In Quadragesima, VI

Machine translation. This sermon has no published English translation in the public domain, so this rendering was made by software (Claude (Anthropic)). It is offered to make the sermon readable, not as a scholarly translation, and it has not been checked against the original by a human. The Latin text beside it is the sermon as it was actually printed.

CHAPTER ONE.

1.

In Lent we must consider the season of the year and the number of the days. The solemn season has come which, more than any other stretch of the year, reminds us to humble the soul with prayers and fasts and to chastise the body. But why this is kept as the solemn feast of the Lord's passion draws near, and why it is kept in the mystery of the number forty — since this often troubles some people — we rightly undertake to set before your Charity what the Lord has seen fit to grant us to say on the matter. And those whom we know to be looking into these things not for the sake of a quarrel but for the sake of knowledge — by their faith and devotion we are greatly helped to obtain what needs to be said.

2.

Question: Why do we fast at this season, before the celebration of Baptism? The answer. For this is what usually raises the question: why the Lord Jesus Christ himself, who by taking on a human body appeared to men as a man precisely in order to give us a pattern for living and dying and rising again, fasted not before he was baptized but after he had been baptized. For this is how it is written in the Gospel: "And when he had been baptized he at once came up from the water; and see, the heavens were opened to him, and he saw the Spirit of God coming down upon him. And see, a voice from heaven saying: This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased. Then Jesus was led into the desert by the Spirit, to be tempted by the devil. And when he had fasted forty days and forty nights, he was hungry afterwards." But we fast together with those who are to be baptized, before the day of their Baptism, which is the approaching day of Easter; and after that day we relax our fasts for fifty days. This would rightly trouble us if it were not permitted to baptize or be baptized except on the most solemn day of Easter. But since throughout the whole year, according to each person's need or wish, no one is barred from Baptism — by the gift of him who gave them power to become sons of God — while the Lord's passion may be celebrated in its yearly return only on one fixed day of the year, which is called Easter: then the sacrament of Baptism is beyond doubt to be distinguished from Easter. The one may be received on any day; the other may lawfully be carried out on one fixed day of the year. The one is given to make life new; the other is entrusted to us for the remembrance of our religion. But as for the fact that a far greater number of candidates for baptism flock to that day, it is not that a richer grace of salvation is to be had there, but that the greater gladness of the festival draws them.

CHAPTER TWO.

3.

John's baptism is to be distinguished from the baptism of Christ. Why Christ took upon himself the sacraments of the old Law. When temptation is brought against us, we must fast. And what of this — that even the baptism of John, which Christ received then, is to be distinguished from the baptism of Christ himself, which his faithful receive; and that the baptism with which Christ was baptized is not better than the one with which a Christian is baptized simply because Christ is better than a Christian, but rather that this baptism is set above that one because it is Christ's? For John baptized Christ while confessing himself less than Christ; but Christ baptizes the Christian, and he showed himself greater than John too. It is as with the circumcision of the flesh: although Christ received it, and no Christian receives it now, better than it is the sacrament of Christ's resurrection, by which the Christian is circumcised so as to strip off the fleshly and old life, hearing the Apostle say: As Christ rose from the dead by the glory of the Father, so let us too walk in newness of life. It is as with the old Passover itself, which was commanded to be kept by the killing of a lamb: it is not better than our Passover, in which Christ was sacrificed, merely because Christ kept it with his disciples. For it belonged to the giving of an example of humility and devotion to us that, when he came, he should see fit to take on even those sacraments by which he himself had been announced as coming: so as to show from this with what religious awe we ought to take on these sacraments by which he is announced as having come. So it is not to be believed that Christ, because he fasted immediately after receiving John's baptism, thereby laid down a rule of observance requiring us to fast immediately after receiving the Baptism of Christ himself: but by that example he certainly taught that we must fast whenever we are engaged in some sharper struggle with the tempter. For this is why Christ, who saw fit to be born as a man, did not refuse to be tempted as a man: so that a Christian, taught by his instruction, might not be overcome by the tempter. Whether then immediately after Baptism, or after any interval of time, whenever a similar battle of temptation is brought against a man, he must fast: so that the body may do its military service by chastisement, and the mind may win the victory by being humbled. So in that example of the Lord's, the cause of that fast was not the washing in the Jordan but the temptation of the devil.

