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by Abbot Gueranger O.S.B.
Having spent the three weeks of Septuagesima in meditating upon
our spiritual infirmities and upon the wounds caused in us by sin,
we should be ready to enter upon the penitential season which the
Church has now begun. We have now a clearer knowledge of the
justice and holiness of God, and of the dangers that await an
impenitent soul; and, that our repentance might be earnest and
lasting, we have bade farewell to the vain joys and baubles of the
world. Our pride has been humbled by the prophecy, that these
bodies would soon be like the ashes that wrote the memento of
death upon our foreheads.
During these forty days of penance, which seem so long to our poor
nature, we shall not be deprived of the company of our Jesus. He
seemed to have withdrawn from us during those weeks of
Septuagesima, when everything spoke to us of His maledictions upon
sinful man, but this absence has done us good. It has taught us
how to tremble at the voice of God's anger. 'The fear of the Lord
is the beginning of wisdom';[1] we have found it to be so: the
spirit of penance is now active within us, because we have feared.
And now, let us look at the divine object that is before us. It is
our Emmanuel; the same Jesus, but not under the form of the sweet
Babe whom we adored in His crib. He has grown to the foulness of
the age of man, and wears the semblance of a sinner, trembling and
humbling Himself before the sovereign Majesty of His Father whom
we have offended, and to whom He now offers Himself as the Victim
of propitiation. He loves us with a brother's love; and seeing
that the season for doing penance has begun, He comes to cheer us
on by His presence and His own example. We are going to spend
forty days in fasting and abstinence: Jesus, who is innocence
itself, goes through the same penance. We have separated
ourselves, for a time, from the pleasures and vanities of the
world: Jesus withdraws from the company and sight of men. We
intend to assist at the divine services more assiduously, and pray
more fervently, than at other times: Jesus spends forty days and
forty nights in praying, like the humblest suppliant; and all this
for us. We are going to think over our past sins, and bewail them
in bitter grief: Jesus suffers for them and weeps over them in the
silence of the desert, as though He Himself had committed them.
No sooner had He received baptism from the hands of St. John, than
the Holy Ghost led Him to the desert. The time had come for
showing Himself to the world; He would begin by teaching us a
lesson of immense importance. He leaves the saintly Precursor and
the admiring multitude, that had seen the divine Spirit descend
upon Him, and heard the Father's voice proclaiming Him to be His
beloved Son; He leaves them and goes into the desert. Not far from
the Jordan there rises a rugged mountain, which has received, in
after ages, the name of Quarantana. It commands a new of the
fertile plain of Jericho, the Jordan, and the Dead Sea. It 18
within a cave of this wild rock that the Son of God now enters,
His only companions being the dumb animals who have chosen this
same for their own shelter. He has no food wherewith to satisfy
the pangs of hunger; the barren rock can yield Him no drink; His
only bed must be of stone. Here He is to spend forty days; after
which, He will permit the angels to visit Him and bring Him food.
Thus does our Savior go before us on the holy path of Lent. He
has borne all its fatigues and hardships, that so we, when called
upon to tread the narrow way of our lenten penance, might have His
example wherewith to silence the excuses, and sophisms, and
repugnances, of self-love and pride. The lesson is here too
plainly given not to be understood; the law of doing penance for
sin is here too clearly shown, and we cannot plead ignorance: let
us honestly accept the teaching and practice it. Jesus leaves the
desert where He has spent the forty days, and begins His preaching
with these words, which He addresses to all men: 'Do penance, for
the kingdom of heaven is at hand.'[2] Let us not harden our hearts
to this invitation, lest there be fulfilled in us the terrible
threat contained in those other words of our Redeemer: 'Unless you
shall do penance, you shall perish.' [3]
Now, penance consists in contrition of the soul, and mortification
of the body; these two parts are essential to it. The soul has
willed the sin; the body has frequently co-operated in its
commission. Moreover, man is composed of both soul and body; both,
then, should pay homage to their Creator. The body is to share
with the soul either the delights of heaven or the torments of
hell; there cannot, therefore, be any thorough Christian life, or
any earnest penance, where the body does not take part, in both,
with the soul.
