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The true Sabbath, according to Roman Catholics and mainline Protestants, falls on Sunday of each week. This happens for several main reasons, some liturgical and some practical.

In practical terms, the work week starts on Monday and ends on Friday in many places. Some countries organize their calendars in this way to reflect Sunday getting recognized as the seventh day of the week. It confuses many Americans, as our calendars put Sunday first in the week. Calendars have been rearranged many times over the millennia and simply reflect what each culture believes about how its time needs to be organized.

Since many modern countries were founded by Christians, the organization of the calendar allowing Sunday to fall at the end of the week lets those nations celebrate the Sabbath on the seventh day. After all, in Genesis 2:1-3, it is written that after spending six days creating the universe, God rested and blessed the seventh day. This gives Christians the opportunity to take a break from their daily labors and go receive the Word of God in church, as God would have them do in order to deepen their faith in Him and receive His grace and salvation.

The main liturgical reason behind holding the Sabbath on Sunday rather than another day lies in the tradition of celebrating Easter on Sunday. This derives from the Gospel accounts of Jesus having been crucified on a Friday around noon and rising on the following Sunday. This timing is accurate because it is mentioned in Mark 15:42 that soon after Jesus' death on the cross, his body needed to be taken down due to Him having been crucified on the Day of Preparation, which occurred the day before the Jewish Sabbath of Saturday. For Jesus to thus lay in the grave for three days, as stated in Scripture that he must, counting from the time of His death, He needed to be buried on Friday and rise on Sunday. This could occur because to the people of his time, any part of a day counted as that day, thus dying on Friday, laying in the grave on Saturday, then rising on Sunday morning constitutes the three days in first-century Jewish culture.

Christians commemorate Jesus' Resurrection on the first Sunday after the first full moon in spring because of the timing noted in the Bible. The Sabbath then must be celebrated on Sundays each week, as those count to many as "Little Easter" and recall the Resurrection. For this reason, Sundays also do not count as days of Lent, the season of repentance observed in preparation for Easter, which means that the season of Lent lasts forty days beginning on Ash Wednesday and ending on Holy Saturday.

As in many other arenas of life, some aspects of religion draw their celebrations from practicality. However, those reasons must be carefully considered alongside purely religious or liturgical motives for a feast day. Thus, putting both types of reasoning together, Christians come to the conclusion that the true Sabbath falls on Sunday.

Learn more about this author, Veronica Bergschneider.
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