CHAPTER THREE.

4.

Why the Lenten fast comes before Easter. When the bridegroom is taken away, the children must mourn. But the reason why we fast before the solemn feast of the Lord's passion, and why that relaxing of fasts is carried through to the fiftieth day, is this. Everyone who fasts rightly either humbles his soul in the groaning of prayer and the chastising of the body, out of an unfeigned faith; or else, with his attention drawn up away from fleshly enticement by some spiritual poverty and by delight in truth and wisdom, comes down to feeling hunger and thirst. About both kinds of fasting the Lord answered those who asked why his disciples did not fast. For about the first kind, which involves the humbling of the soul, he said: The children of the bridegroom cannot mourn as long as the bridegroom is with them. But the hour will come when the bridegroom will be taken away from them, and then they will fast. And about the other kind, which involves the feasting of the mind, he went on to speak like this: No one sews a new patch on an old garment, or the tear will be worse; nor do men put new wine into old wineskins, or the skins burst and the wine is spilled; but they put new wine into new skins, and both are preserved. And so, since the bridegroom has now been taken away, we, the children of that beautiful bridegroom, must certainly mourn. For he who is beautiful in form beyond the sons of men, and whose grace is poured out on his lips, had neither beauty nor comeliness in the hands of his persecutors, and his life was taken away from the earth. And we mourn rightly, if we are burning with longing for him. Blessed were those who were allowed to have him present then, before the passion, to question him as they pleased and to hear him as they should. The fathers before his coming longed to see those days and did not see them: because they had been appointed under a different dispensation, as men through whom he was to be announced as coming, not men by whom he would be heard when he came. For it is of them that he speaks to the disciples, saying: Many just men and prophets wanted to see what you see, and did not see it; and to hear what you hear, and did not hear it. But in us there has been fulfilled what he likewise says: Days will come when you will long to see one of these days, and you will not be able.

CHAPTER FOUR.

5.

Why in this life we must groan and fast. Who would not burn with the flame of holy longing? Who would not mourn here? Who would not labour in his groaning? Who would not say: My tears have become my bread day and night, while it is said to me daily, Where is your God? For we believe in him as already seated at the Father's right hand: and yet as long as we are in the body we are away from him on our travels, and we cannot show him to those who doubt or deny and say, Where is your God? Rightly did his Apostle long to be dissolved and to be with him: while he judged that remaining in the flesh was not best for himself, but necessary for our sake. Here the thoughts of mortals are timid and our foresight uncertain; for the earthly dwelling weighs down a mind that thinks of many things. Hence human life on earth is a temptation: and in this night of the world a lion prowls about, looking for someone to devour. Not the Lion of the tribe of Judah, our king; but the lion the devil, our adversary. And he, expressing in himself alone the figures of the four living creatures in John's Apocalypse, was born as a man, worked as a lion, was sacrificed as a calf, flew as an eagle. He flew on the wings of the winds, and made darkness his hiding place. He made darkness, and night came on, in which all the beasts of the forest go about. The lions' cubs roaring — those tempters, that is, through whom the devil looks for someone to devour; and they have no power except over those they have been allowed to have, since in that very psalm it goes on: Seeking their food from God. In so dangerous a night of this world, so full of temptations, who would not be afraid, who would not tremble in the very marrow of his bones, for fear he might be judged fit to be let go, to be devoured, into the jaws of so cruel an enemy? And so we must fast and pray.

CHAPTER FIVE.

6.

Fasting most fitting before the solemn feast of Christ's passion. And when more, when more urgently, than as that very solemn feast of the Lord's passion draws near, in which by the yearly celebration the memory of that same night is in a manner of speaking carved out afresh for us, so that it may not be wiped away by forgetfulness, and so that the roaring devourer may not find us asleep — not in body but in spirit? For what else did the Lord's passion itself especially commend to us in Christ Jesus our Head, but this very temptation of this life? Hence, when the time of his death was already coming, he said to Peter: "Satan has asked to sift you like wheat: and I have prayed for you, Peter, that your faith may not fail; go and strengthen your brothers." And he certainly strengthened us, by his apostolate, by his martyrdom, by his letters. And there too, warning us about that night of which I speak, and that it must be feared, he taught us to keep watch carefully by the consolation of prophecy, which is like a lamp in the night. "We have," he says, "a more certain word of prophecy, to which you do well to attend, as to a lamp shining in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts."

