9781644135945

The Easter Cycle
merciful, patient and rich in mercy, and ready to repent of the evil. . . . Blow the trumpet in
Sion; sanctify a fast; call a solemn assembly; gather together the people; sanctify the Church. . . .
Between the porch and the altar the priests, the Lord’s ministers, shall weep and shall say: Spare,
O Lord, spare Thy people, and give not Thy inheritance to reproach” (Epistle). Such is God’s
appeal to the Church of the Old Testament. God first asks for penance, the interior sentiments of
penance, sorrow, contrition; the external works of penance, fasting and self-denial, are to follow.
Through sin we have turned away in disobedience to His commandments and deprived Him
of the honor and recognition due to Him. We have gone after something else, a creature, and
made it our god. Penance must make recompense for our departure from God and our service
of creatures. In repentance the soul must turn back to God: “Be converted to Me with all your
heart.” Because it has given itself up to the service of a creature and preferred it to God, the soul
must in penance subject itself to a punishment, a privation, an act of self-denial. Only in this
way does man free himself from sins which he has committed, and places himself in a position
to receive pardon for his sins. “Be converted to Me with all your heart.”
“When you fast, be not as the hypocrites, sad. For they disfigure their faces that they may
appear unto men to fast. . . . But thou, when thou fastest, . . . appear not to men to fast, but to
thy Father who is in secret, and thy Father who seeth in secret will repay thee” (Gospel). St.
Augustine comments on these words of the Gospel in the lessons at Matins:
According to these precepts, it is clear that all our attention should be directed to acquiring
interior joys; lest, while seeking external rewards, we conform ourselves to this world and
lose the promise of that blessedness which is the more solid and stable as it is more interior, in
which God has chosen us to be made like to the image of His Son. We must especially note in
this chapter that pride is to be found, not only amid the splendor and pomp of material things,
but even in sadness and squalor; and it is then even more dangerous because it hides under the
name of the service of God.
Christianity is the religion of the inner self, not of external greatness before men nor of
outward appearance. Christian piety keeps its eyes fixed on God and His holy will. Its motive
is the love of God, of which we are reminded, not without cause, at the beginning of Lent. No
one should be able to notice our fasting. But we should be more recollected than usual, more
strict with ourselves than during the rest of the year. We should deprive ourselves somewhat of
sleep, devote more time to prayer, and observe more carefully the virtue of silence. But towards
others we should be more charitable, all the more ready to serve, all the more pleasant, cheerful,
and cordial. No one should know that during these weeks we practice more mortification than
usual. “Lay not up to yourselves treasures [honor, recognition, praise] on earth, where the
rust and moth consume. . . . But lay up to yourselves treasures in heaven,” before God, with the
intention of pleasing Him alone. According to these directions of the Gospel, let us take upon
ourselves the work of Lent.
“Let us change our garments for ashes and sackcloth; let us fast and lament before the Lord;
for our God is plenteous in mercy to forgive our sins.”
“Let us amend for the better in those things in which we have sinned through ignorance,
lest, suddenly overtaken by the day of death, we seek time for penance and be not able to find it.
Attend, O Lord, and have mercy; for we have sinned against thee. Help us, O God, our Savior;
and for the honor of Thy name, O Lord, deliver us” (Antiphons before Mass).
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