But it is the soul which gives reality to penance The Gospel
teaches this by the examples it holds out to us of the prodigal
son, of Magdalene, of Zaccheus, and of St. Peter. The soul, then,
must be resolved to give up every sin; she must heartily grieve
over those she has committed; she must hate sin; she must shun the
occasions of sin. The sacred Scriptures have a word for this
inward disposition, which has been adopted by the Christian world,
and which admirably expresses the state of the soul that has
turned away from her sins: this word is conversion. The Christian
should, therefore, during Lent, study to excite himself to this
repentance of heart, and look upon it as the essential foundation
of all his lenten exercises. Nevertheless, he must remember that
this spiritual penance would be a mere delusion, were he not to
practice mortification of the body. Let him study the example
given him by his Savior, who grieves, indeed, and weeps over our
sins; but He also expiates them by His bodily sufferings. Hence it
is that the Church, the infallible interpreter of her divine
Master's will, tells us that the repentance of our heart will not
be accepted by God, unless it be accompanied by fasting and
abstinence.
How great, then, is the illusion of those Christians, who forget
their past sins, or compare themselves with others whose lives
they take to have been worse than their own; and thus satisfied
with themselves, can see no harm or danger in the easy life they
intend to pass for the rest of their days! They will tell you that
there can be no need of their thinking of their past sins, for
they have made a good confession! is not the life they have led
since that time a sufficient proof of their solid piety? And why
should anyone speak to them about the justice of God and
mortification? Accordingly, as soon as Lent approaches, they must
get all manner of dispensations. Abstinence is an inconvenience;
fasting has an effect upon their health, it would interfere with
their occupations, it is such a change from their ordinary way of
living; besides, there are so many people who are better than
themselves, and yet who never fast or abstain. And, as the idea
never enters their minds of supplying for the penances prescribed
by the Church by other penitential exercises, such persons as
these gradually and unsuspectingly lose the Christian spirit.
The Church sees this frightful decay of supernatural energy; but
she cherishes what is still left, by making her lenten observances
easier, year after year. With the hope of maintaining that little,
and of seeing it strengthen for some better future, she leaves to
the justice of God her children who hearken not to her when she
teaches them how they might, even now, propitiate His anger. Alas!
these her children, of whom we are speaking, are quite satisfied
that things should be as they are, and never think of judging
their own conduct by the examples of Jesus and His saints, or by
the undeviating rules of Christian penance.
It is true, there are exceptions; but how rare they are,
especially in our large towns! Groundless prejudices, idle
excuses, bad example, all tend to lead men from the observance of
Lent. Is it not sad to hear people giving such a reason as this
for their not fasting or abstaining-because they
But their own conduct will be their loudest accuser. These very
persons, who persuade themselves that they have not strength
enough to bear the abstinence and fasting of Lent even in their
present mitigated form, think nothing of going through
incomparably greater fatigues for the sake of temporal gains or
worldly enjoyments. Constitutions which have broken down in the
pursuit of pleasures which, to say the least, are frivolous, and
always dangerous, would have kept up all their vigour, had the
laws of God and His Church, and not the desire to please the
world, been the guide of their conduct. But such is the
indifference wherewith this non-observance of Lent is treated,
that it never excites the slightest trouble or remorse of
conscience; and those who are guilty of it will argue with you,
that people who lived in the middle ages may perhaps have been
able to keep Lent, but that now-a-days it is out of the question:
and they can coolly say this in the face of all that the Church
has done to adapt her lenten discipline to the physical and moral
weakness of the present generation! How comes it that, whilst
these men have been trained in, or converted to, the faith of
their fathers, they can forget that the observance of Lent is an
essential mark of Catholicity; and that when the Protestants
undertook to
But it will be asked 'Are there, then, no lawful dispensations?'
We answer that there are; and that they are more needed now than
in former ages, owing to the general weakness of our
constitutions. Still, there is great danger of our deceiving
ourselves. If we have strength to go through great fatigues when
our own self-love is gratified by them, how is it we are too weak
to observe abstinence? If a slight inconvenience deter us from
doing this penance, how shall we ever make expiation for our sins?
