Published in the bulletin of Holy Ghost Catholic Church in Knoxville, TN, on the Most Holy Body and Blood of CHhrist Sunday.
My dear Parishioners,
Peace! There are seven (7) “In Brief” articles in the Catechism of the Catholic Church addressing the Third Commandment of the Decalogue, ‘Keep Holy the Sabbath.’ The following is a reflection on CCC 2190.
We are taught in the Catechism that “The Sabbath which represents the achievement of the first creation is replaced by Sunday which recalls the new creation, inaugurated by the Resurrection of Christ.”
When considering the Sabbath and “keeping it holy” Mother Church is happy to juxtapose two different notions of creation, namely the first creation and the new creation. In the beginning, after God created the heavens and the Earth and all there is therein, we read in Sacred Scripture that “God rested” (cf. Genesis 2:2–3). We should be careful not to anthropomorphize God, as if He was worn out by all of the labors involved in creation. “To rest” also means to cease or to stop. When the Lord Jesus Himself said on a Sabbath that “the Father works and I work” it was His way of teaching us that He is the Lord of the Sabbath and that even on the “day of rest” God maintained in existence the creation He had made (cf. John 5:17). To sustain the creation is a work which Almighty God continues even on the Sabbath.
The new creation or second creation has its basis in the redemption. We become in Christ crucified and glorified a new creation thanks to His grace and mercy upon us (cf. 2 Corinthians 5:17). Jesus Christ is “the firstborn over all creation” and that “all things have been created through Him and for Him” yet we know that Our Lady the Blessed Virgin Mary was born before Him in His human nature which He received from her (cf. Colossians 1:15–16; Galatians 4:4). The “new heavens and the new Earth” of which we read in Sacred Scripture are a part of the new or second creation (cf. Revelation 21:1–27).
Saint Augustine’s axiom, cited in both the Catechism and Dei Verbum, “in the Old the New lies hidden, in the New the Old is fulfilled” comes to mind when considering that the resurrection of the Lord completes the first creation (cf. DV,16; CCC129) Christ is the new and definitive Adam (cf. 1 Corinthians 15:22, 45). While we are indebted to the first Adam for our human nature, we are no less indebted to the new and definitive Adam who is Christ for our redemption and being made anew. This is what we celebrate each Sunday and Holy Day of Obligation when we go to the Holy Mass and participate there fully, actively, and consciously by listening attentively to the readings from Sacred Scripture, by making the proper responses at the proper time, by standing and sitting and kneeling as appropriate. It is in this that we begin to fulfill our responsibility and exercise our right as adopted children of God Most High, people of prayer.
God bless you!
Father John Arthur Orr