We are pleased to share an article by author Daniel Fitzpatrick on his new book, Restoring the Lord’s Day, by Sophia Institute Press.
To answer the Lord’s call, “Come, follow me,” is by no means to commit to a single hour of worship per week. For the apostles, it meant leaving behind occupations, families, and houses, not to mention, in many cases, a good standing in the community, riches, and comfort. It meant leaving Capernaum and Jerusalem for Rome, Greece, Turkey, and India. It meant, in almost every case, martyrdom. It meant that every hour of every day, every encounter and every pursuit, could no longer be a matter of personal interest; rather, it had to become a moment of attention to the Lord as a fellow laborer in the Father’s vineyard, seeking to bring about the Kingdom. Bringing about the Kingdom cannot be a matter of compartmentalization, of occasional prayer, occasional worship, occasional service, all quite comfortably separated from the real business of life. For Sts. Peter and Paul, life became a matter of prayer without ceasing, of dedication of every action and thought, of every moment of being, to the Father with the Son who had Himself lifted up all the world on the altar of the Cross.
How did the apostles sustain this life of total dedication to Christ? In the first place, their energy was no doubt a function of the depth of their encounters with the Lord, whose life became
in them a spring welling up to eternal life, so that, through the exigencies of life, St. Paul could write, “I have learned, in whatever situation I find myself, to be self-sufficient. I know indeed how to live in humble circumstances; I know also how to live with abundance. In every circumstance and in all things I have learned the secret of being well fed and of going hungry, of living in abundance and of being in need. I have the strength for everything through him who empowers me” (Phil. 4:11–13).
This self-sufficiency was, in itself, a matter of recognizing Christ in the depth of self-hood, and this was a matter of prayer. One of the things that grows most striking about the account of St. Paul’s travels in Acts is the manner in which he apparently maintains both the Sabbath and the Lord’s Day as a joint locus of prayerful community which could expand the Body of Christ through Scripture and reason, strengthening that Body through partaking of the Eucharist. Again and again throughout his journeys, we are told that Paul goes to the synagogue on the Sabbath. There he enters into discussions on the Scriptures and seeks to persuade all present of the necessity of Christ’s Incarnation, death, and Resurrection. And, at least in Acts 20, Paul breaks bread with the local church on the first day of the week, preaching so far into the night that the young man Eutychus, dozing off at the window, falls to his death, only to be restored when Paul throws himself down upon him. The Eucharistic celebration then continues until dawn. “And they took the boy away alive and were immeasurably comforted” (12). Would that all Christians in their celebration of the Lord’s Day could go away more alive, comforted beyond measure.
This Sabbath study of Scripture, followed by the Lord’s Day Eucharist, must have served as a font of spiritual energy to St. Paul as, throughout the week, he debated, labored, wrote, and, in so many cases, endured persecution. Immersed in the Lord, always to the working of the Spirit, Paul was at last strengthened for the martyrdom of decapitation which awaited him in Rome. The executioner’s sword fell, and it is said that in the three places where his fallen head struck the ground, springs of water arose. He himself had caused a literal font of living water, welling up to eternal life. His death, whereby he entered that Lord’s Day in which he had striven to live, continues to strengthen Christ’s Church.
Revelation: The Heavenly Liturgy
The only apostle not to suffer martyrdom (though not for lack of attempts) was St. John, who ended his life in exile on the island of Patmos. There, the beloved disciple, the one who stood by Mary’s side at the Crucifixion, the one who raced ahead of St. Peter to the tomb, the one who first recognized the Lord on the shore of the Sea of Tiberias, was “caught up in spirit on the Lord’s day (Rev. 1:10). The ensuing encounter with one who looked like “a Son of Man” (Rev. 1:13) recalls the encounters with Christ on the day of the Resurrection. St. John falls like a dead man, just as the guards who were watching over the tomb fell at the sight of the angels. The glory of the Lord, who appears as He did at the Transfiguration, His clothes dazzling white and His face shining like the sun at its brightest, overwhelms even the apostle who laid his head on Jesus’ breast at the Last Supper.
After the Lord delivers messages to John for the angels of the seven churches of Asia, He calls John up to a vision of the throne of God and the heavenly worship that eternally attends it. Twenty-four elders, as well as four animals, six-winged and covered in eyes, sing praise to the Lord; the animals proclaim without ceasing “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God almighty, who was, and who is, and who is to come” (Rev. 4:8). Meanwhile the elders announce, “Worthy are you, Lord our God, to receive glory and honor and power, for you created all things; because of your will they came to be and were created” (Rev. 4:11). The heavenly praises emphasize the eternity of God as well as the created universe’s utter dependence on Him, a dependence that is oriented toward worship as the true joy of all created beings. Indeed, at the approach of the Lamb, John “heard every creature in heaven and on earth and under the earth and in the sea, everything in the universe, cry out: ‘To the one who sits on the throne and to the Lamb be blessing and honor, glory and might, forever and ever’ ” (Rev. 5:13).
While we tend to think of Revelation as an account of a future event, a final horrific drawing back of the curtain between time and eternity, John’s vision of the heavenly liturgy serves as a re- minder that eternity is not merely what awaits us at the end of time. Rather, eternity is the unbounded now of the Trinity, the perfect presence of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, one to the other, which sustains creation and elicits the praises of the angelic choirs. The Lord’s Day is God’s weekly invitation to join that eternal chorus. It is the eternal, proffered to us in our temporal state. It is, as it were, the eighth day, the day on which the Lamb who was slain is raised to eternal life so that we, partakers of His flesh and blood, may likewise share in that life.
Man is made for the eternity of the Lamb, and all of man’s life ought to be a process of submitting to that grace that makes eternity a possibility for our limited temporal selves. The Lord’s Day, when the Passion and Resurrection are made present for us again and again until the end of time, is the supreme means by which God makes us one with Him, calling us back to the paradisal stewardship offered to Adam, consecrating creation as a cosmic temple, and raising man even beyond the scope of the angels.
Author Bio: Daniel Fitzpatrick
Daniel Fitzpatrick is the author of two novels, a poetry collection, and a translation of Dante’s Divine Comedy. His book Restoring the Lord’s Day is out in April from Sophia Institute Press. He is the editor of Joie de Vivre: A Journal of Art, Culture, and Letters for South Louisiana, a member of the Creative Assembly at the New Orleans Museum of Art, and a teacher at Jesuit High School in New Orleans, where he lives with his wife and four children.
