"Whoever wishes to be great among you shall be your servant;
whoever wishes to be first among you shall be your slave.
Just so, the Son of Man did not come to be served but to serve
and to give his life as a ransom for many."
(Mt 20:17-28)
It was March 3, exactly 1,700 years ago today when Emperor Constantine decreed that the “venerable day of the sun,” the Roman dies solis, should be a day off, that is, a public holiday without labor. Christians had of course marked Sunday long before the year 321AD, as the day of Christ’s Resurrection. They had marked it such, however, while the day was a work-day. Constantine changed that, and Sunday now became recognized not only as a specifically Christian holy day but also as a day of public rest.
