Divine Mercy: The Heart of the Gospel

130 Divine Mercy: The Heart Of The Gospel after the seventh, but it does not allow any succession o f numbers after it for it remains always unique, never being interrupted by the obscurity of night (that is, it never ends). (609 D - 612 A) The liturgists, then, who continue to insist on the idea of every Sunday being the “first” as well as simultaneously the “eighth,” have locked themselves in polemics which already long ago have been put to rest in the Church, and in doing that they do not allow the faithful to clearly understand the sublime meaning o f the “octave” in the liturgy. The polemics referred to were raging in the Church at the time the effort was being made to convince all the early Christians in a most solemn way that Sunday, and not the Sabbath, that is, Saturday, is to be the prin­ cipal day of worship. And the arguments used to that effect were taken from the original and ancient explanations that orthodox theology elab­ orated concerning the “Eighth” and final Day of Christian history. Fr Danielou clearly demonstrates how that matter finally looked already at the time of St. John Chrysostom, who in his second treatise On Compunction (which is the joyful sorrow for sin), writes on the theme o f the title of the Vlth Psalm, namely: “For the Octave.” Here is what Chrysostom says: What is the eighth but the great and manifest day o f the Lord which bums like straw, which makes the powers on high tremble? Scripture calls it the eighth, showing the change o f state, and the inauguration o f the future life. Indeed, the present life is nothing but one week which begins on the first day and ends on the seventh and returns to the same unit and goes back to the same beginning, to continue to the same end. This is why no one calls the Lord’s Day (that is, Sunday) the eighth day, but the first. Indeed, the septenary cycle does not extend to the number eight. But when all these things stop and dissolve, then the course of the octave will arise. Its course indeed does not go back to the beginning, but it is made up of suc­ cessive units. This is why the prophet (that is, David, the author of the Psalm and its title) animated by profound compunction, having before him continually the memory o f judgment, wrote this Psalm (.De Compunctionis II, 4- P.G., XLVTI, 415 D-416 A). Fr. Danielou further states that all this, but without the philosophical developments, reminds us of Gregory’s commentary. The vocabulary is the same, and also the thought. And, he notes, this text also marks the fur­