from yesterday, here is the “second installment.” Sunday is our weekly Easter, which replaces the Jewish Sabbath with a new holy day that will remind all peoples of all times of the event of the Resurrection of Jesus Christ. The first Christian communities, guided by the apostles, understood that it was Jesus’ will (explicit or implicit, we cannot know) to gather on the first day of the week to listen to the apostles’ teaching and to celebrate the Eucharistic Sacrifice together. Some Christians came from the Jews and were still attached to Jewish customs; they wanted to continue attending the synagogue on Saturday (let us remember that Jesus too always attended the synagogue on Saturday, first with his parents when he was little and then alone or with his disciples). Others came from the “Gentiles,” that is, from other nations / cultures, for example from the Greeks. And these did not want to attend the synagogue on Saturday because it was not part of their customs. And so in the first communities this problem arose: must Christians attend the synagogue or not? Must Christians refrain from eating meat offered to idols, or not? The Jewish Christians wanted to impose their customs on the Christians who came from the Greeks. And the apostles had to hold council to resolve this problem.
The problem of the Jewish Christians with respect to the Greek Christians… and “Christian freedom”
To resolve this problem, Saint Paul above all took it in hand, the great defender of “Christian freedom”: let the Jewish Christians go to the synagogue and abstain from meat sacrificed to idols, according to their conscience and their customs; but let them not judge the Greek Christians who do not go to the synagogue and instead eat meat sacrificed to idols, knowing that idols are not true gods, they are false, and therefore, so as not to throw away good meat, they eat it. Saint Paul, however, is very clear with the Greek Christians: if you who eat the meat of idols when you are in someone’s house do so to honor idols and gods, then your conscience is defiled and you would do better not to eat it. We read about this matter in the First Letter of Saint Paul to the Corinthians in chapter 8 and again in chapter 10.
Saint Paul speaks of the “knowledge / awareness of interior freedom” as “knowledge.” If you have “knowledge,” that is, the awareness of Christian freedom, and, knowing that idols are not gods, you eat the meat offered to idols without concern, nevertheless bear in mind that if this action of yours scandalizes another brother (a Jewish Christian) who does not yet have this “knowledge” of Christian freedom and thinks that you are honoring the idol, then abstain from eating the meat offered to idols so as not to scandalize your brother.
Here is the great wisdom of Saint Paul! And this is where the different “rites” in the Catholic Church come from (Latin Rite, Greek Rite, Armenian Rite, etc.). Christians can believe the same truths, they can be part of the same community, they can have been baptized with the same Baptism, and yet they can live different traditions and have different customs. Diversity is not necessarily division, even though it can become division if there is no humility and consideration for the brother who is beside you and has a conscience different from your own.
In one way or another, both Jewish Christians and Greek Christians, and Christians of any other nation, gather together on the day after the Sabbath, on the first day of the week, around one table. And thus this “first day of the week” also becomes the “day after the last,” the “day beyond,” the “first and last day, radiant and splendid day.” Sunday is the first day of creation, and it is the day that transcends creation, that goes beyond. The day of Jesus’ Resurrection is the eighth day, the day that casts us beyond the week, beyond time and history toward eternity. The eighth day, an ancient writer tells us, Origen, who, although not considered a “Church Father,” nevertheless remains an important point of reference for the interpretation of Sacred Scripture, casts us toward that eternal day on which the rising sun will have no more setting. Jesus in his Resurrection is compared to the sun that rises never to set again. The sun that we know in this physical world every day “dies,” disappearing beyond the horizon in its sunset, and then “rises” with the new day, only to “die” again in the evening. Instead, Jesus, dead and risen, is the sun that dies and then rises never to set again. Sunday is the “new day” that God has created, because we know seven days in the week, but God now creates a “new day,” an eighth day, in which believers, reborn in Christ, having become “new creatures,” will sing the “new hymn” before the throne of the Lamb (Book of Revelation 14,3). This is why the baptismal font, which also represents the tomb of Jesus in which the catechumen dies and then comes forth from it rising to new life in Christ, this is why the baptismal font is octagonal. Even when the large basin was used, as at the Baptistery of Saint John Lateran, the building itself was octagonal. The eight sides represent the eighth day, the day of eternity, the day of the definitive Resurrection. The eight sides represent the extension to the whole earth of salvation in Christ. Just as there are eight cardinal points on the “wind rose,” the four principal ones plus the four intermediate ones, so this water flows forth from the Church toward all humanity of all times, so that all may become one in Christ, so that all may rise with him on the eighth day.
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