Bound in Love

Those who keep his commandments remain in him, and he in them. – 3 John 3:24

What does it mean to remain in him? It’s not an action in our common use today. We tend to use the word “remain” to indicate something left over after an action. So we have to unpack what Jesus (through the Church) might want us to consider when we are instructed to actively remain in him.

We have a wonderful example in Mary, the mother of God, remaining at the foot of the Cross on Good Friday. She actively stayed there, which is in contrast to the active departure of almost all the apostles. If you place yourself in that scene, you can probably feel the anxiousness and the desire to move in one direction or the other. The hardest commandment is to stay.

In our home, we have two cats. Cats are famous for their unpredictability, especially the unpredictability of their affection. One of our cats likes to come and sit in my lap during my daily prayer time. But the cat simply cannot stay the full length of my prayer time. It will come purring madly and insist on nesting in my lap and wait expectantly for me to pet it. And then it will spring out of my lap and go do something because it just can’t sit still. That is the instinct of this cat, and cats do not have rational intellects nor do they have independent wills. So the cat does cat things because it’s a cat and has almost no control over what it does.

Jesus knows that we are not cats. Fortified by our intellects, we can direct our wills against our natural passions. So when Jesus tells us to remain in him, we can actually do that. A cat cannot but we can.

If we choose Jesus, he expects us to follow his commandments. He told us in the Epistle today that it is by following his commandments that we remain in him. Chief among the commandments he gives us is to love one another. It is the second great commandment, and it follows the first great commandment, which is to love God with all that we have every day of our lives. We cannot really love our neighbor if we don’t love God our father. We see this order in the 10 Commandments. The first three give details about that first great commandment. The next seven give details about the second great commandment.

Among the first three commandments of the Decalogue is the commandment to keep the Sabbath holy. I was recently asked why our Sabbath is Sunday instead of Saturday, and I replied simply that we transferred the holy day. That is not wrong; we did change the day from the Jewish Saturday to Sunday because the Easter resurrection made Sunday the day of the Lord for Christians. One thing we didn’t really change was the Sabbath nature of the Lord’s day. It is the Lord’s day, which means it is not our day.

We are supposed to keep holy the Lord’s day. In our modern Christian usage, the term “Sabbath” is occasionally used to mean “vacation.” When we lived in Buckhead, my commute home frequently took me past a large modern evangelical church. When that church closed for two weeks’ vacation around Labor Day, they posted a sign saying they were “keeping Sabbath time.” It would be fantastic if the entire church was actually on a two-week retreat, but in point of fact the church was closed for vacation.

Vacation is not Sabbath. What makes the day the Sabbath is that it is sacred. What makes something sacred is that it is set apart for God. The Latin word for priests is our source for the English word sacred because priests are men set apart for God. Sunday is set apart for God. That means that on Sunday God comes first. It doesn’t mean that you have to stay absolutely still praying all day, but it does mean that God and his commandments come first. (God and his commandments should come first every day of the week, but the church insists that at least one day of the week they really do.)

If we are to remain in him and follow his commandments, then we have to make Sunday mass a priority. I do recognize that the people who need to hear that are not here. You are here because you understand that as you plan your Sunday, “what time is Mass” is at the top of your list. It’s not that way on Tuesday, but it should be that way for Sunday.

It should be that way for every Sunday. The priority of Mass on Sunday means that on Super Bowl Sunday or Masters Sunday or Sunday the Fourth of July or any other Sunday when the world is busy doing worldly things, we Christians first make sure to get to Mass.

In most parishes in the United States, Catholics have multiple opportunities to fulfill their Sunday Mass obligation. The rise of anticipatory Masses — those Saturday afternoon Masses we typically call the vigil Mass — reflects an effort by the church to accommodate the modern worldly busyness that has affected and even infected Catholics. A Catholic mom or dad whose kid is on a travel soccer team has a very hard time telling the coach that little Susie cannot play this weekend because the game is scheduled on Sunday, and so the church offers Saturday evening Masses to help.

But if the Sabbath is a sacred day set aside for the Lord, then those Catholic moms and dads need to fight for Sunday just as hard as they fight for their kids. If the soccer league has no respect for Sunday as a day set apart, then perhaps God is asking Catholic moms and dads to set up another soccer league that does. Keeping the Lord’s day is an action of stillness. It is very much like remaining. It is uncomfortable, as Mary was at the foot of the Cross. But it is as important as any of the 10 Commandments.

The Lord wants us to rest on Sunday. But he wants that to be a holy rest. Sunday should have sufficient free time that a Catholic could read a chapter from one of the books of the Bible on a Sunday. It is not Catholic doctrine that Sunday is the day of pilgrimage to Home Depot to knock 10 things off the honey-do list. While not the teaching of the Church, it is all too often the practice of the people of the Church. We have to fight against the busyness of the world in all our days, and the Church has given us a commandment to keep holy the Sabbath so that we can make a concerted effort at least one day of the week.

Here on the fifth Sunday of Easter, we are continuing our celebration of the resurrection and the victory of life over death. Through his passion, death, and resurrection of the Paschal mystery, Jesus has defeated the devil and has gained for us the opportunity for eternal life with him. The devil is defeated, but he is like the snake with its head cut off. He can still bite and sink his poison in us if we are not constantly vigilant. One of his most effective poisons is the busyness of the world. One of his most important victories is to turn Sunday into just another busy day of the week.

Sunday is the day of the Lord. Sunday is our Sabbath. Sunday we remain in Him. We actively choose stillness over busyness. Like Jesus on the cross with Mary at his feet, our choice to keep the Lord’s day holy and set aside is a sign of contradiction to the world. Strengthened with grace by our participation in the holy sacrifice of the Mass, let us go out today and remain in him and keep his commandments.