Dear Friends and Benefactors
of the Society,
Lent is
already here, and with it the privileged season which the Liturgy
introduces as "the acceptable time, the day of salvation" (2
Corinthians, VI, 2).
The imposing ceremony of Ash Wednesday is not only a
yearly reminder of our death and of the futility of perishable
things, it is also a symbolic burial of the old man who is in each
one of us; the ugly and imperfect man made of concupiscence, of
mediocrity, of materialism; the frivolous and selfish man of sin who
must die so that we may be free again, free to serve God in the joy
of a pure and perfect heart.
How shall we "kill" the old man? And how will the new
man grow strong and healthy? Lent gives us the answer and shows us
the way: penance is the weapon, Our Lord's Passion the source of
strength.
Penance is the first motive which seems to have
influence Mother Church in the institution of the Lenten season. We
cannot forget that there is a law, an ineluctable command, calling
all the children of Adam to do penance. This law was decreed in the
garden of Eden at the moment of the first fall, and again proclaimed
in Calvary at the time of our regeneration. Heirs to the sin of
Adam, we are also heirs to the sentence which has condemned him to
suffer, and which sheds a comforting light on the mystery of sorrow
and pain: we must suffer because we have all sinned in our first
parents, and suffering leads to redemption.
This sin of the first couple brought upon the human
family, along with the sentence of punishment, the promise of the
Redeemer. The perfect expiation was consummated on Golgotha. As
children of the Cross, as fruits conceived in the agonies of
Calvary, we are also called to a liberating penance. Although the
sacrifice of Our Saviour has been complete in all that regards the
Person and the merits of the Victim, this sacrifice must continue in
His members, who with Him form but one and the same Mystical Body,
the Church. The Cross of Christ remains forever planted in the midst
of His Church, to recall to us the sweet obligation of attaching
ourselves to it and of dying on it with Him; and there shall be
something wanting to His passion, as St. Paul understood, if it is
not accomplished also in our own body; if the blood of Jesus does
not continue to flow in the veins of His martyrs and all those who
believe in Him, until the time when the whole Church will have
passed from the state of suffering and of combat to the possession
of glory. Christians, we are children of the King, but of a King
crowned by sorrow; we are born to the purple, but the purple of His
Precious Blood. Our live should not belie our origin! Penance, then,
accepted and carried as the holy livery of the household of Christ
the King.
The law of penance binds us also as individual sinners
in need of expiation. Who can count exactly all the sins of his
life? So many transgressions make us debtors to Divine Justice, and
insolvent debtors too, without any doubt, if God had not deigned to
accept our feeble satisfactions in consideration of the
superabundant merits of His Son.
At this remembrance, our conscience compels us to
chastise and reduce to order the instruments of our falls. But we
always procrastinate the time for penance, if we ever think about
it. Well, this is Lent; this is the acceptable time to do penance!
No more deferring, no more putting it off for tomorrow. Fast,
abstinence, prayer, alms, good works, recollection of spirit... from
the pulpits of Christendom the heralds of the Crucified Saviour, the
physicians of the souls, His priests remind us of these duties and
proclaim in unmistakable terms: "Unless you do penance you shall
perish!" (Luke, XIII, 3).
The talk of penance sounds negative and depressing to
modern ears, and rightly so, unless we understand that the principal
act in the exercise of this virtue is not the mere mortification of
the senses but the detestation of sin because it offends God our
Father. It is an empty penance and a monstrous one indeed the one
which is separated from compunction of the heart. And what is more
capable of exciting compunction in us than the meditation of the
sufferings of Christ?
Unquestionably, we can be achieve this compunction by
other considerations, drawn from the grandeur of God, or His
justice, or the heinousness of sin. But the true source of tears,
those tears of the heart which have the power to purify the soul, to
strengthen it, to transform it, to create in it the new man, this
true source is the Cross. In the Cross which illumines all the
divine perfections, but in a manner so well arranged that His
goodness dominates and absorbs all the other perfections, and all
the rays of this grand glory melt away and are effaced in the single
resplendent light of God's infinite love.
The Cross is by excellence the Christian's book. Every
one may read it. There, in characters visible to every eye and
accessible to every intelligence, we learn the most important of all
lessons. This is why the Church unfolds its blood-stained pages
during Lent and the exercises proper to the season, like the Way of
the Cross. The liturgy of Lent not only recalls the grand mystery of
our redemption, but it renders it in a way present and sensible by
the vivacity and truth of its pictures, as an action which passes
under our very eyes. The Church sprinkles her children with ashes,
exchanges her vestments of joy by assuming the sombre hue of violet;
she sings, but her chants are broken with sighs and repentance; she
seems to fear the solitude of her penitent children, and therefore
she invites them frequently to assemble in the church for prayers,
devotions, days of recollection, and parish missions. Like a family
bowed by sorrow, whose members are united to weep for the loss of an
only and well beloved Son. As the end of Lent approaches, the
representation becomes more striking, and the impression of the
death of the Man-God is more vividly felt. The very silence of His
tomb reigns in the temple during the last days of the Holy Week. The
stripped altars, the covered statues, and the empty Tabernacle leave
nothing to behold except the unveiled Cross, the only sacred object
which the Church adores and only salutes in those days as our last,
one, and only hope.
With Mary, Mother of Sorrows, we will be lead in spirit
of faith to assist at each of those terrible and magnificent scenes
of the drama of our redemption. With her Immaculate and Sorrowful
Heart we will gather the drops of bloody sweat falling from Jesus in
the Garden of Olives; we will accompany with Holy Mary, St. John,
and the daughters of Jerusalem, the new Isaac up to the sacrifice of
Calvary, and we will not descend from the holy mountain until we
have struck our breast with the centurion. Or, rather, we will not
quit the holy mountain, but remain there, crucified with Jesus and
close to Mary's maternal presence; nailing to the cross not our feet
and hands but our sins, our defects and imperfections, for which the
Saviour dies. He would have died in vain –terrible words!– if we
also do not die to them, killing the old man to arise with the
triumphant Christ to a new life.
A holy Lent to you, my friends, hopefully the best
ever, with the blessing of your priests of the Society of St. Pius
X, who pray and love you much from their cold and quiet Dun
Laoghaire.
Father Ramón
Anglés
