The 3rd Commandment - Keep Holy the Sabbath

by Fred Vilbig

Have you ever had someone refuse a gift from you? You take the time to go shopping (one of my least favorite things to do). You have to figure out what they are going to like. You kind of put yourself on the line a little in picking the present. And then they say they don’t want it, they don’t like it. Or they re-gift it, and you find out. Or they ask where you bought it, and you know they’re going to take it back. That kind of hurts. I know it’s just something you bought (or worse, something you made), but it’s a little piece of you.

I look at the Church that way. When Jesus was here on earth, he established the Church. He established the sacraments. He set up a hierarchy when he picked the Apostles, and He established the papacy when He commissioned Peter. And at the Last Supper, he instituted the priesthood and the Mass. The Church is God’s gift to us, and yet so many of us throw it back at Him.

One of the reasons people give for rejecting the Church is the sins of the ministers or the hypocrisy of believers. Of course, these are real problems, but they are missing the point. Even Jesus Himself picked Judas.

Towards the end of his life at the age of 44, St. Francis was very frail. He had spent years fasting (seven 40-day fasts each year – yes, the math works). He spent many sleepless nights in prayer. In the end, he needed the help of his brothers to travel at all.

One day, with the help of his brothers, he was passing a village. When the villagers found out that St. Francis was passing by, they went to meet him and implore him to come into their village. They took him to the rectory where the parish priest was living with his girlfriend (a not uncommon practice at the time). When the priest came to the door, he was probably chagrined to see St. Francis.

The villagers proceeded to accuse the priest of his immoral behavior. They certainly expected St. Francis to condemn the man.

Instead, St. Francis fell to his knees, took the priest’s hands in his own stigmatized hands, kissed them, and said, “All I know, and all I want to know, is that these hands give me Jesus.”

If we focus on the sins of the ministers or of the laity, we are missing the point. Jesus is the point. Jesus is the sole reason for our Church. The Church is the ordinary means God uses to reach out to us. The Church gave us the Bible. The Church gives us the sacraments. The Church gives us the Eucharist, the Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity of Our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.

If we reject the church, we are throwing back in God’s face the greatest gift He could ever give to us. We are telling God, “No, we are not interested.” God doesn’t give up on us, but I think a part of us dies whenever we do this.

What more appropriate way to keep holy the Sabbath than to participate in that great gift of God, the Mass. Anything else falls so short.