THE MYSTERY OF LENT
by Abbot Gueranger O.S.B.
WE may be sure that 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. During Septuagesima, we
had the number <seventy>, which reminds us of those seventy years
of captivity in Babylon, after which God's chosen people, being
purified from idolatry, was to return to Jerusalem and celebrate
the Pasch. It is the number <forty> that the Church now brings
before us: a number, as St. Jerome observes, which denotes
punishment and affliction.[1]
Let us remember the forty days and forty nights of the deluge[2]
sent by God in His anger, when He repented that He had made man,
and destroyed the whole human race with the exception of one
family. Let us consider how the Hebrew people, in punishment for
their ingratitude, wandered forty years in the desert, before they
were permitted to enter the promised land.[3] Let us listen to our
God commanding the Prophet Ezechiel to lie forty days on his right
side, as a figure of the siege which was to bring destruction on
Jerusalem.[4]
There are two persons in the old Testament who represent the two
manifestations of God: Moses, who typifies the Law; and Elias, who
is the figure of the Prophets. Both of these are permitted to
approach God: the first on Sinai,[5] the second on Horeb;[6] but
both of them have to prepare for the great favour by an expiatory
fast of forty days.
With these mysterious facts before us, we can understand why it is
that the Son of God, having become Man for our salvation and
wishing to subject Himself to the pain of fasting, chose the
number of forty days. The institution of Lent is thus brought
before us with everything that can impress the mind with its
solemn character, and with its power of appeasing God and
purifying our souls. Let us, therefore, look beyond the little
world which surrounds us, and see how the whole Christian universe
is, at this very time, offering this forty days' penance as a
sacrifice of propitiation to the offended Majesty of God; and let
us hope that, as in the case of the Ninivites, He will mercifully
accept this year's offering of our atonement, and pardon us our
sins.
The number of our days of Lent is, then, a holy mystery: let us
now learn, from the liturgy, in what light the Church views her
children during these forty days. She considers them as an immense
army, fighting day and night against their spiritual enemies. We
remember how, on Ash Wednesday, she calls Lent a Christian
warfare. In order that we may have that newness of life, which
will make us worthy to sing once more our <Alleluia>, we must
conquer our three enemies: the devil, the flesh, and the world. We
are fellow combatants with our Jesus, for He, too, submits to the
triple temptation, suggested to Him by satan in person. Therefore,
we must have on our armour, and watch unceasingly. And whereas it
is of the utmost importance that our hearts be spirited and brave,
the Church gives us a war-song of heaven's own making, which can
fire even cowards with hope of victory and confidence in God's
help: it is the ninetieth Psalm.[7] She inserts the whole of it in
the Mass of the first Sunday of Lent, and every day introduces
several of its verses into the ferial Office.
She there tells us to rely on the protection, wherewith our
heavenly Father covers us, as with a shield;[8] to hope under the
shelter of His wings;[9] to have confidence in Him; for that He
will deliver us from the snare of the hunter,[10] who had robbed
us of the holy liberty of the children of God; to rely upon the
succour of the holy angels, who are our brothers, to whom our Lord
hath given charge that they keep us in all our ways,[11] and who,
when Jesus permitted satan to tempt Him, were the adoring
witnesses of His combat, and approached Him, after His victory,
proffering to Him their service and homage. Let us well absorb
these sentiments wherewith the Church would have us to be
inspired; and, during our six weeks' campaign, let us often repeat
this admirable canticle, which so fully describes what the
soldiers of Christ should be and feel in this season of the great
spiritual warfare.
But the Church is not satisfied with thus animating us to the
contest with our enemies: she would also have our minds engrossed
with thoughts of deepest import; and for this end she puts before
us three great subjects, which she will gradually enfold to us
between this and the great Easter solemnity. Let us be all
attention to these soul-stirring and instructive lessons.
And firstly, there is the conspiracy of the Jews against our
Redeemer. It will be brought before us in its whole history, from
its first formation to its final consummation on the great Friday,
when we shall behold the Son of God hanging on the wood of the
cross. The infamous workings of the Synagogue will be brought
before us so regularly, that we shall be able to follow the plot
in all its details. We shall be inflamed with love for the august
Victim, whose meekness, wisdom, and dignity bespeak a God. The
divine drama, which began in the cave of Bethlehem, is to close on
Calvary, we may assist at it, by meditating on the passages of the
Gospel read to us by the Church during these days of Lent.
