Housework on Sundays

A reader writes:

My wife and I have a large family, my wife homeschools, and I work six days a week.

I do not want a special dispensation to do work on Sundays, but if my wife and I do not work around the house on Sunday the place would fall apart.

I do not do really hard labor on Sundays — no home improvement or lawn work. But just doing the necessary work keeping the house picked up and my wife doing a load of laundry or two is fairly hard work.

I have no doubt that if my wife and I were more diligent during the week we probably could cut down on Sunday work a lot. But it is hard. And we simply are not diligent enough.

So what is too much on Sunday? I try to sanctify the work I do by offering it to God, but obviously if He wants me not to do it, the sanctification won’t take, so to speak.

I know the standard "more than two [or some say three] hours of work is a mortal sin." I know I should strive for as little as possible. But if my wife and I get to the end of the week and the work needs doing, are we permitted to do it?

I find it hard to advise in this situation, because there are not hard and fast rules about what can and can’t be done on Sunday. In fact, I would be hesitant to employ the "two or three hours" rule that you mention. That kind of rule of thumb coheres well with the way the law used to be written, but the law on Sunday observance has been integrally reordered. The current law applies the principles of Sunday observance in a way that makes such prior rules of thumb unreliable.

Let me show you what I mean. Here’s the old law:

On feast days of precept, Mass is to be heard; there is an abstinence from servile work, legal acts, and likewise, unless there is a special indult or legitimate customs provide otherwise, from public trade, shopping, and other public buying and selling [CIC(1917) can 1248].

Now, here’s the new law:

On Sundays and other holy days of obligation, the faithful are obliged to participate in the Mass.

Moreover, they are to abstain from those works and affairs which hinder the worship to be rendered to God, the joy proper to the Lord’s day, or the suitable relaxation of mind and body [CIC(1983) can. 1247].

You’ll notice that the concept of "servile work" is gone from the new law. So are prohibitions on any specific affairs (legal acts, public trade, shopping). Instead, there is a general prohibition on "those works and affairs which hinder" the goals of worship and rest.

The concept of servile work was problematic, which is why it was eliminated. Servile work was understood principally as physical labor, and the concept worked fairly well in an age when people largely lived by manual labor. If you’d worked all week, you needed a day of physical rest. On this day it was permissible, however, to do non-servile work, meaning non-physical labor.

But today a large number of people do not do manual labor for a living. They sit in offices and do non-physical labor all day long. To prevent them from doing physical work on Sundays could result in them getting little or none of the physical activity they need to be healthy. Also, allowing them to continue to do non-physical work on Sundays, just like they do all week, would result in long-term mental strain due to not getting adequate time to rest and recharge their batteries. It would leave them stuck in a rut.

As a result, the law was re-written. As it is now, the law leaves it to the individual to figure out which specific works and affairs interfere with these goals in his particular case.

This means, among other things, that the old rules of thumb about how much servile work you could do on Sunday aren’t reliable.

Now to deal with your particular situation, I am a bit hesitant due to lack of information: I don’t know what kind of work you do during the week, I don’t know how many kids you’ve got or what ages they are, and (quite importantly) I don’t (yet) have the experience of managing a large household. All of these give me pause, but let me offer what I hope are some useful points:

  1. You don’t have to kill yourself the other six days in order to provide yourself with a restful Sunday. You need some rest on the other days, too, so if you find it too difficult to get your work done on those days, don’t worry about it.
  2. Consider the possibilities of using your kids to help with the housework. If you have a large family, some of the kids may be getting to an age at which they could be of use picking up, doing laundry, etc. Enlisting them in doing the tasks also would be of benefit to them, both spiritually and in establishing good habits and skills for the future.
  3. Try to group the things you do on different days so that you end up doing things on Sunday that shake you out of your rut, either by raising or lowering your physical activity level or just changing what tasks you do so that you flex different mental and physical muscles on Sunday.
  4. Re-think what tasks you let yourself do on Sunday in light of the above discussion of the law. It might be that some tasks you have up-to-now have been classifying as servile work (e.g., lawn work, gardening) might actually be fun for you or your wife to do and constitute restful activities.
  5. Think about what you do on Sunday and other days in terms of value: Which is more valuable to you and your family: Doing the work and having the environment you like (which is restful in itself) or not doing the work and not having the environment you would like. It might be that it is more restful to do the work and get the environment you want, or it might be that physically resting and having a sub-optimal environment is more restful.
  6. If you have trouble sorting out these issues, that’s understandable. The way the law is written now, we don’t have the kind of simple rules we used to, and more of a burden is placed on the individual in applying the principles to his own circumstances. Just do your best to figure it out, act on the results, and that will be pleasing to God.
  7. If you need, try consulting a spiritual director who knows you, your family, and your situation. Make sure he also understands the principles embodied in the current law regarding Sunday.

Hope this helps!

Author: Jimmy Akin

Jimmy was born in Texas, grew up nominally Protestant, but at age 20 experienced a profound conversion to Christ. Planning on becoming a Protestant seminary professor, he started an intensive study of the Bible. But the more he immersed himself in Scripture the more he found to support the Catholic faith, and in 1992 he entered the Catholic Church. His conversion story, "A Triumph and a Tragedy," is published in Surprised by Truth. Besides being an author, Jimmy is the Senior Apologist at Catholic Answers, a contributing editor to Catholic Answers Magazine, and a weekly guest on "Catholic Answers Live."