7.

These are now days of toil and sorrow. So let our loins be girded and our lamps burning, and let us be like men waiting for their Lord, for when he comes back from the wedding. And let us not say to one another, Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we shall die. Rather, all the more because the day of death is uncertain and the day of life is troublesome, let us fast and pray, for tomorrow we shall die. A little while, he says, and you will not see me; and again a little while, and you will see me. This is the hour of which he said, You will be sorrowful, but the world will rejoice: that is, this life full of temptations, in which we are away from him on our travels. But again, he says, I shall see you, and your heart will rejoice; and no one will take your joy from you. In this hope of a promiser so utterly faithful we even now rejoice as best we can, until that most abundant joy comes, when we shall be like him, because we shall see him as he is, and no one will take our joy from us. For as the pledge of this hope, a pledge so welcome and so freely given, we have received the Holy Spirit, who works in our hearts the unspeakable groans of holy longings. "For we have conceived," as Isaiah says, "and given birth to the spirit of salvation." And "a woman when she is in labour," says the Lord, "has sorrow, because her day has come: but when she has given birth, there is great joy, because a man has been born into the world." That will be the joy which no one will take from us; and into it we shall be poured out, from this conceiving of faith into eternal light. Now, then, let us fast and pray, since this is the day of labour.

CHAPTER SIX.

8.

Why the fast was set at the number forty. This whole body of Christ, spread through the whole world — that is, the whole Church — does this, and that unity which says in the Psalm: From the ends of the earth I have cried to you, while my heart was in anguish. And from this it is now clear to us why this solemn feast of humbling was set at forty days. For she who cries from the ends of the earth, when her heart is in anguish, cries from the four quarters of the world, which Scripture too often mentions: East and West, North and South. In all of this the Ten Commandments of the Law are laid upon us, no longer merely to be feared through the letter, but to be fulfilled through the grace of love. And so, multiplying ten by four, we see forty come out. But we are still in the toil of temptation, with pardon for our failings. For who perfectly fulfils, You shall not covet? And so we must fast and pray, and yet not stop doing good work. To that toil the wages are paid at the end, which are called by the name of a denarius, a coin of ten. And as the number three takes its name from three, and four from four, so the denarius takes its name from ten: and joined to forty it is paid out as wages for the toil. The figure of the number fifty signifies the time of that joy which no one will take from us; and though we do not yet enjoy its exercise in this life, we still celebrate it after the solemn feast of the Lord's passion, for the fifty days from the day of his resurrection during which we relax our fasts, with the Alleluia ringing out in praise of the Lord.

9.

The season of Lent ought to be more fervent with abstinence and works of devotion. So now, in the person of Christ, I urge you, dearly beloved, so that you may not be got round by Satan, to win God's favour by daily fasts, larger alms, and more fervent prayers. Now is the time when both husbands should abstain from their wives and wives from their husbands, so as to be free for prayer: although they ought to do this on certain days throughout the whole year as well; and the more often, certainly the better: because a man who reaches immoderately for what has been allowed him offends the one who allowed it. For prayer is a spiritual thing, and so it is more acceptable the more it fulfils the effect of its own nature. And it is poured out the more as a spiritual work the more the mind that pours it out is held up away from fleshly pleasure.

CHAPTER SEVEN.

For forty days fasted Moses, the administrator of the Law; forty days Elijah, the most excellent of the Prophets; forty days the Lord himself, who has the witness of the Law and the Prophets. That is why he showed himself on the mountain with those two. But we, who cannot keep up so long a fast as to take no food at all, as they did, through so many days and nights, let us at least do what we can; so that, apart from the days on which for certain reasons the custom of the Church forbids fasting, we may please the Lord our God by a daily or a frequent fast. But surely abstinence from intercourse is not, like abstinence from food and drink, impossible to keep unbroken through so many days? — since we see so many of both sexes in the name of Christ keeping their limbs wholly untouched by this and dedicated to God. I do not think it a great thing for the chastity of married people to manage through the whole Easter season what virginity can manage through a whole life.

CHAPTER EIGHT.

10.

