Christmastide came to a close two weeks ago with the feast of the Purification of Our Lady, Candlemas, on February 2nd. We are now approaching the 'gesima season during which we prepare for the exercises and endurance race that is Lent. My singing voice leaves something to be desired, but during Vespers this Saturday night I will sing the dismissal with the double Alleluia and the Deo gratias with the double Alleluia, my last bit of liturgical joy for the next month and a half.
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| source: atonementparish.blogspot.com |
In past times, and in some places now, the coming of Lent was a process of transition. The Roman tradition anticipates Lent by introducing a penitential spirit in the liturgy: violet vestments, the "burial" of the Alleluia (in the Middle Ages it was literally buried), the excision of the Gloria from the Mass on the Lord's day, and the dismissal Benedicamus Domino which we use on days of penance, almost to say Serviamus Domino. The Roman Divine Office becomes very brutal during Lent. The Office of the Dead is prayed on Mondays of Simple rank, which will be every Monday this year. As we run our course in the faith we must recall and pray for our friends who did the same with divers degrees of success. Vespers loses the Suffrages of the Saints and replaces them with what is likely the detritus of an Office for the Dead of past time, a series of intercessory prays followed by the Miserere, psalm 50.
As stated earlier, it is my private belief that the season of Advent, replete with apocalyptic tones and an emphasis on the Coming, is most appropriate to consider sin and judgment. For the non-catechumen Lent is a different story. The Masses of the 'gesima season introduce us to what we should consider during Lent. The first Sunday, Septuagesima Sunday, prescribes for the Gospel the parable of a landowner hiring servants at the various hours of the days. The jealous men who worked the entire day caterwaul at the wages of those who worked less than they. The master of the house reminds the greedy workers that he can pay them as he wishes, the "first shall be last and the last shall be first." Above all, the message is that the Kingdom of God is available to all who seek it, although many turn away: "Many are called, but few are chosen." For those who follow the Byzantine tradition this sermon will form the foundation of the greatest sermon ever given, St. John Chrysostom's Paschal sermon which is read at Mattins. The following week's Gospel pericope presents us with the parable of a sower whose seed takes root and grows according to the environment in which it is planted. And the last Sunday tells us of a blind man whose cries to Our Lord "Son of David, have pity on me" stir His compassion; Our Lord gives the man his sight and tells him "Your faith has saved you." The three considerations the Church gives us for Lent then are:
- We are all called to eternal life with God and regardless of when we accept Him and repent of our sins we are assured of the same reward as those who lived their entire lives in holiness. The stories of saints are the stories of sinners.
- The gifts of God, faith the first of them, grow and sanctify the soul according to their nurturing. Do we pray? Do we serve others? Do we help others mechanically or are acts of random kindness still a part of our lives? Mechanical prayer can be useful in keeping the mind disciplined, but the sinner must mean the prayer at some point in order to let the Holy Spirit work within the soul. Kindly the Roman liturgy varies greatly during Lent: different readings at every single Mass, different psalms at the major hours daily owing to the absence of feasts, and different collects. The Church gives the man of prayer a tool to sow his seeds in the most fecund places.
- Faith saves us and even illuminates us. The blind man must have been blinded by light when he first recovered his vision after being lost in the throes of darkness for the duration of his life. Is sin not the same thing? Conversion, in an instant or in a progression, illuminates the sinner and basks him in the light of Christ. Peter, James, and John found this light profoundly blinding when they ascended Mount Tabor with Our Lord and yet the light they saw was only a hint of the light that is Christ's Divine essence. The Hesychast Byzantine tradition calls the light of Transfiguration the "uncreated energies." The Byzantine tradition even refers to Baptism as the "Mystery of Illumination." Fittingly the last Gospel before Lent is about illumination and the last act of Lent is the Baptism of converts to Christ.
Fasting dampens the noise of earthly distractions and attunes the soul to what the Church asks us to consider during Lent. Severe penance? No. Self-inflicted brutality? No. Fasting helps us to think and pray about the three simple topics above: calling, fostering, and seeing in the faith.
Lent. It is coming.
Thank you for this beautiful reflection.