The second of the subjects offered to us, for our instruction,
requires that we should remember how the feast of Easter is to be
the day of new birth for our catechumens, and how, in the early
ages of the Church, Lent was the immediate and solemn preparation
given to the candidates for Baptism. The holy liturgy of the
present season retains much of the instruction she used to give to
the catechumens; and as we listen to her magnificent lessons from
both the old and the new Testament, whereby she completed their
<initiation>, we ought to think with gratitude of how we were not
required to wait years before being made children of God, but were
mercifully admitted to Baptism even in our infancy. We shall be
led to pray for those new catechumens, who this very year, in far
distant countries, are receiving instructions from their zealous
missioners, and are looking forward, as did the postulants of the
primitive Church, to that grand feast of our Saviour's victory
over death, when they are to be cleansed in the waters of Baptism
and receive from the contact a new being-regeneration.
Thirdly, we must remember how, formerly, the public penitents, who
had been separated on Ash Wednesday from the assembly of the
faithful, were the object of the Church's maternal solicitude
during the whole forty days of Lent, and were to be admitted to
reconciliation on Maundy Thursday, if their repentance were such
as to merit this public forgiveness. We shall have the admirable
course of instructions, which were originally designed for these
penitents, and which the liturgy, faithful as it ever is to such
traditions, still retains for our sake. As we read these sublime
passages of the Scripture, we shall naturally think upon our own
sins, and on what easy terms they were pardoned us; whereas, had
we lived in other times, we should have probably been put through
the ordeal of a public and severe penance. This will excite us to
fervour, for we shall remember that, whatever changes the
indulgence of the Church may lead her to make in her discipline,
the justice of our God is ever the same. We shall find in all this
an additional motive for offering to His divine Majesty the
sacrifice of a contrite heart and we shall go through our penances
with that cheerful eagerness, which the conviction of our
deserving much severer ones always brings with it.
In order to keep up the character of mournfulness and austerity
which is so well suited to Lent, the Church, for many centuries,
admitted very few feasts into this portion of her year, inasmuch
as there is always joy where there is even a spiritual feast. In
the fourth century, we have the Council of Laodicea forbidding, in
its fifty-first canon, the keeping of a feast or commemoration of
any saint during Lent, excepting on the Saturdays or Sundays.[12]
The Greek Church rigidly maintained this point of lenten
discipline; nor was it till many centuries after the Council of
Laodicea that she made an exception for March 25, on which day she
now keeps the feast of our Lady's Annunciation.
The Church of Rome maintained this same discipline, at least in
principle; but she admitted the feast of the Annunciation at a
very early period, and somewhat later, the feast of the apostle
St. Mathias, on February 24. During the last few centuries, she
has admitted several other feasts into that portion of her general
calendar which coincides with Lent; still, she observes a certain
restriction, out of respect for the ancient practice.
The reason why the Church of Rome is less severe on this point of
excluding the saints' feasts during Lent, is that the Christians
of the west have never looked upon the celebration of a feast as
incompatible with fasting; the Greeks, on the contrary, believe
that the two are irreconcilable, and as a consequence of this
principle, never observe Saturday as a fasting-day, because they
always keep it as a solemnity, though they make Holy Saturday an
exception, and fast upon it. For the same reason, they do not fast
upon the Annunciation.
This strange idea gave rise, in or about the seventh century, to a
custom which is peculiar to the Greek Church. It is called the
<Mass of the Presanctified>, that is to say, consecrated in a
previous Sacrifice. On each Sunday of Lent, the priest consecrates
six Hosts, one of which he receives in that Mass; but the
remaining five are reserved for a simple Communion, which is made
on each of the five following days, without the holy Sacrifice
being offered. The Latin Church practices this rite only once in
the year, that is, on Good Friday, and this in commemoration of a
sublime mystery, which we will explain in its proper place.
This custom of the Greek Church was evidently suggested by the
forty-ninth canon of the Council of Laodicea, which forbids the
offering of bread for the Sacrifice during Lent, excepting on the
Saturdays and Sundays.[13] The Greeks, some centuries later on,
concluded from this canon that the celebration of the holy
Sacrifice was incompatible with fasting; and we learn from the
controversy they had, in the ninth century, with the legate
Humbert,[14] that the <Mass of the Presanctified> (which has no
other authority to rest on save a canon of the famous Council in
<Trullo>,[15] held in 692) was justified by the Greeks on this
absurd plea, that the Communion of the Body and Blood of our Lord
broke the lenten fast.
The Greeks celebrate this rite in the evening, after Vespers, and
the priest alone communicates, as is done now in the Roman liturgy
on Good Friday. But for many centuries they have made an exception
for the Annunciation; they interrupt the lenten fast on this
feast, they celebrate Mass, and the faithful are allowed to
receive holy Communion.
