How am I to observe Sunday according to the Commandments?

[envchemist]

I appreciate all the questions on Sunday shopping and so on. I have wrestled with the same worries. We do a lot of work for the Church and sometimes that work takes up our entire Saturday. Is it lawful to substitute the necessary work that we do on Saturday (youth retreats, RCIA etc) and have Sunday to clean the house and so on? It seems like it would be. Actually there are times that I am so tired by Saturday that it ends being my day of rest by default and I’m doing the same thing—cleaning on Saturday.

Secondly my husband has said that the 10 commandments go from the most serious (meaning if you break the first commandment that that’s a more serious sin than breaking the second) to the least serious. My problem with this would be not showing honor to your parents would be more serious than murdering someone and of course, this makes breaking the Sabbath even worse!! So I have a hard time believing this—but if he’s right–I’m going to be spending a lot of time in confession and in purgatory!

Thanks ahead of time!

 

[Fr.Vincent_Serpa]

Hi,

We are to refrain from all unnecessary manual labor on Sunday and are to keep it holy. The work that you do on Sunday sounds necessary. Besides attending Mass there are other ways of making Sunday special, i.e., Sunday dinner and family time.

There is a range of the degree of evil among the Ten Commandments, but the range does not follow their numerical order.

Fr. Vincent Serpa, O.P.