Welcome to the first installment in Tuesday’s CatholicQuestions & Answers. Todays question comes from the book Did Adam AndEve Have Belly Buttons? By Matthew J. Pinto. If anyone is interested in specifictopics or questions please let me know and I will put them in a future post.
CATHOLICBELIEFS AND PRACTICES
Question #132:
“Why do we go tochurch on Sunday instead of another day?” –Erik L., 14
Answer:
Saturday was the Sabbath for the Jews, but the early Catholics changed thepractice to Sunday to commemorate Jesus’ rising from the dead on Sunday (Acts20:7; Rv 1:10; CCC 2042)
For the first Jewish Christians, both Saturday (the originalSabbath) and Sunday were regarded as festival days. As the number of Jewishconverts to Christianity decreased, the Christian observance of Saturday as aholy day diminished. For the gentile (that is, non-Jewish) Christians, Saturdaynever had any particular importance. They observed Sunday as the holy day.
There have been attempts by a few modern Protestant sects toreestablish Saturday as the day of worship. The most notable of these is theSeventh-Day Adventists. This practice has no historical basis and is contraryto the practice of the early Church (CCC 1343).