EU Call for Work-Free Sundays

According to Catholic bishops in the European Union, “Synchronised free time should be a priority in the EU social-policy agenda” (Vatican News, March 4, 2021). This is a message the bishops are sending to EU leaders, and the day most European nations traditionally observe this “free time” is Sunday. In their written statement, the bishops also cited the pressures brought about by COVID-19 as evidence for the importance of this “free time.”

During the pandemic, many more people than usual are working from home, and people need a weekly rest. A joint statement with the European Sunday Alliance notes that the erosion of boundaries between life and work creates a great deal of stress for workers, “affects their work-life balance,” and “compromises the health and wellbeing of workers, making them not only sick in the long run but also causing increasingly more often their absence from work due to psychosocial illness for sustained periods of time.” The group urged EU leadership to make this day of rest a high priority, citing the Council of Europe’s Social Charter which already recommends that a weekly day of rest from work “coincide with the day recognised by tradition or custom in the country or region concerned as a day of rest.”

The conference of bishops is biblically on-target with their recognition that everyone needs a weekly day of rest. However, they are biblically incorrect in calling for the day to be Sunday, when the Bible clearly denotes God’s commanded day of rest as the seventh day of the week—which is Saturday (see Exodus 20:8–11; Luke 4:16; Acts 17:2). We at Tomorrow’s World have also long proclaimed that the coming European “beast” power will eventually mandate Sunday worship for its citizens and even those who trade with her (Revelation 13:16–17). Such a coming law or mandate may help set the stage for the fulfillment of other end-time prophecies concerning Europe and the coming “beast.” For more insight into this current call by bishops of the EU for work-free Sundays, be sure to watch “The Mark of the Beast Is Here.”