ReplyDeleteDear Rad Trad. Just smashing; timely, insightful, and most welcome.
ReplyDeleteRecently, I have been thinking about the modern habit even we Christian catholics have of proclaimaing indifference to the immorality of others as though what they do has no effect on our own selves, our own families, or even a Divinely-Designed Church but that has been an unfortunate result of the mess made of what Our Holy Father said about not judging - he did not mean what is being claimed he meant by those who succor the homosexualisation of State and Church.
I am thinking of the fetid wounds left on the Body of Christ after it was scourged by a cohort of queer clergy and how their continuing presence in the Body of Christ has excised its masculine heart and replaced it with a sulphurous epicene sepulcher and I am thinking of how Holy Mother Church contributed mightily to its own, arguably, avoidable scourging at the pillar of perversion when it applied the modern sacramental of defenestration to the Iron Law which holds that a decrease in mortification ineluctably leads to an increase in effeminacy.
That all of this would have come to pass was the predictable result of the virtual abandonment of bodily mortification after liberal laxity had supplanted righteous rigor. Here is the great Dom Prosper Gueranger in, The Liturgical Year,:
It was with this intention that Pope Benedict XIV., alarmed at the excessive facility wherewith dispensations were then obtained, renewed, by a solemn dated June 10, 1745, the prohibition of eating fish and meat, at the same meal, on fasting days.
The same Pope, whose spirit of moderation has never been called in question, had no sooner ascended the papal throne, than he addressed an encyclical letter to the bishops of the Catholic world, expressing his heartfelt grief at seeing the great relaxation that was introduced among the faithful by indiscreet and unnecessary dispensations. The letter is dated May 30, 1741. We extract from it the following passage:
‘The observance of Lent is the very badge of the Christian warfare. By it we prove ourselves not to be enemies of the cross of Christ. By it we avert the scourges of divine justice. By it we gain strength against the princes of darkness, for it shields us with heavenly help. Should mankind grow remiss in their observance of Lent, it would be a detriment to God’s glory, a disgrace to the Catholic religion, and a danger to Christian souls. Neither can it be doubted that such negligence would become the source of misery to the world, of public calamity, and of private woe.’
ReplyDeleteMore than a hundred years have elapsed since this solemn warning of the Vicar of Christ was given to the world; and during that time, the relaxation he inveighed against has gone on gradually increasing. How few Christians do we meet who are strict observers of Lent, even in its present mild form!
And must there not result from this ever-growing spirit of immortification, a general effeminacy of character, which will lead, at last, to frightful social disorders? The sad predictions of Pope Benedict XIV. are but too truly verified. Those nations, among whose people the spirit and practice of penance are extinct, are heaping against themselves the wrath of God, and provoking His justice to destroy them by one or other of these scourges - civil discord, or conquest. In our own country there is an inconsistency, which must strike every thinking mind: the observance of the Lord’s day, on the one side; the national inobservance of days of penance and fasting, on the other. The first is admirable, and, if we except puritanical extravagances, bespeaks a deep-rooted sense of religion; but the second is one of the worst presages for the future. The word of God is unmistakable: unless we do penance, we shall perish.
But if our ease-loving and sensual generation were to return, like the Ninivites, to the long-neglected way of penance and expiation, who knows but that the arm of God, which is already raised to strike us, may give us blessing and not chastisement?
Laxity has, slowly but surely, gained the whip hand over The Body of Christ and even our Non-Catholic neighbors have experienced the negative consequences of our violation of that Iron Law and we Catholics bear partial blame for what has happened to even non-Catholics and so we simply can not claim that we are indifferent to the Cross of a perverted Lust that they bear for they are bearing that Cross in metaphorical china shops all over the place and causing grave destruction.
We'll be doing an at-home Alleluia "burial" tomorrow.
ReplyDeleteOne point about the Suffrages of the Saints - these should continue until Lauds of "Sitientes" Saturday inclusive, being omitted only during Passiontide. Or was this not always the case?
John R, care to share how you will do it? I'm interested also in incorporating this into family prayer life.
DeleteI ditto Sparticus, very timely and insightful post! :)
ReplyDelete