for expiation is essentially painful to nature. The opinion of our
physician that fasting will weaken us, may be false, or it may be
correct; but is not this mortification of the flesh the very
object that the Church aims at, knowing that our soul will profit
by the body being brought into subjection? But let us suppose the
dispensation to be necessary: that our health would be impaired,
and the duties of our state of life neglected, if we were to
observe the law of Lent to the letter: do we, in such a case,
endeavour, by other works of penance, to supply for those which
our health does not allow us to observe? Are we grieved and
humbled to find ourselves thus unable to join with the rest of the
faithful children of the Church, in bearing the yoke of lenten
discipline? Do we ask of our Lord to grant us the grace, next
year, of sharing in the merits of our fellow-Christians, and of
observing those holy practices which give the soul an assurance of
mercy and pardon? If we do, the dispensation will not be
detrimental to our spiritual interests; and when the feast of
Easter comes, inviting the faithful to partake in its grand joys,
we may confidently take our place side by side with those who have
fasted; for though our bodily weakness has not permitted us to
keep pace with them exteriorly, our heart has been faithful to the
spirit of Lent.
How long a list of proofs we could still give of the negligence,
into which the modern spirit of self-indulgence leads so many
among us, in regard of fasting and abstinence! Thus, there are
Catholics to be found in every part of the world who make their
Easter Communion, and profess themselves to be children of the
Catholic Church, who yet have no idea of the obligations of Lent.
Their very notion of fasting and abstinence is so vague, that they
are not aware that these two practices are quite distinct one from
the other; and that the dispensation from one does not, in any
way, include a dispensation from the other. If they have, lawfully
or unlawfully, obtained exemption from abstinence, it never so
much as enters into their minds that the obligation of fasting is
still binding upon them during the whole forty days; or if they
have had granted to them a dispensation from fasting, they
conclude that they may eat any kind of food they wish upon any
day. Such ignorance as this is the natural result of the
indifference wherewith the commandments and traditions of the
Church are treated.
So far, we have been speaking of the non-observance of Lent in its
relation to individuals and Catholics; let us now say a few words
upon the influence which that same non-observance has upon a whole
people or nation. There are but few social questions which have
not been ably and spiritedly treated of by the public writers of
the age, who have devoted their talents to the study of political
economy; and it has often been a matter of surprise to us that
they should have overlooked a subject of such deep interest as
this: the results produced on society by the abolition of Lent;
that is to say, of an institution which, more than any other,
keeps up in the public mind a keen sentiment of moral right and
wrong, inasmuch as it imposes on a nation an annual expiation for
sin. No shrewd penetration is needed to see the difference between
two nations, one of which observes, each year, a forty-days'
penance in reparation of the violations committed against the law
of God, and another, whose very principles reject all such solemn
reparation. And looking at the subject from another point of view-
is it not to be feared that the excessive use of animal food tends
to weaken, rather than to strengthen, the constitution? We are
convinced of it: the time will come when a greater proportion of
vegetable, and less of animal, diet will be considered as an
essential means for maintaining the strength of the human frame.
Let, then, the children of the Church courageously observe the
lenten practices of penance. Peace of conscience is essential to
Christian life; and yet it is promised to none but truly penitent
souls. Lost innocence is to be regained by the humble confession
of the sin, when it is accompanied by the absolution of the
priest; but let the faithful be on their guard against the
dangerous error, which would persuade them that they have nothing
to do when once pardoned. Let them remember the solemn warning
given them by the Holy Ghost in the sacred Scriptures: 'Be not
without fear about sin forgiven'![5] Our confidence of our having
been forgiven should be in proportion to the change or conversion
of our heart; the greater our present detestation of our past sins
and the more earnest our desire to do penance for them for the
rest of our lives, the better founded is our confidence that they
have been pardoned. 'Man knoweth not,' as the same holy Volume
assures us, 'whether he be worthy of love or hatred';[6] but he
that keeps up within him the spirit of penance, has every reason
to hope that God loves him.
But the courageous observance of the Church's precept of fasting
and abstaining during Lent must be accompanied by those two other
eminently good works, to which God so frequently urges us in the
Scripture: prayer and almsdeeds. Just as under the term 'fasting'
the Church comprises all kinds of mortification; so under the word
'prayer' she includes all those exercises of piety whereby the
soul holds intercourse with her God. More frequent attendance at
the services of the Church, assisting daily at Mass, spiritual
reading, meditation upon eternal truths and the Passion, hearing
sermons, and, above all, approaching the Sacraments of Penance and
the holy Eucharist-these are the chief means whereby the faithful
should offer to God the homage of prayer, during this holy season.
