Vatican to Promote Sunday Celebration Through World Meeting of Families.

Though the next World Meeting of Families is not till 2012, Benedict XVI sent a letter of exhortation to the Pontifical Council for the Family well in advance of the event. Pope Benedict is asking families and parishes to prepare a year in advance for the Milan meeting.

“Family: Work and Celebration” is the theme for the 7th World Meeting of Families which openly suggests that Sunday rest is a key part of balanced family life.

“Work and celebration are intimately connected in the life of families… the pope said. “Holy Scripture tells us that the family, work and the feast day are gifts and blessings of God to help us to live a fully human existence…”

Benedict XVI also lamented the modern organization of work, “in… maximizing profit,” while the “concept of rest or celebration has become an “occasion for escape and consumption,” which contributes to the breakup of the family.

He also said this contributes to the spreading of an “individualistic lifestyle,” as opposed to a community oriented lifestyle.

The Pope also said it is necessary get balance between “the demands and the periods of work with those of the family and to recover the true meaning of the feast, specially on Sunday, the weekly Easter, the day of the Lord and the day of man, the day of the family, of the community and of solidarity.’”

The popes have consistently argued that Sunday rest is vital to balanced family life and proper cultural formation. The problem is that no matter how cogent the papal arguments are for Sunday observance, the Bible teaches that God’s holy Sabbath day is the day He has set aside for precisely the same reasons. The popes have, therefore, transferred the arguments for the Sabbath rest God gave at creation to Sunday.

“God made the world in six days and rested on the seventh, sanctifying this day, and setting it apart from all others as holy to Himself, to be observed by His people throughout their generations. But the man of sin, exalting himself above God, sitting in the temple of God, and showing himself to be God, thought to change times and laws. This power, thinking to prove that it was not only equal to God, but above God, changed the rest day, placing the first day of the week where the seventh should be. And the Protestant world has taken this child of the papacy to be regarded as sacred. In the Word of God this is called her fornication [Revelation 14:8].” Last Day Events, p. 123.

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