Angelus News | February 9, 2024 | Vol. 9 No

LETTER AND SPIRIT
SCOTT HAHN
Scott Hahn is founder of the
St. Paul Center for Biblical
Theology; stpaulcenter.com.
Lenten back to basics
I
love Lent.
Don’t get me wrong. It’s not that I take pleasure in
fasting. And I don’t enjoy “giving stuff up” any more
than the next guy. In my devotional life I can be a typical
spoiled American.
But Lent, for me, is always a hopeful time. It’s my annual
reminder that change is possible. More than that, I’m reminded
that God wants me
to change and wills me to
change. So he’ll give me the
grace I need to put away vice
and put on virtue. All the
readings at Mass reinforce
those lessons. God calls
Israel to repent — to cease
its sinning — and to grow by
means of prayer, fasting, and
almsgiving.
I usually mark the season
with a silent retreat, so that I
can get back to the basics of
the spiritual life. I’ll usually
take a book with me; and
I want to tell you about a
book I took along a Lent or
two ago. It’s “Knowing the
Love of God: Lessons from a
Spiritual Master” (St. Joseph
Communications, $14.95),
by Father Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange,
OP.
This author defined “the
basics of the spiritual life”
for me, way back when I
was a new Catholic. Garrigou-Lagrange
was perhaps the
most celebrated Catholic
theologian of his lifetime
(1877-1964). He taught for
many years at Rome’s Pontifical University of Saint Thomas
Aquinas (the Angelicum), and among his illustrious
students was a young Polish priest named Karol Wojtyla.
Father Wojtyla (whom we now know as St. Pope John Paul
II) completed his doctoral dissertation under the direction
of Friar Reginald.
He is best known, however, for his foundational work of
spiritual theology, “The Three Ages of the Interior Life”
(CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, $25),
which he wrote when he was young. That title, too, bears
careful reading and re-reading. I cannot name — and can’t
even imagine — a book more justly influential on the
practice of spiritual direction.
But “Knowing the Love of
God” is an even better way
Father Reginald
Garrigou-Lagrange. |
FLICKR
to pass your Lenten days.
It is Father Garrigou-Lagrange’s
most mature work
— his last writings, produced
in the midst of much
suffering. In fact, its chapters
are mostly the notes for meditations
that he preached at
retreats for his fellow friars.
Garrigou-Lagrange anticipated
what St. Pope John
XXIII called the greatest
teaching of the Second Vatican
Council: the universal
call to holiness. Garrigou-Lagrange
believed that
ordinary Christians, by virtue
of their baptism, were called
to the mystical life and empowered
for it. This doesn’t
mean we’ll all be visionaries
or prophets; in fact, it seems
that God calls very few to
experience such dramatic
phenomena.
But we’re all called to enjoy
a life of profound, prayerful,
and intimate union with
God. We’re called to be
God’s children, and to know
his Fatherhood in an ever more powerful way. This is the
ordinary vocation of Christians.
It’s my vocation and yours, and we can certainly live it
better. If you can’t join me on retreat this year, please join
me at least in the pages of this book, which is now available
again after many years out of print.
32 • ANGELUS • February 9, 2024