Should I Leave My Job to Go to Church?
Note: This article is an automatically generated transcript of an audio lecture. It was transcribed and lightly reworded for readability using automated tools, so it does not reproduce the speaker’s exact words. For the original, listen to the recording linked below.
Listen to the original lecture on Patristic Nectar →
Key takeaways:
- Worship is a commandment; Sunday attendance must take priority over work
- Christians should esteem the worship of God above any secular employment
- The fourth commandment obliges Christians to attend Sunday and feast-day worship
- Only a small set of blessed jobs—doctors, priests, on-call caregivers—may work Sundays
Leaving a job for the Lord's Day
A man who works a weekend job and has a growing interest in attending an Orthodox church may find that his shift cannot be changed. Should he consider leaving his job for another, for the sake of attending?
The answer is 100% yes. We do not go to church because we merely want to — so that when we want to, we do, and when we don't, we don't. Of course we should want to; our hearts should be thrilled to enter into the courts of the Lord, into the house of our God. It is the greatest honor, but it is also a commandment. The fourth commandment requires that Christians go to church every Sunday and on the feast days. To keep the ten commandments means to esteem the worship of God higher than anything else. No one should hold such a job unless it is a job that God blesses, like being a priest or being a doctor.
How Sunday used to be observed
Some number of doctors have to be on call to take care of people; there is a small collection of jobs that are blessed to be doing their work on Sunday morning. But when Fr. Josiah was growing up in Southern California, one could get up on Sunday and the only people to be seen were people driving to church. Nothing else was going on, because everyone knew that Sunday was the Lord's Day, and Sunday morning was Jesus' time — and there is no one who is going to compete with Jesus.
