SUNDAY. - From (dies) Dominica, "day of the Lord." There is discussion about the time, place and manner in which this day came alongside the Jewish Sabbath and then replaced it in obliging weekly rest. Increasingly, however, the opinion gains credence that the feast was born in Jerusalem, before the dispersal of the Apostles, as a weekly liturgical and eucharistic gathering, which was to commemorate the Resurrection of Jesus Christ, which occurred on the first day of the week. Rationalists and modernists, on the other hand, have made of it a derivation from solar and Mithraic cults; but the facts stand against them. It is true that there is knowledge of a planetary week, which arose in Babylon, then passed into Egypt, spread among the Greeks and, at the beginning of the Empire, among the Romans; it had a certain analogy with the Hebrew week, which, however, made the Sabbath the concluding day, whereas in the pagan one it began the week. And indeed the d. was called prima sabbati, una sabbati, dies octava to signify that it had been added to the Jewish Sabbath, as an invitation to continue in it the worship practices begun on the preceding day. But outside the Jewish world, the pagan usage prevailed. Justin (I Apol., 67) says that Christians gathered on the d. "because this first day is the one on which God created the world and because our Lord Jesus Christ rose from the dead on the same day." It should be noted, however, that the clearest and most ancient testimonies of the d. are found for the territories of Palestine, Syria, and Greece, where solar worship took least root.
Callewaert draws direct arguments for the origin, in a Jewish milieu, of the d. from two New Testament passages of the years 54-56: "Now concerning the collections that are made for the Saints, as I have given orders to the churches of Galatia, so do you also. On the first day of the week (κατὰ μίαν σαββάτων), let every one of you put apart with him, laying up whatsoever he shall be prospered in" (I Cor. 16:1-2). "And we stayed (at Troas) seven days. And on the first day of the week, when we were assembled to break bread, Paul discoursed with them, being to depart on the morrow: and he continued his speech until midnight. And there were a great many lights in the upper chamber where we were assembled" (Acts 20:7-8). St. Paul, therefore, would have taken advantage of the customary weekly gathering, rich with a certain ceremonial apparatus because of the mysteries celebrated there.
The term d. finds its first testimonies outside the Jewish world. St. John in the Apoc. (1:10) calls it dominica dies; the Didache (ch. XIV), written in Syria at the beginning of the 2nd century, says Dominica Domini; St. Ignatius of Antioch simply dominica (ad Magnesios, IX); St. Justin, on the other hand, dies solis, in the pagan fashion, from the planetary week that referred that day to the sun, as Monday to the moon.
The weekly commemoration of Christ's Resurrection gave rise to many rites. That of spending the night between Saturday and the d. in prayer, in the "breaking of bread" and, in some places, in expectation of the Master's glorious return. Also explained are: the character of joy always enjoyed on this day, with the exclusion of fasting and other penance; the ceremony of aspersion with holy water before the solemn Mass, a figure of Baptism administered in the most solemn form at the dawn of Easter; the complete dedication of the d. to God with the prohibition of celebrating saints' feasts on it, unless they are of the first or second class (from Pius X onward).
It established the regular celebration of Mass, which the faithful felt to be a duty equal to that still practiced on the Sabbath in the synagogue and which it would later replace, while for the gentiles it immediately became the rite of the new faith. The Didache attests the practice; St. Justin emphasizes its obligatory character; Tertullian (De idol., 14) its importance. The Council of Elvira in the year 300 (Mansi, II, 1 ff.) reproves the lazy in its fulfillment, which appears as a precise obligation in the Council of Agde of 506 (Mansi, VIII, 326 ff.). Mass was ordinarily to be heard in one's own parish church; but from the 13th century the innovations of the Mendicant Orders would increasingly weaken that ancient ordinance, although it was still validated for some centuries by synodal decrees. Leo X, with the bull Intellecimus of 1517, partly ratified the new usage by permitting Mass to be heard in the churches of the said Orders; the Council of Trent (sess. XXII) contented itself with a simple exhortation; the CIC (can. 1249) establishes that the precept is satisfied in any Catholic rite, in the open air, in churches, in public and semi-public oratories, in cemetery chapels; private oratories are excluded, unless they are favored by a privilege.
The first Christians practiced rest on the Sabbath, but the gradual and progressive detachment from Jewish customs and the penetration of Christian doctrine into the social organism transferred the law of rest to the d.; Tertullian already attests it (Ad nationes, 1, 15; Apol., 16), but perhaps it is not fitting to force the meaning of the words: in fact it seems that work was avoided only to the extent that allowed attendance at the liturgy. In substance, Constantine's law of 321 (Codex Theodosianus, ed. Mommsen, 1, 87) says the same thing; only in the Council of Orléans of 538 (Mansi, IX, 16 ff.) are manual works directly condemned.
That rest was in some way observed even in the afterlife, with suspension of the pains of hell and purgatory, is affirmed by legendary documents. In recent decades the continuous evolution of forms of life and the advance of new needs have caused the theme to be treated in liturgical congresses and pastoral letters: sanctification of the d. The encyclical Mediator Dei of Pius XII reaffirmed the traditional forms: "The d. and the feast days must be consecrated to divine worship, by which God is adored and the soul is nourished with heavenly food: and although the Church prescribes only that the faithful must abstain from servile work and must assist at the Eucharistic Sacrifice, and gives no precept for evening worship, nevertheless... it is undoubtedly necessary that all should go to our temples, to be instructed in the truths of the Catholic faith, to sing the praises of God, to be enriched by the priest with the eucharistic blessing" (AAS, 39 [1947], pp. 575-76).
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Enrico Cattaneo