Monday, Monday, so good to me…
Who remembers the Mamas and the Papas? I don’t, because I’m too young! Well, I was around, but I was a toddler when they were a folk/rock vocal group in the mid-sixties.
More of us might remember the Bangles’ ‘Manic Monday’ or even the Boomtown Rats singing of why they don’t like Mondays. I prefer the Mamas and the Papas’ song because it allows for a little more, well, ambiguity, rather than just reinforcing that Monday morning feeling. Mondays are still full of possibilities as we embark on another week.
Good News, the week has already started
Not everyone starts work on a Monday but we all know the Monday morning feeling and can still suffer from it. But that dread of Mondays is a fairly recent curse of modern living.
For the people of God, and for the early Church, Sunday was the first day of the week: the Sabbath, the day of rest, being Saturday (in fact if you look at the word for Saturday in languages other than English, it is often a variation of the word ‘sabbath’). Christians celebrate the Eucharist on a Sunday because that was the day the Lord rose from the dead.
Early Christians attended the synagogue on a sabbath, rested, and then began their working week with mass! By Monday, things were well underway.
Recreation
In the Church, we still think of the first day of the week as being Sunday, the Day of the Lord (again, look up the word for Sunday in other languages and you’ll see this reflected).
While, in the more recent past, Sundays were associated with a day of rest from labour and for ‘observing the Sabbath’, this is, in truth, a bit misleading. We are all for rest and recuperation in the Church, and we should continue to support workers’ rights to proper days off and holidays, but Sundays and the celebration of the Eucharist are really about the recreation of the week in the Lord’s image.
Hope and opportunity are the key messages here. As we commence the working week, whenever that is, we are called to bring Sunday into every day. In the power of the Lord, we have been sent out to renew the earth and bring hope to the people of our times (‘Go in Peace, glorifying the Lord by your life’ and similar dismissals from mass).
Perhaps this involves a certain ‘organized chaos’, but is never manic.
Prayer suggestion – bring the Sunday into your week
Try not to begin the week in a rush. Remember Sunday. Perhaps try to remember the Gospel and what it was about, or a reading or prayer that struck you during mass.
Bring that word into your week. Even if there doesn’t seem to be an immediate connection all will be revealed!