The Christian Wheel of the Year: Lent

[readoldthings]

Welcome to Lent

Today is Shrove Tuesday, which means that Lent begins tomorrow. Lent is the great Penitential season of the Church, in which we prepare ourselves for the great feast of Easter.

Lent is, above all, the greatest of the Christian fasts.

The Purpose of Lent

In the old tradition, every feast is preceded by a fast, every fast followed by a feast. This is the rhythm of life; as Spring follows Winter and Summer gives way to Autumn, so does the liturgical cycle precede from fast to feast, from feast to fast. The Lenten season is especially the season of penance, and before we go any further, we ought to talk about what that means.

The Lenten season lasts 40 days, as Jesus fasted 40 days in the desert following his baptism. Discussing this, Dom Prosper Gueranger tells us:

Thus does our Saviour go before us on the holy path of Lent. He has borne all its fatigues and hardships, that so we, when called upon to tread the narrow way of our Lenten Penance, might have His example wherewith to silence the excuses, and sophisms, and repugnances, of self-love and pride. The lesson is here too plainly given not to be understood; the law of doing penance for sin is here too clearly shown, and we cannot plead ignorance;- let us honestly accept the teaching and practise it. Jesus leaves the Desert where he had spent the Forty Days, and begins his preaching with these words, which he addresses to all men: Do penance, for the Kingdom of heaven is at hand [St. Matth. iv. 17]. Let us not harden our hearts to this invitation, lest there be fulfilled in us the terrible threat contained in those other words of our Redeemer: Unless ye shall do penance, ye shall perish [St. Luke, xiii. 3].
 

Now, in the verse in Luke's Gospel referenced, "do penance" is metanoēte. This refers back again to metanoia, "the changing of the nous." Let's recall our psychic anatomy: The nous is the highest part of the soul, the part that extends upward into the realm above the soul. Some of the ancient writers refer to nous as "the eye of the soul," because it sees the spiritual reality directly. In our current condition, our nous is clouded, and our attention is fixed on the things of the material world, which is a mere shadow of the True Reality of Spirit. Lent is a season for metanoia, changing the condition of our nous and re-directing our attention away from the things of this world, toward the spiritual world. Another word for this re-direction is conversion.

But why does penance have to be difficult?

Lent and the Law of Rhythm

Here is a little bit of Occult Philosophy, from an early 20th century text called :

 

The pendulum of the clock swings a certain distance to the right, and then an equal distance to the left. The seasons balance each other in the same way. The tides follow the same Law. And the same Law is manifested in all the phenomena of Rhythm. The pendulum, with a short swing in one direction, has but a short swing in the other; while the long swing to the right invariably means the long swing to the left. An object hurled upward to a certain height has an equal distance to traverse on its return. The force with which a projectile is sent upward a mile is reproduced when the projectile returns to the earth on its return journey. This Law is constant on the Physical Plane, as reference to the standard authorities will show you.

But the Hermetists carry it still further. They teach that a man's mental states are subject to the same Law.

Easter is the greatest feast of the Christian church. To say that is not to say that it's a great party-- it's far more than a good time. During the Easter Triduum we enter into and participate in the crucifixion, death, and resurrection of Our Lord. To truly enter into the mystery of Easter is to exalt our spirits far beyond any pleasure of the flesh or any wonder of the astral or psychic worlds.

The Kybalion continues:
 

[The ancient masters] teach that before one is able to enjoy a certain degree of pleasure, he must have swung as far, proportionately, toward the other pole of feeling. They hold, however, that the Negative is precedent to the Positive in this matter, that is to say that in experiencing a certain degree of pleasure it does not follow that he will have to "pay up for it" with a corresponding degree of pain; on the contrary, the pleasure is the Rhythmic swing, according to the Law of Compensation, for a degree of pain previously experienced either in the present life, or in a previous incarnation.

In other words, the difficulties and austerities of Lent become a kind of slingshot, intended to launch us upward as far as we can go at Easter. It follows that the more we enter into the penitential side of Lent, the more effectively we will be "launched upward" at Eastertime.

Again, remember that it isn't just any pain we seek, or any pleasure; this isn't sadomasochism. Moreover, we must be very careful not to limit our works of penance during Lent to the material body, because if we do, this will lead directly to sin. How? Because the slingshot will propel us from pain to pleasure, and if all we've done is to give up a destructive pleasure, we will find ourselves mired in it all the worse come Easter! In order to have lasting results, the focus of our penance must be spiritual, and not material, or not merely material.

Lent and the Training of the Will

We also train and fortify our will. Now, the will gets a bad rap among many modern Christians. Rightly noting our Lord's words, "Thy Will, not mine be done," they therefore conclude that we ought not to have a will of our own, and . But this is based on a misunderstanding of our will and its nature.

Discussing the nature of God, Plotinus writes that His will and his essential being are the same.

The Good, then, exists; It holds Its existence through choice and will, conditions of Its very being; yet It cannot be a manifold; therefore the will and the essential being must be taken as one identity; the act of will must be self-determined and the being self-caused; thus reason shows the Supreme to be its own Author.

Our very existence is provided for us by God, "in whom we live and move and have our being." To exist at all is to exist on account of God. Just as God's being is not a separate thing from his Will, our own true will is also identical with the core of our being. Now, from this it is apparent that our will is not the same thing as our passions or our desires, as many think. In fact, it's very often exactly the opposite! Just as our being is derived from God's being, our true will is derived from God's will and is God's will. So there isn't a contradiction between our will and God's will-- When we say to God, "thy will, not mine be done," we mean "May I be as you intend me to be, which is what I truly am."

