You observe days, and months, and times, and years.
All Commentaries on Galatians 4:10 Go To Galatians 4
Cornelius a Lapide
AD 1637
Ye observe days, and months, and times, and years. As S. Augustine ( Ephesians 119 and Enchirid79) and Anselm understand the elements to be the sun, moon, and idols, so do they understand this verse to mean days that were lucky or unlucky, according as astrology made them so. But Chrysostom and Jerome and others explain the days to be the Jewish Sabbaths; the months to be the new moons, and the seventh month, which was held sacred throughout; the times to be the stated feasts of the four seasons—the Passover, Pentecost, the Day of Atonement, and the New Year; and the years to be the seventh year of remission of debts, and the fiftieth year of jubilee. By the observance of days, months, and years, S. Paul means the ceremonies of the Old Law as a whole.
From this appears the error of the heretics, who infer from this that the feasts of the Church are condemned. If they were, then would the heretics themselves be condemned for keeping Sunday? What is condemned here is the observance of the Jewish feasts only. These are happily distinguished from those observed by Christians, by Gregory Nazianzen, in his Whitsuntide Oration, in which he says: "The Jew keeps feast days, but it is according to the letter; for by observing the corporeal law he attains not to the spiritual. The Gentile keeps feast days, but it is according to the body, in revelling and wantonness. [Accordingly Lucian (Saturnalia) bids that nothing be done during the time of the feast, whether in public or in private, but what pertains to sport, to pleasure, and to lust; nay, the feasts of the heathen were obscene in themselves, witness those of Venus, Priapus, and Bacchus, in whose honour every abomination was practised]. We Christians keep feasts, but only such as are pleasing to the Spirit."
Jerome, too, says: "Any one may say that if it is not lawful to observe days, and months, and times, and years, then we do what is forbidden in observing Wednesdays, and Good Friday, and the Lords Day, and the Lenten fast, and the Easier solemnities, and the Whitsuntide festivities, and the days set apart in different places in honour of the martyrs. A wise and simple reply to this will be that the Jewish feast-days differ from ours. We do not observe the feast of unleavened bread, but that of the Cross and the Resurrection, nor do we number our weeks to Pentecost as the Jews did, but celebrate one coming of the Holy Spirit." From which we may observe that, in S. Jerome"s time, days were set apart in honour of the martyrs, and that the practice is approved by him.
