The 3rd Commandment is,
“Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days you shall labor and do all your work; but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God; in it you shall not do any work, you, or your son, or your daughter, your manservant, or your maidservant, or your cattle, or the sojourner who is within your gates; for in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested the seventh day; therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and hallowed it” (Exodus 20:8-10).
Much of our Sundays are spent in the Field of Our Lady’s apparitions for spiritual rejuvenation and rest for the week ahead.
Somehow in today’s society man in his arrogance has decided that this Commandment is not important. That as long as we go to church, we’ve fulfilled our duty and then can go on and work, or if not working, we can support and pay others to work for us at the gas station, a restaurant, the airport, etc. As a Community we have come to take living this Commandment seriously, and in so doing have realized what a blessing God meant this day to be – a day of rest in the Lord.
It took time and very serious prayer and discernment for our founder to come to the understanding that we weren’t living up to the Sabbath Commandment. What follows was published for the first time ever in Look What Happened While You Were SleepingTM. It is an excerpt from “A Way” in a New Time, the “rule” of the Community of Caritas. As “A Way” in a New Time was written directly to the Bishop, the manner of speaking, in what follows, is expressed in a more personal nature, from our founder to the Bishop.
Our most joyous day of the week is Sunday. Most youth look forward to Friday night and spend Sunday with the dread sentiment that the next day is Monday, thinking, “I have to go to work.” Our Sunday is cherished, and we hold Monday in view of the joy of working for Our Lady. A peaceful slumber on Sunday in the Field during rosary, with Agnes the sheep asleep with her friends.
“Meanwhile, something extraordinary began to happen in the Community once “living Sundays” began to root itself into our lives. The more we desired to fulfill the command of God by love, the more our experiences were touched by grace. Being raised Catholic, I can say I had never before in my life experienced the grace associated with living the Commandment. Why should I? I had never lived it. I didn’t even know a grace was available. In doing it as “a way” of life, it was within six months that Sunday became an extraordinary day, filled with graces. One Sunday, when I first experienced this grace, I felt as though Sunday lasted for two days. Monday morning, as the Community met, we all shared the same experience, “a day that seemed not to end.” One could easily believe this to be exaggerated, at least stretching it. But it is easy to unveil this truth by simply living this commandment – not to do it to test God and see if He gives one a grace, but a real commitment.1
We offer here next a story about living Sunday that actually happened in our Community shortly after we began to live the Commandment. This story about our hay is also recorded in Look What Happened While You Were SleepingTM. There’s a saying, “What you fix on Sunday, breaks on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday and Saturday.” Not long after we began to live Sundays, we had some hay on the ground that we were planning on bailing on the upcoming Monday. “Remember Exodus 34:21 “…but on the seventh day you shall rest: on that day you must rest even during the seasons of plowing and harvesting.” It was our lush, late spring cut; the best cut of the year. Saturday, the hay was not quite ready to bale. Sunday would be the perfect day to bale, but we knew we were not to work on Sunday, so we had to plan to bale Monday. By Saturday evening a strong chance of rain was forecasted beginning Monday morning. We thought we couldn’t af¬ford to lose this much hay. Surely, God would not be offended if we went ahead and baled Sunday. Would God not see our ox was in the ditch? We needed every bale we could harvest to put us through the next winter. If we did not bale it Sunday, we might lose the crop. We had enough sound rationalization to say our ox was in the ditch, so that we could bale the hay, but in our hearts we said, “No, we must trust God.” If we honor Him on Sunday, keeping the day holy, He will honor our Monday and preserve the hay. We placed our trust in Our Lady’s intercession and did not even pray that it wouldn’t rain, but only that God would take care of us because we honored His command.
The Community lives in a natural way with nature in an unnatural way many would dream of. The gifts of life Our Lady offers through Her messages are available to everyone who is willing to walk with Her for a while. It takes time and is difficult in the beginning years, but leads to Heaven on Earth. It was Our Lady who said,
We went through a beautiful Sunday and Mon¬day came with a beautiful morning. Our hope in trusting God was invigorated, but within two hours after sunrise the storm moved in and it poured and poured and poured. Thinking that God was testing our faith, we thought, “OK, we will just bale a lower quality hay Tuesday or Wednesday.” Tuesday it poured and poured and poured. Wednesday the same. We lost the whole crop. So much for positive action of the laws of consequences. But we kept good attitudes and said, “God giveth and God taketh away.” And did He ever taketh! Our best crop! Yet, we did not regret keeping the Commandment because Scripture stated clearly do not work on the Sab¬bath, ‘not even to plow or harvest.’
With the rest of the cutting that summer some¬thing amazing began to happen. We normally get three cuttings. That summer we got five! Every crop was more than normal. We filled our hay barn with a harvest so full that we’ve never had so much hay since that year! We were faithful to God, and through the positive action of the laws of consequences, God was faithful to us! We were so happy. We are convinced had we baled that crop that Sunday, we would have had far less hay in our barn from the rest of the cuttings, maybe even losing more to rain. We could have never imagined losing so much hay, only to end up with so much more than our need, ending up with a large surplus.”2 God cannot be outdone!
Blessing of an abundant harvest for living God’s commandments. We always end our day in prayer of thanksgiving. We are absolutely sold on the Sabbath Commandment and have experienced extraordinary graces from living this Commandment, graces that we did not even know existed because we never received them as a result of not living this Commandment in the past.
Today most Christians don’t understand that keeping the 3rd Commandment means much more than just going to church. But the biggest problem with this Commandment is not that people are breaking it, but rather that most Christians do not even consider it a sin to work on Sunday or have others work for you. The denial that this is a sin is an even greater problem than the sin itself. “If, at least, we admitted it, ‘I’m doing wrong. I’ll confess this sin,’ then perhaps we could spare our¬selves many of the woes we now suffer from.”3 These woes afflict families and nations and are in direct consequence to the violation of the Sabbath. You will not disagree with this statement when you read Look What Happened While You Were SleepingTM. (Click here to order a copy of Look What Happened While You Were SleepingTM)
1. “A Way in a New Time,” by A Friend of Medjugorje
2. Look What Happened While You Were Sleeping, by A Friend of Medjugorje
Ibid.