Almsdeeds comprise all the works of mercy to our neighbour, and
are unanimously recommended by the holy doctors of the Church, as
being the necessary complement of fasting and prayer during Lent.
God has made it a law, to which He has graciously bound Himself,
that charity shown towards our fellow-creatures, with the
intention of pleasing our Creator, shall be rewarded as though it
were done to Himself. How vividly this brings before us the
reality and sacredness of the tie which He would have to exist
between all men! Such, indeed, is its necessity, that our heavenly
Father will not accept the love of any heart that refuses to show
mercy: but, on the other hand, He accepts as genuine and as done
to Himself the charity of every Christian, who, by a work of mercy
shown to a fellow-man, is really acknowledging and honouring that
sublime union which makes all men to be one family with God as its
Father. Hence it is that Almsdeeds done with this intention, are
not merely acts of human kindness, but are raised to the dignity
of acts of religion, which have God for their direct object, and
have the power of appeasing His divine justice.
Let us remember the counsel given by the Archangel Raphael to
Tobias. He was on the point of taking leave of this holy family,
and returning to heaven; and these were his words: 'Prayer is good
with fasting and alms, more than to lay up treasures of gold: for
alms delivereth from death, and the same is that which purgeth
away sins, and maketh to find mercy and life everlasting.'[7]
Equally strong is the recommendation given to this virtue by the
Book of Ecclesiasticus: 'Water quencheth a flaming fire, and alms
resisteth sins.'[8] And again: 'Shut up alms in the heart of the
poor, and it shall obtain help for thee against all evil.'[9] The
Christian should keep these consoling promises ever before his
mind, but more especially during the season of Lent. The rich man
should show the poor, whose whole year is a fast, that there is a
time when even he has his self-imposed privations. The faithful
observance of Lent naturally produces a saving; let that saving be
given to Lazarus. Nothing, surely, could be more opposed to the
spirit of this holy season, than keeping up a table as richly and
delicately provided as at other periods of the year, when God
permits us to use all the comforts compatible with the means He
has given us. But how thoroughly Christian is it that, during
these days of penance and charity, the life of the poor man should
be made more comfortable, in proportion as that of the rich shares
in the hardships and privations of his suffering brethren
throughout the world! Poor and rich would then present themselves,
with all the beauty of fraternal love upon them, at the divine
Banquet of the Paschal feast, to which our risen Jesus will invite
us after these forty days are over.
There is one means more whereby we are to secure to ourselves the
great graces of Lent; it is the spirit of retirement and
separation from the world. Our ordinary life, such as it is during
the rest of the year, should all be made to pay tribute to the
holy season of penance; otherwise, the salutary impression
produced on us by the holy ceremony of Ash Wednesday will soon be
effaced. The Christian ought, therefore, to forbid himself, during
Lent, all the vain amusements, entertainments, and parties, of the
world he lives in. As regards theatres and balls, which are the
world in the very height of its power to do harm, no one that
calls himself a disciple of Christ should ever be present at them,
unless necessity, or the position he holds in society, oblige him
to it: but if, from his own free choice, he throws himself amidst
such dangers during the present holy season of penance and
recollection, he offers an insult to his character, and must needs
cease to believe that he has sins to atone for, and a God to
propitiate. The world (we mean that part of it which is Christian)
has thrown off all those external indications of mourning and
penance, which we read of as being so religiously observed in the
ages of faith; let that pass; but there is one thing which can
never change: God's justice, and man's obligation to appease that,
justice. The world may rebel as much as it will against the
sentence, but the sentence is irrevocable: 'Unless you do penance,
you shall all perish.'[10] It is God's own word. Say, if you will,
that few now-a-days give ear to it; but for that very reason many
are lost. Those, too, who hear this word, must not forget the
warnings given them by our divine Saviour Himself, in the Gospel
read to us on Sexagesima Sunday. He told us how some of the seed
is trodden down by the passers-by, or eaten by the fowls of the
air; how some falls on rocky soil, and is parched; and how, again,
some is choked by thorns. Let us be wise, and spare no pains to
become that good ground, which not only receives the divine seed,
but brings forth a hundredfold for the Easter harvest which is at
hand.