The canon of the Council of Laodicea was probably never received
in the western Church. If the suspension of the holy Sacrifice
during Lent was ever practiced in Rome, it was only on the
Thursdays; and even that custom was abandoned in the eighth
century, as we learn from Anastasius the Librarian, who tells us
that Pope St. Gregory II., desiring to complete the Roman
sacramentary, added Masses for the Thursdays of the first five
weeks of Lent.[16] It is difficult to assign the reason of this
interruption of the Mass on Thursdays in the Roman Church, or of
the like custom observed by the Church of Milan on the Fridays of
Lent. The explanations we have found in different authors are not
satisfactory. As far as Milan is concerned, we are inclined to
think that, not satisfied with the mere adoption of the Roman
usage of not celebrating Mass on Good Friday, the Ambrosian Church
extended the rite to all the Fridays of Lent.
After thus briefly alluding to these details, we must close our
present chapter by a few words on the holy rites which are now
observed, during Lent, in our western Churches. We have explained
several of these in our 'Septuagesima.'[17] The suspension of the
<Alleluia>; the purple vestments; the laying aside of the deacon's
dalmatic, and the subdeacon's tunic; the omission of the two
joyful canticles <Gloria in excelsis> and <Te Deum>; the
substitution of the mournful <Tract> for the Alleluia-verse in the
Mass; the <Benedicamus Domino> instead of the <Ite Missa est>; the
additional prayer said over the people after the Postcommunions on
ferial days; the celebration of the Vesper Office before midday,
excepting on the Sundays: all these are familiar to our readers.
We have now only to mention, in addition, the genuflections
prescribed for the conclusion of all the Hours of the Divine
Office on ferias, and the rubric which bids the choir to kneel, on
those same days, during the Canon of the Mass.
There were other ceremonies peculiar to the season of Lent, which
were observed in the Churches of the west, but which have now, for
many centuries, fallen into general disuse; we say general,
because they are still partially kept up in some places. Of these
rites, the most imposing was that of putting up a large veil
between the choir and the altar, so that neither clergy nor people
could look upon the holy mysteries celebrated within the
sanctuary. This veil-which was called <the Curtain>, and,
generally speaking, was of a purple colour-was a symbol of the
penance to which the sinner ought to subject himself, in order to
merit the sight of that divine Majesty, before whose face he had
committed so many outrages. It signified, moreover, the
humiliations endured by our Redeemer, who was a stumbling-block to
the proud Synagogue. But as a veil that is suddenly drawn aside,
these humiliations were to give way, and be changed into the
glories of the Resurrection.[18] Among other places where this
rite is still observed, we may mention the metropolitan church of
Paris, <Notre Dame.>
It was the custom also, in many churches, to veil the crucifix and
the statues of the saints as soon as Lent began; in order to
excite the faithful to a livelier sense of penance, they were
deprived of the consolation which the sight of these holy images
always brings to the soul. But this custom, which is still
retained in some places, was less general than the more expressive
one used in the Roman Church, which we will explain in our next
volume-the veiling of the crucifix and statues only in
Passiontide.
We learn from the ceremonials of the middle ages that, during
Lent, and particularly on the Wednesdays and Fridays, processions
used frequently to be made from one church to another. In
monasteries, these processions were made in the cloister, and
barefooted.[19] This custom was suggested by the practice of Rome,
where there is a <Station> for every day of Lent which, for many
centuries, began by a procession to the stational church.
Lastly, the Church has always been in the habit of adding to her
prayers during the season of Lent. Her discipline was, until
recently, that, on ferias, in cathedral and collegiate churches
which were not exempted by a custom to the contrary, the following
additions were made to the canonical Hours: on Monday, the Office
of the Dead; on Wednesday, the Gradual Psalms; and on Friday, the
Penitential Psalms. In some churches, during the middle ages, the
whole Psalter was added each week of Lent to the usual Office.[20]
ENDNOTES
1<In Ezechiel>, cap. xxix
2 Gen. vii 12.
3 Num. xiv. 33.
4 Ezechiel iv. 6.
5 Exod. xxiv. 18.
6 3 Kings xix. 8.
7 Ps. <Qui habitat in adjutorio>, in the Office of Compline.
8 <Scuto circumdabit te veritas ejus.> Office of None.
9 <Et sub pennis ejus sperabis.> Sext.
10 <Ipse liberavit me de laqueo vernantium.> Tierce.
11 <Angelis suis mandavit de te, ut custodiant te in omnibus viis
tuis.> Lauds and Vespers.
12 Labbe, <Concil.> tom. i.
13 Labbe, <Concil>. tom. i
14 <Contra Nicetam> tom. iv
15 Can. 52. Labbe, <Concil.> tom. vi.
16 Anastas. <In Gregorio> II.
17 See their explanation in the volume for Septuagesima.
18 Honorius of Autun. <Gemma animae,> lib. iii. cap. lxvi.
19 Martene. <De antequis Eccles. ritibus,> tom. iii. cap. xviii.
20 <Ibid.>
(Taken from Volume V Lent of "The Liturgical Year" by Abbot
Gueranger O.S.B. published by Marian House, Powers Lake, ND
58773.)
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