By FR. JAMES ALTMAN
Dear family, as you know, the Tuesday before Ash Wednesday has come to be known as Fat Tuesday, a day when not-very-faithful people overindulge because — somehow that is supposed to do what? That is supposed to somehow help them prepare for Lent? Somehow the wretched excesses of Mardi gras are somehow supposed to prepare us for Lent? Somehow four days or more of drunkenness and debauchery are supposed to prepare us for Lent? What shall we do in the face of such a contradiction to our Catholic goal of striving to live a holy life all 365 days of the year, and especially during the Lenten season?
We should restore to our traditions what Holy Mother Church handed down to us in earlier times. One such tradition was Septuagesima Season, a season of preparation for entering into the penitential Lenten season. Dom Gueranger, a preeminent liturgist, explains it perfectly in one of the 15 volumes he wrote on the Church’s Liturgical Year. They are a “must read” for anyone who seeks superior knowledge and authority to guide us in all things Sacred Liturgy.
Sadly, it seems that few shepherds of the Church are even aware of them. It’s not their fault, really — one does not know what one does not know. There is fault in the fact that for decades there was poor liturgical formation in seminaries. The shepherds who knew what that was did not teach about it. Indeed, if a seminarian even hinted at a desire to immerse himself in millennia of Sacred Tradition, he likely was ostracized at best, kicked out at worst. I myself would not be aware of these treasure troves of our Sacred Liturgical Traditions but for them being brought to my attention by a parishioner longing to live in this rich inheritance.
Now, as we have crossed the threshold of Lent through the reception of the cross of ashes on our forehead — yet another thing so many tried to cancel this year — allow me to return to you a little bit of what Dom Gueranger compiled on what the Church taught about preparing for Lent, quote:
“The Season of Septuagesima comprises the three weeks immediately preceding Lent. It forms one of the principal divisions of the liturgical year, and is itself divided into three parts, each part corresponding to a week: the first is called Septuagesima; the second, Sexagesima; the third, Quinquagesima. All three are named from their numerical reference to Lent, which, in the language of the Church, is called Quadragesima, that is, Forty, because the great feast of Easter is prepared for by the holy exercises of forty days.
“The words Quinquagesima, Sexagesima, and Septuagesima, tell us of the same great solemnity as looming in the distance, and as being the great object towards which the Church would have us now begin to turn all our thoughts, and desires, and devotion.
Now, the feast of Easter must be prepared for by forty days of recollected-ness and penance.
“Those forty days are one of the principal seasons of the liturgical year, and one of the most powerful means employed by the Church for exciting in the hearts of her children the spirit of their Christian vocation. It is of the utmost importance that such a season of grace should produce its work in our souls — the renovation of the whole spiritual life.
“The Church, therefore, has instituted a preparation for the holy time of Lent. She gives us the three weeks of Septuagesima, during which she withdraws us, as much as may be, from the noisy distraction of the world, in order that our hearts may be more readily impressed by the solemn warning she is to give us at the commencement of Lent by marking our foreheads with ashes.”
Dear family, for centuries and centuries and centuries, we had the Septuagesima Season to help us prepare to receive our ashes on Ash Wednesday. Never in the mind of God nor His Church were drunkenness and debauchery part of the preparation.
Thus we now have entered Lent without the preparation the Catholic Church once taught us by and through the liturgical season of Septuagesima. Instead, the “many” indulge in Fat Tuesday and then think they can just flip a switch and somehow instantly prepare in all seriousness for the great task to which God has called us: martyrdom, red or white.
Where did Jesus take His holy cross, dear family? Calvary. If we actually follow Him, where are we going to end up? That’s right. Calvary. In other words, the purpose of this penitential season of Lent really is to prepare ourselves in all seriousness for the great task to which God has called us: martyrdom, red or white.
Don’t Be A Lemming
A question that keeps coming from the faithful, as they see it all developing around us, is: “What are we supposed to do?” I can tell you what we should not do: Lament, despair, give up hope. Why do we worry, dear family? Why are we so concerned over this latest fear-demic? Why are we not recognizing in it a beautiful sign of God’s Justice on the Godless, be they in positions of secular power or be they in positions of clerical power, or be they mere Godless lemmings who follow such Godless leaders?
Corrie ten Boom was not a lemming. Remember she was the holy Dutch woman whose family was arrested for hiding Jews from the Nazis. Members of her family died in Nazi concentration camps. Through her faith and the grace of God, she survived and wrote that profound book entitled The Hiding Place (it also became a movie in 1975).
Remember how in the midst of the squalor, devastation, and death, the Nazi socialist leader tried to crush her spirit by saying to her that she did not even know where her father was, and that he’s dead! This holy, faithful Christian replied: “I know where my father is!”
Let us, as we begin this lent — a year into the fear-demic which not only has no end in sight but, rather, offers an ever-increasing oppression on the near horizon — let us begin this Lent not by wallowing in desolation and despair but by being faithful, by living up to the great task to which God has called us. We can help ourselves to do that by recalling the faith of those few faithful people who stood up in far worse times and said “I know where my Father is.”
Let us be strengthened and encouraged by the words of Corrie ten Boom who said, quote: “If you look at the world, you’ll be distressed. If you look within, you’ll be depressed. If you look at God, you’ll be at rest.” Corrie ten Boom knew exactly what God could do, she knew exactly what God would do, when she said: “The wonderful thing about praying is that you leave a world of not being able to do something, and enter God’s realm where everything is possible. He specializes in the impossible. Nothing is too great for His almighty power. Nothing is too small for His love.”
Dear family, Corrie ten Boom is a perfect example of what our little sign says to us every day: “Let your Faith be greater than your fear.” So let us follow her example, immerse ourselves fully into this Lenten season, and really prepare for the great task before us, martyrdom, red or white.
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