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The LINK and the relevant portion are included below. It is in a section from an online LINK discussing: "The mystery of the Eighth Day, an important discussion of why the Church is not sabbatarian." The LINK is found at: www.jbburnett.com/schmemann/schmemann-ordo.html#eighth It is all from: The Original Structure of Christian Worship, by Protopresbyter Alexander Schmemann, Chapter Two of Introduction to Liturgical Theology, "The Problem of the Origin of the Ordo". (St. Vladimir's Seminary Press, Crestwood, NY; 2d ed. 1975) pp. 40-71.

And here is the relevant portion: __________________________________________________________

For the early Church the Lord's Day was not a substitute for the sabbath; it was not (so to speak) its Christian equivalent. On the contrary the real nature and significance of this new day was defined in relation to the sabbath and to the concept of time connected with it. The key position of the sabbath (and all its related prescriptions) in the Old Testament law and Hebrew piety is well known. From whatever source the weekly cycle of time may have been acquired by Israel, its religious interpretation and experience was rooted in a specifically biblical theology of time. The Seventh Day, the day of complete rest, is a commemoration of the creation of the world, a participation in the rest of God after creation. This rest signifies and expresses the fullness, the completion, the 'goodness ' of the world, it is the eternal actualization of the word spoken about the world by God from the beginning: 'it is very good.' The sabbath sanctions the whole natural life of the world unfolding through the cycles of time, because it is the divinely instituted sign of the correspondence of the world to God's will and purpose. On this day the Law prescribes joy: 'thou shalt eat and drink and give thanks to Him who created all things,' since 'He who created all things honoured and sanctified the sabbath day and commanded that it should be so' (2 Macc. 15:2-4). Faithfulness to the sabbath was bound up with the ultimate mystical depths of the people of Israel, and only by understanding it as something for which men were prepared to die is it possible to comprehend the significance of the new day introduced by the Church.

The appearance of this new day is rooted in the expectation of salvation, in that striving toward the future and in those messianic hopes which were just as characteristic of the theology of the Old Covenant as the cult of the Law. If in the sabbath the Hebrew honours the Creator of the universe and His perfect Law, he knows too that within this world created by God hostile forces are rebelling against Him, that this world is spoiled by sin. The Law has been broken, man is sick, life is poisoned by sin. The time which is included in the weekly cycle is not only the time of a blessed and God-pleasing life, but also the time of a struggle between light and darkness, between God and all that has rebelled against Him. This is the time of the history of salvation which is founded in an eschatological. Realization– the Day of the Messiah. And again, no matter what may have been the original content and genesis of Hebrew Messianism and the apocalypticism connected with it, the important thing for us is that the time of the manifestation of Christianity coincided with the ultimate limit of intensity of these expectations, with their growth into a universal eschatological outlook. It was precisely in connection with or as a result of this eschatology that there arose the idea of the Lord's Day, the day of Messianic fulfilment, as the 'Eighth Day, 'overcoming' the week and leading outside of its boundaries.33 In the eschatological perspective of the struggle of God with 'the prince of this world' and the expectation of the new aeon, the week and its final unit– the sabbath– appear as signs of this fallen world, of the old aeon, of that which must be overcome with the advent of the Lord's Day. The Eighth Day is the day beyond the limits of the cycle outlined by the week and punctuated by the sabbath– this is the first day of the New Aeon, the figure of the time of the Messiah. 'And I have also established the eighth day,' we read in the book of Enoch, a characteristic example of late Hebrew apocalypticism, 'that the eighth day be the first after my creation, that in the beginning of the eighth (millennium) there be time without reckoning, everlasting, without years, months, weeks, days or hours.' The concept of the eighth day is connected with another idea characteristic of Jewish apocalypticism : the cosmic week of seven thousand years. Each week is thus a figure of all time, and all time, that is the whole of 'this age,' is one week. So then the eighth day and the eighth millennium are the beginning of the New Aeon not to be reckoned in time. This eighth day (coming after and standing outside the week) is also, therefore, the first day, the beginning of the world which has been saved and restored.

Christ rose not on the sabbath, but on the first day of the week (mia sabbaton). The sabbath was the day of His rest, His 'en-sabbathment' in the tomb, the day which completed His task within the limits of the 'old aeon.' But the new life, the life which had begun to 'shine out of the tomb,' began on the first day of the week. This was the first day, the beginning of the risen life over which 'death has no dominion.' This day also became the day of the Eucharist as the 'confession of His resurrection,' the day of the communication to the Church of this risen life.34 And here it is quite remarkable that in early Christianity, up to and including the time of Basil the Great, this day was often called in fact 'the eighth day.' This means that the symbolism of Hebrew apocalypticism was adopted by Christians and became one of the theological 'keys' to their liturgical consciousness. There is no need to dwell especially on the first epistle of Peter, in which there seems to be a hint of the significance of the number eight (3:20-1). In the Gospel according to John, undoubtedly the most 'liturgical' of all the Gospels, the risen Christ appears after eight days (John 20:26). Later the 'mystery' of the eighth day is explained by Christian authors in application to the Eucharistic Day of the Lord, which points to a dear tradition. These numerous texts on the eighth day have been collected by J. Danielou.35 Their meaning is clear: Christ rose on the first day, i.e. on the day of the beginning of creation, because He restores creation after sin. But this day which concludes the history of salvation, the day of victory over the forces of evil, is also the eighth day, since it is the beginning of the New Aeon. 'So the day which was first,' writes St. Augustine, 'will be also the eighth, so that the first life might not be done away, but rather made eternal.'36 And even more clearly St. Basil the Great writes: 'The Lord's Day is great and glorious. The Scripture knows this day without evening, having no other day, a day without end; the psalmist called it the eighth day, since it is outside of time measured in weeks. Whether you call it a day or an age, it is all the same. If you call it an aeon, it is one, and not a part of a whole....'37 In this way the eighth day 'is defined in opposition to the week,' writes J. Danielou. 'The week is related to time. The eighth day is outside time. The week stands within the sequence of days, the eighth day has nothing coming after it, it is the 'last one.' The week involves multiplicity; the eighth day is one...'38

In the Church this first-eighth day (the Lord's Day: kyriake hemera) is the day of the Eucharist. The early Christian tradition bears uniform witness to this fact. The Eucharist has its day, Christians gather together on a statu die39– on an established day. We know that the 'Day of the Sun' was not a holy day of rest in either the Jewish or the Roman calendars. Nonetheless the Eucharist 'became so firmly connected with this day that nothing has ever been able or will be able to undermine this connection.'40 But then this is the whole point: though the Eucharist is celebrated on a statu die, though it has its own day and thus reveals a connection with and is set in the framework of time, still this day is not simply 'one out of many.' Everything that has been said above about the first and eighth day shows that this connection of the Eucharist with time emphasizes the eschatological nature of the Eucharist, the manifestation in it of the Lord's Day, the New Aeon. The Eucharist is the Sacrament of the Church. It is the parousia, the presence of the Risen and Glorified Lord in the midst of 'His own,' those who in Him constitute the Church and are already 'not of this world' but partakers of the new life of the New Aeon. The day of the Eucharist is the day of die 'actualization' or manifestation in time of the Day of the Lord as the Kingdom of Christ. The early Church did not connect either the idea of repose or the idea of a natural cycle of work and rest with the Eucharistic Day of the Lord. Constantine established this connection with his sanction of the Christian Sunday. For the Church the Lord's Day is the joyful day of the Kingdom. The Lord's Day signifies for her not the substitution of one form of reckoning time by another, the replacement of Saturday by Sunday, but a break into the 'New Aeon,' a participation in a time that is by nature totally different.

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