| Galatians 4:10
| You observe days and months, and times, and years.
| \f + \fr 4:10-11\ft You observe { Ver. 10. St. Jerome on this verse, p. 271, dicat aliquis, nos simile crimen in[]urrimus....observantes diem dominicam....Pascha festivitatem, et Pentecostes []aetitiam, et pro varietate regionum, diversa in honore martyrum tempora consti[]uta, etc.|} days, etc. These false teachers were for obliging all Christians to observe all the Jewish feasts, fasts, ceremonies, etc. Some of the later reformers find here an occasion to blame the fasts and holydays kept by Catholics. St. Jerome, in his commentary on these words, tells us that some had made the like objection in his time: his answer might reasonably stop their rashness; to wit, that Christians keep indeed the sabbath on the Sunday, (not the Jewish sabbath on Saturdays) that they keep also divers holydays, and days on which great saints suffered martyrdom, (let our adversaries take notice of this) but that both the days are different, and the motives of keeping them. See St. Jerome, tom. 4:p. 271. (Witham) --- This text cannot mean to condemn the feasts appointed to be kept holy in the Catholic Church. For on the festivals dedicated to our Lord, St. Augustine writeth thus: "We dedicate and consecrate the memory of God's benefits with solemnities on solemn appointed days, lest in process of time they might creep into ungrateful and unkind oblivion." And of the martyrs thus: "Christian people celebrate the memories of martyrs with religious solemnity, both to move themselves to an imitation of their virtues, and that they may be partakers of their merits, and helped by their prayers." (Conta Faust. lib. xx. Galatians 21.) And of other saints thus: "keep ye and celebrate with sobriety the nativity of saints, that we may imitate them that are gone before us, and that they may rejoice in us, who pray for us." (In Ps. lxxxviii. Conc. 2. in fine.)
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