An unavoidable feeling will arise in the minds of some of our
readers, as they peruse these pages, in which we have endeavoured
to embody the spirit of the Church, such as it is expressed, not
only in the liturgy, but also in the decrees of Councils and in
the writings of the holy fathers. The feeling we allude to is one
of regret at not finding, during this period of the liturgical
year, the touching and exquisite poetry, which gave such a charm
to the forty days of our Christmas solemnity. First came
Septuagesima, throwing its gloomy shade over those enchanting
visions of the mystery of Bethlehem; and now we have come into a
desert land, with thorns at every step, and no springs of water to
refresh us. Let us not complain, however; holy Church knows our
true wants, and is intent on supplying them. Neither must we be
surprised at her insisting on a severer preparation for Easter,
than for Christmas. At Christmas, we were to approach our Jesus as
an Infant; all she put us through then were the Advent exercises,
for the mysteries of our Redemption were but beginning.
And of those who went to Jesus' crib, there were many who, like
the poor shepherds of Bethlehem, might be called simple, at least
in this sense, that they did not sufficiently realize either the
holiness of their Incarnate God or the misery and guilt of their
own conscience. But now that this Son of the eternal God has
entered the path of penance; now that we are about to see Him a
victim to every humiliation, and suffering even a death upon a
cross, the Church does not spare us; she rouses us from our
ignorance and our self-satisfaction. She bids us strike our
breasts, have compunction in our souls, mortify our bodies,
because we are sinners. Our whole life ought to be one of penance;
fervent souls are ever doing penance: could anything be more just
or necessary, than that we should do some penance during these
days, when our Jesus is fasting in the desert, and is to die on
Calvary? There is a sentence of our Redeemer, which He spoke to
the daughters of Jerusalem on the day of His Passion; let us apply
it to ourselves: 'If in the green wood they do these things, what
shall be done in the dry?'[11] Oh, what a revelation is here! And
yet, by the mercy of Jesus who speaks it, the dry wood may become
the green, and so not be burned.
The Church hopes, nay, she is laboring with her whole energy,
that, this may be; therefore, she bids us bear the yoke; she gives
us a Lent. Let us only courageously tread the way of penance, and
the light will gradually beam upon us. If we are now far off from
our God by the sins that are upon us, this holy season will be to
us what the saints call the purgative life, and will give us that
purity which will enable us to see our Lord in the glory of His
victory over death. If, on the contrary, we are already living the
illuminative life; if, during the three weeks of Septuagesima, we
have bravely sounded the depth of our miseries, our Lent will give
us a clearer view of Him who is our light; and if we acknowledged
Him as our God when we saw Him as the Babe of Bethlehem, our
soul's eye will not fail to recognize Him in the divine Penitent
of the desert, or in the bleeding Victim of Calvary.
References/Footnotes
1 Ps. cx. 10.
2 St. Matt iv. 17.
3 St. Luke xiii 3.
4 Rom. vi 6.
5 Ecclus. v. 5.
6 Eccles. ix. 1.
7 Tob. xii 8, 9.
8 Ecclus. iii. 33.
9 Ibid. xxix. 15.
10 St. Luke xiii. 3.
11 St. Luke xxiii. 31.
(Excepted from Volume V Lent of "The Liturgical Year" by Abbot Gueranger O.S.B. published by Marian House, Powers Lake, ND
58773.)
See Also:
The Mystery of Lent by Abbot Gueranger O.S.B.
A season so sacred as this of Lent is rich in mysteries. The Church has made it a time of recollection and penance, in preparation for the greatest of all her feasts; she would, therefore, bring into it everything that could excite the faith of her children, and encourage them to go through the arduous work of atonement for their sins. ...Lenten Rumination
The Lent is meant to cleanse the whole being, both the inner and chemical by being with God. How to clean the physical man? The abstinence from food for hours and days allow the body to consume all the toxins accumulated by our day to day inherent infirmities.The Significance of Fasting in the Struggle against Fallen Spirits
Fasting is acceptable to God when it is preceded by the great virtue of mercy; fasting prepares a reward in heaven when it is foreign to hypocrisy and vainglory; fasting works when it is joined with another great virtue – prayer.Conversion Through Prayer, Fasting and Almsgiving
Lenten conversion is not a superficial renewal. What the Lord wants is not just the change of bad habits and worldly vices; He wants a clean soul and no half-measures will do.
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