The Lenten Fast

The traditional Lenten fast-- which was kept by the church, remember, until the 1960s-- was very severe. One was to eat one vegetarian meal per day, along with two small snacks; a cup of coffee and some plain toast in the morning were permitted as well. Now, this obviously wouldn't work for many-- coal miners, construction workers, and other people who did hard physical labor were excepted from the fast, as were the very young or old and the sick. Today, in churches that still keep the traditional forms of the fast, it's still the case that no one is allowed to undertake the fast without spiritual direction. Unguided, it's too easy to either push yourself too far, so that you fail; or to turn it into an occasion for pointless self-harm; or to approach the fast in a spirit of pride, which is entirely contrary to the intention.

Father Jean Croiset discussed this issue in his Devotion to the Sacred Heart:

It is true that sanctity does not consist in exterior penances, and that they are not incompatible with hypocrisy. But it is not so with interior mortification. Not everyone can fast and wear a hair shirt, but there is no one who cannot be silent when passion prompts him to reply, or vanity to speak. The desire to learn news or to know what is going on or what is being said can be the subject of continual mortification, which is as meritorious as it is ordinary. If they are interrupted 100 times in a serious employment, they will reply 100 times with as much sweetness and civility as if they had not been busy. Interior mortification is always a certain mark of true piety, and it is more necessary than exterior mortification. The ill humor of a person with whom we have to live, the imperfections of a friend, the ingratitude of others can give great opportunity for patience. The inconveniences we suffer may be small, but he mortifications on these occasions is not small. Great graces and even sublime sanctity usually depend on the generosity with which we mortify ourselves constantly on these little occasions.

We can all participate in the traditional fast to at least a limited extent, by abstaining from meat, rich foods, and alcohol, at least during Fridays, and better yet, during Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, throughout Lent. Some will attempt the full fast. Others will fall somewhere in the middle.

I wrote during Advent that I believe that the most important form of fasting that we can engage in during this time is fasting from technology. Online news, social media, video games, and screens in general are the great addictions of our time; moreover, they, far more than meat or even alcohol, turn our attention away even from God's physical world, toward a creation of the human mind at its worst. The material world is the Shadow World; the internet is the Shadow of Shadows. Refer back to the post introducing Advent, and consider what sort of fasting is right for you.

Rhythms

Today is Shrove Tuesday, but you probably know it by its more common name, Mardi Gras. Today is the last day of a season called Gesimatide. You'll notice that I skipped that part this year, as indeed I did, for the sake of simplicity; my feeling is that we need to start by re-learning the Big Stuff, and then we'll paint in the details. Gesimatide is traditionally the Carnval season in Catholic countries-- a joyful season, following in the wake of the previous joyful season of Christmas. (For the purpose of this blog, we're more or less skipping straight from Christmas to Lent, but the rhythm is the same: Joy is followed by Sorrow. And what will follow Sorrow?

The Glory of Easter.

This pattern, an initial Joy at the awareness of the divine; followed by a plunge into Sorrow as we purge ourselves of our sins; followed by the Glory of divine union is found over and over again in the Christian tradition.

Practice During Lent

Fasting is not the only part of practice. An Orthodox friend of mine on social media shared a meme to the effect of "If your fast isn't accompanied by prayer and almsgiving, it's just a diet."

During Lent, commit to prayer daily, and to regular charitable works. Morning and evening prayer is best, if you can manage it; for many of us, morning practice is as much as we can manage, given our schedules. Dom Prosper Gueranger provides a useful guide to Lenten prayer practice here, and we'll discuss what a good prayer rule during Lent should look like as we continue.

For now, consider the following as a guide to daily prayer:

1. The Sign of the Cross, as described in an earlier post.

2. An Act of Contrition, suitable to your particular spiritual path.

3. Spiritual reading and meditation. This is a great time to take up one of the great classics of Western spirituality. Don't pick something that you will read in one sitting-- pick a book you can read slowly, a little bit at a time, every day. Many of the old classics, such as The Imitation of Christ or True Devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary are written in short, numbered sections with exactly this sort of practice in mind.

4. Any additional devotional practices-- a rosary, a litany, or whathaveyou.

This is also the time for giving. Lent is a time to give freely of ourselves, as God gives of himself freely. I w

These three practices, fasting to restrain the appetites, prayer to open the mind to God, and giving to turn the heart to charity, work together to accomplish the Great Work of the conversion of the soul.




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Comments

[methylethyl]

We'll be taking a break from internet for all but email/messaging purposes for the duration. Solidarity!

We don't start 'til this Sunday though. Always enjoy your posts even when I don't comment. I hope you have a blessed Lent.

[readoldthings]

Thank you! Your comments are always appreciated here. I'll see you after Pascha!

[onesage]

Second to last paragraph ends with I w…

Were you going to say I will… and then thought better of it? ;)

[readoldthings]

I have no idea what I was going to say. Let's just assume it was some profound wisdom, and lament its loss.

[open_space]

I note as I researched the elements mentioned in the bible that the same quote in its full form includes references to the five elements:

“But there went up a mist from the earth, and watered the whole face of the ground. And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.”

Water in: "watered", Earth in: man from dust, Air: in God breathing into his nostrils, fire in: becoming a living soul, the fire of live and Spirit: in the being of God.

I think this is a good reminder in the purification aspects of Lent.

[readoldthings]

That's a great catch! All of these stories admit of layers upon layers of meaning.