The Lord’s Day and the Day Before the Sabbath

He also ordered that one day should be set apart especially for prayer: I mean the day that is truly the first and chief of all, the day of our Lord and Savior. The whole management of his household was entrusted to deacons and other ministers consecrated to the service of God and known for their seriousness of life and every other virtue. His trusted bodyguard, strong in love and loyalty to him, found in their emperor a teacher in the practice of piety. Like him they held the Lord’s saving day in honor, and on that day they performed the devotions he loved. This blessed prince urged the same observance on all classes of his subjects, for his earnest desire was to lead all humankind, little by little, to the worship of God. So he ordered all the subjects of the Roman empire to keep the Lord’s day as a day of rest, and also to honor the day before the Sabbath, in memory, I suppose, of what the Savior of humankind is recorded to have accomplished on that day. And since he wanted to teach his whole army to honor the Savior’s day with zeal (the day that takes its name from light and from the sun), he freely gave those of them who shared the divine faith time off to attend the services of the church of God, so that they could carry out their worship without hindrance. [a]