A day of celebration again” “

The question of how to understand and revive Sunday as the “Lord’s Day” has been repeatedly posed by the European Episcopal Conferences over the last twenty years. At the same time, the debate on the coincidence of this day with the weekly rest-day seems to be periodically re-ignited in the continent (for EU legislation and that of member states on the question see SirEurope no. 29/2003). On 31 May 1998 John Paul II published his apostolic letter “Dies Domini” on the question. It still remains an essential point of reference for reflection on Sunday. The issue is also addressed by the recent encyclical “Ecclesia de Eucharistia” (17 April 2003) in which the Pope underlines the value of the Christian Sunday and participation in Sunday Mass. Even during summer holidays Sunday remains a day different from the others. Below we give a brief review of recent pronouncements by the bishops in various European countries. Spain. “The evangelising significance of Sunday and feast-days” is the title of the instruction of the Spanish Episcopal Conference (1992) in which the bishops call “the celebration of Sundays” “a very effective means for the proclamation of Jesus Christ” and for “the participation in the life of salvation”. Hence the importance of promoting the “Christian sense of festivity and of Sunday”, fields in which “the Christian identity of many faithful is at stake”. United Kingdom. Of the same view are the British bishops, who in their document on the Eucharist of 1998 “One bread, one body” declare: “The very act of going to Mass on Sunday is a proclamation of our faith and a witness for the world”. Switzerland. A document issued by the Swiss bishops in 1981, called, “Our Sunday”, has essentially pastoral objectives. It places the emphasis on the celebration of the Eucharist, “heart of the Christian feast from which a living community springs”. But Sunday, say the Swiss bishops, is also a “day for man”. “Turning a day created for man into a day that permits him to achieve self-fulfilment, depends on us”, says the document. Italy. So that Sunday may once again become “The Lord’s Day”, according to the title of a document put out by the Italian Episcopal Conference (1984), “it is not enough to organise the eucharistic celebration more effectively”, write the bishops; “what’s needed is to revive the sense of festivity and the “joy that comes from communion with God”. France. The social Commission of the French Church took a stance against “the 24-hour economy” in 1992, following the unregulated practice of opening shops on Sundays, and the increasing practice of “Sunday work”. Though admitting the need for essential services to be provided on Sundays, the bishops express the hope that the rights of workers would be guaranteed. Austria. The same issue is at the centre of the document published by the Austrian bishops, under the title “Sundays and Feast Days in Austria” (2001): “The human person has a need for work days and feast days, in regular alternation, to be able to conduct a life of dignity”, and since the Church also has a “public dimension”, Christians must be granted “the right to collective forms of expression of their own religious dimension”. Belgium. The appeal to “develop social consensus on a single rest day” in a continent where people live with “different religious rhythms” was made by the Belgian bishops in 1992 in their document “Sunday, a time for God, a time for man”. “Ecumenical actions”. The Christian Churches of the Netherlands promoted a campaign against “the 24-hour economy” in 1998. The Evangelical Church in Germany and the Episcopal Conference in Germany also issued a joint declaration on the matter in the following year. Another ecumenical campaign, the “Alliance for free Sundays”, was launched in Austria in 2001. It aims, among other things, to defend, at the EU level, the right to free Sundays as an expression of the religious identity of member states.