Self-indulgent keepers of Lent. And there is one more thing which I should not have needed to mention, since I have commended the season for humbling the soul as strongly as I could; and yet, because of the errors of men, who by empty-talking seductions and crooked habits never stop causing me troublesome anxiety on your behalf, I cannot keep silent about it. There are some keepers of Lent who are self-indulgent rather than religious, hunting out new sweetnesses rather than chastising old cravings; who with lavish and expensive spreads of various fruits set out to outdo the varieties and flavours of any kind of dish there is: they shudder at the pots in which meat has been cooked as though they were unclean, and do not shudder at the self-indulgence of belly and throat in their own flesh; they fast, not so as to lessen their usual greed by moderating it, but so as to increase an immoderate appetite by putting it off. For when the time to eat arrives, they rush at richly laden tables like cattle at their mangers; they bury their hearts and stretch their bellies with an ever greater number of courses; they provoke the throat with elaborate and exotic varieties of seasoning, so that not even abundance may check it. In short, they take in so much by eating that they cannot manage to digest it by fasting.

CHAPTER NINE.

11.

Abstinence from wine turned into a delicacy. There are some too who do not drink wine only in the sense that they hunt out other drinks for themselves, squeezed from other fruits, not for their health but for their pleasure: as though Lent were not the keeping of a devout humbling but the occasion for a new self-indulgence. For how much more honourable it would be, if a weak stomach cannot bear drinking water, to be supported by the usual wine in a small amount, than to go looking for wines that know nothing of a vintage and have never seen a winepress; not so as to choose a cleaner drink, but so as to condemn the thriftier one. And what is more absurd than that at the very season when the flesh is to be more tightly chastised a man should provide the flesh with such sweetnesses that the very craving of his throat would rather Lent did not end? What is more unfitting than that in the days of humbling, when the fare of the poor is to be imitated by everyone, a man should live in such a way that if he lived so all the time the estates of the rich could hardly keep it up? Beware of these things, dearly beloved: think of what is written, Do not go after your cravings. And if that most wholesome commandment is to be kept at every season, how much more in these days, when it is so shameful for our greed to be let loose on unaccustomed enticements that a man is rightly blamed if he has not held back even the accustomed ones?

CHAPTER TEN.

12.

Works of mercy towards the poor. The other kind of mercy, in pardoning. Above all, be sure to remember the poor, so that what you take from yourselves by living more sparingly you may lay up in the treasury of heaven. Let Christ in his hunger receive what a Christian in his fasting receives less of. Let the chastising of one who chooses it become the support of one who has nothing. Let the voluntary want of the well-off become the necessary plenty of the needy. And let there be in a calm and humble mind a merciful readiness to pardon. Let the man who has done a wrong ask pardon; let the man who has been wronged give pardon: so that we may not be taken over by Satan, whose triumph is the falling out of Christians. For this too is an alms of great profit — to release a fellow servant from his debt, so that you may be released by the Lord. The heavenly Master commended both good works to his disciples, saying: Forgive, and you will be forgiven; give, and it will be given to you. Remember that servant to whom his master added up again the whole debt he had already remitted, because the servant himself did not pay out to a fellow servant, who owed him a hundred denarii, the mercy he had received over the ten thousand talents he owed. In this kind of good work there is no excuse, where the will alone is the whole ability. Anyone can say: I cannot fast, or my stomach will hurt. He can also say: I want to give to the poor; but I have nothing to give from; or, I have so little that I am afraid I shall be in want myself if I give. Though even in these works men very often make up false excuses for themselves, because they cannot find true ones. But who is there who would say: I did not pardon the man who asked for pardon because my health got in the way, or because I had no hand to hold out? Forgive, so that you may be forgiven. Here there is no work of the flesh at all, not a single limb even of one's own flesh is called in to help the soul in fulfilling what is asked. It is done by the will, it is completed by the will. Do it without a care, give it without a care; you will feel no pain in your body, you will have nothing less in your house. And now see, brothers, what an evil it is for a man not to pardon a brother who repents, when he has been commanded to love an enemy while he is still an enemy. And this being so, since it is written, Let the sun not set on your anger, consider, dearest brothers, whether a man is to be called a Christian who is unwilling at least in these days to end the enmities which he ought never to have carried on at all.