By Metropolitan Hierotheos of Nafpaktos
So far, we have examined the weekly festive cycle, that is, the meaning of the days of each week, and we have seen what we celebrate on each day of the week, constantly, with the exception of the feasts of Christ, the Most Holy Theotokos, and the saints. We have repeatedly emphasized that the week consists of seven days, the first day for us Christians being Sunday, the “first day of the week,” and the last day being Saturday, the seventh day of the week.
However, in the texts of Holy Scripture and the Fathers of the Church, Sunday is called both the first day – “the first day of the week,” and the eighth day, since it is the first day of the week and also the day after the Sabbath – the seventh day. Thus, it is called both the first and the eighth day.
In the book of Leviticus, it is written that God told Moses to tell the Israelites about the Feast of Tabernacles, that this feast should be seven days. “And the first day shall be a solemn and holy day” – to be solemn and holy, and they should do no ordinary work. For seven days they would offer burnt offerings to the Lord, “and the eighth day shall be a solemn and holy day” – i.e. on the eighth day they would offer burnt offerings (Lev. 23:23–34). Therefore, this festive period moves between the first and eighth days, which are both solemn and holy days.
Saint John of Damascus in the canon that he composed for the feast of Passover, and more precisely in the eighth song, in accordance with God’s command to Moses, writes: “This solemn and holy day, the first of the week, king and lord, feast of feasts and feast of feasts, in which we bless Christ forever.”
Saint Nicodemus the Athonite, interpreting this troparion, writes that “the radiant day of the Resurrection of the Lord” is called “with many exalted and glorious names and epithets.” “It is called solemn and holy by Moses for two reasons – first, because it is the eighth day and a type of the age to come, and second, because it is the day of the Passover.” And he continues that this is how the feasts of Pentecost and Tabernacles are also characterized. And he concludes: “If the feast of the symbolic Passover is called solemn and holy, how much more should the radiant Sunday, which brings the true and real Passover – the Risen Lord Christ, be called solemn and holy? According to these words, the hymnist calls the radiant Sunday of the Passover solemn and holy.”
Thus, Sunday is also called the first day of the week, the first day of the Resurrection of Christ, and the eighth day – the next Sabbath, the seventh day, which is a type of the future age.
On this issue, Saint Gregory Palamas teaches that “as Friday is to the Sabbath, so is the Sabbath to Sunday, which clearly surpasses it, since perfection and truth surpass the beginning, which is an image and shadow.” That is, Sunday surpasses the Sabbath, just as perfection and truth surpass the beginning, which is only an image and shadow.
The Jews in the Old Testament, according to God’s command to Moses, celebrated their holidays based on the number seven (7). The Sabbath was the seventh day. Every seven years they celebrated a Sabbath year. And every seventh Sabbath year was followed by a Jubilee year – the 49th year, which was a holy year of atonement. Although the 49th year is spoken of as a year of rest, it is written to sanctify the 50th year and proclaim “liberation in the land” – it will be a year of forgiveness. Then the fields will not be sown, but will be sown in the eighth year (Lev. 25:1–22).
Saint Gregory Palamas, taking into account what is written in Leviticus, teaches that although God praises the seventh day as a day of Sabbath rest, this refers rather to the eighth day, that is, to Sunday. The Jubilee year, which is considered a year of forgiveness and is not counted among the weeks of years counted according to the Law, but comes after them, is called the eighth. This also applies to the weeks of the weeks of days. For us, however, Sunday is the eighth day. So Moses also honored the seventh day, because it leads to the eighth, which is truly honorable.
And Saint Gregory Palamas continues, saying: “Sunday is not only the eighth of those counted before it, but also the first of those after it, so that it is at the same time the same, new, and first of all days, which we call only Sunday, and Moses calls it not ‘first’, but ‘one’, because it surpasses the others and is the forerunner of the only endless day of the future age.”
Therefore, the day of Sunday, as the day of the Resurrection of Christ and as a day that reminds us of the day of the Kingdom of Heaven after the Second Coming of Christ, is called both ‘one’ – the first, and ‘the eighth day.’
This means that if we consider that the whole of present life is one week of seven days, then the future life is the eighth day, which we taste from now on on Sunday, the day of the Resurrection of Christ, the eternal Passover. We celebrate this important event every Sunday.
In the sixth psalm of David, which begins with the words: Lord, do not rebuke me in Your anger, and do not chastise me in Your wrath, there is an inscription: “To the end, with hymns, for the eighth; a psalm of David.” (Εἰς τὸ τέλος, ἐν ὕμνοις, ὑπὲρ τῆς ὀγδόης· ψαλμὸς τῷ Δαυΐδ).
According to the interpretation of Euthymius Zigavin and Saint Nicodemus the Athonite, the expression “until the end” prophetically predicts the resurrection of the dead, and the expression “for the eighth” means that the prophet David sings and glorifies God “for the sake of the eighth, i.e. for the sake of the future age; for the present age is the seventh, since it is measured by the week and ends with it; and the future is the eighth, because it comes after the seventh.”
Saint Nicodemus the Athonite, in a note to this inscription on the Psalm of David, quotes a text by Saint Gregory of Nyssa, according to which “when the time of the week is over, the eighth day will come after the seventh, called the eighth, because it comes after the seventh.” He also mentions that according to Saint Athanasius the Great, Saint Cyril, Saint Basil the Great, and Saint Gregory the Theologian, “the eighth day is the day of the Resurrection of the Lord and the future age.” Therefore, “the inscription (of the psalm) advises us not to pay attention to the present weekly age, but to the future eighth.”
So, so far we have analyzed the meaning of the seven days of the week, the so-called “weekly festive circle,” and the significance it has for our preparation for the eighth day, the eighth age, eternal life. We can taste this eighth day right now – on Sunday, the day of the Resurrection. And we must pray that this day will be a continuation of the worthy celebration of the “weekly festive circle” and an anticipation of the future eighth day.
We must, beloved brothers, we must be people who seek the eighth day!
Source in Greek: “Εκκλησιαστική Παρέμβαση” Magazine, Issue 336, July 2024.
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