All of Mexico Celebrated Family Day on Sunday

Family Day is a holiday observed in various countries around the world to celebrate the importance of family and encourage families to spend quality time together. Even though the goal is to benefit and strengthen relationships within families and communities, one of the other possible motives is to highlight the importance of Sunday. We can be sure of that whenever Rome is involved in this kind of celebration. Seven 24 News in Mexico reported the following about Family Day on Sunday:

• “All of Mexico is ready to celebrate Family Day this Sunday. We will celebrate this day in a very special way in each of our parishes, movements and ecclesial groups; we give thanks to God.” [1]

• “In Mexico, National Family Day is celebrated on the first weekend of March, in order to recognize and continue strengthening the ties we have with our loved ones.” [1]

• “The purpose of the commemoration of the day is to promote integration and family union, as well as to highlight the social importance of the family and build a culture favorable to it, through education, in the same way it seeks to create awareness of the importance of family homes, with the purpose of confronting and creating public policies aimed at protecting the ties of its members.” [1]

• “For this reason, the Mexican Bishops’ Conference invites archbishops, bishops, religious, families, faithful, lay people, and family pastoral agents to celebrate this day that unites and strengthens family ties throughout the country.” [1]

In order to achieve these objectives, Family Day on Sunday was launched in Mexico. The idea that Sunday is family time and that we must spend these hours together with our loved ones to build up family relationships is the ultimate goal. Do you see their strategy? On this day, families ought to relax and strengthen their bonds by being together (and not have to work). Where did they get this idea that Sunday should be a time for the family? Well, they got it from Rome.

• “Parents must teach their children to understand and participate in Sunday Mass. By the example of parents, Mass should not be presented as a burden or something to be done before the fun can begin, but rather as a true source of joy and unity for the family. Flowing from the encounter with Christ as a family at Mass, Sundays should be used as an opportunity for true recreation to build up family relationships” (Roman Catholic Bishop Joseph E. Strickland “Sunday: The Lord’s Day and Our Day”). [2]

We are seeing the exaltation of Sunday as the designated day for people to spend time with their families. “Sunday should be a time for rest, worship, and family,” is what is subsequently being proposed worldwide. All of the arguments in favor of taking Sunday off sound good on the surface—spending time with our families—but we have already been given a special time in the Bible to accomplish this. Did you know that God’s true Sabbath day, Saturday, was intended to be kept with our families?

“Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days shalt thou labour, and do all thy work: But the seventh day is the sabbath of the LORD thy God: in it thou shalt not do any work, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, thy manservant, nor thy maidservant, nor thy cattle, nor thy stranger that is within thy gates: For in six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day: wherefore the LORD blessed the sabbath day, and hallowed it.” Exodus 20:8-11.

In fact, heaven is our extended family, and the true seventh-day Sabbath, Saturday, was a time when the Creator came to commune with His creation in the Garden of Eden. So we were given a day for the family, and it wasn’t Sunday. Tragically, God’s Sabbath has been abandoned, and today the world is embracing a counterfeit:

“The Christian world is honoring a false sabbath, and we are to show them its true character and foundation. We must make it plain to them that they are honoring a manmade institution in place of that which God himself has sanctified” (Review and Herald, January 31, 1893).

Sources

[1] https://siete24.mx/vida-y-familia/todo-mexico-listo-para-festejar-este-domingo-el-dia-de-la-familia/

[2] https://www.simplycatholic.com/sunday-the-lords-day-and-our-day/