Saturday after Ash Wednesday: "If you hold back your foot on the sabbath"

... from following your own pursuits on my holy day; If you call the sabbath a delight,and the LORD’s holy day honorable; If you honor it by not following your ways, seeking your own interests, or speaking with malice -- Then you shall delight in the LORD, and I will make you ride on the heights of the earth;

-- Is 58:9b-14

Sunday is expressly distinguished from the sabbath which it follows chronologically every week; for Christians its ceremonial observance replaces that of the sabbath. In Christ's Passover, Sunday fulfills the spiritual truth of the Jewish sabbath and announces man's eternal rest in God. For worship under the Law prepared for the mystery of Christ, and what was done there prefigured some aspects of Christ: Those who lived according to the old order of things have come to a new hope, no longer keeping the sabbath, but the Lord's Day, in which our life is blessed by him and by his death.

-- CCC 2175

God's action is the model for human action. If God "rested and was refreshed" on the seventh day, man too ought to "rest" and should let others, especially the poor, "be refreshed." The sabbath brings everyday work to a halt and provides a respite. It is a day of protest against the servitude of work and the worship of money.

-- CCC 2172

Image: Blesseds Jacinta and Francisco Marto, pray for us!