Episode Transcript
Speaker 0 00:00 Well, today is step two Jews them as Sunday. And so this morning we'll spend some time considering what the fathers and doctors teach about <inaudible> and lent. First off, uh, what's the meaning of this season of <inaudible> Saint Augustan. There are two times the one which runs on and mid the temptations and anxieties of this life, the other which will be spent in rest and everlasting joy. These two times we celebrate here on earth, the one before the other after Easter, the time before Easter signifies the sorrows of this present life. The time after Easter, the heavenly blessed. It's which we shall enjoy. Therefore, we spend the first two these times and fasting and prayer and the other and songs of joy. And there is no fasting while it lasts. So before Easter, this whole period of step two, choose Ama stands for our time of trial in this life.
Speaker 0 01:00 And then of course, the fee from Easter through the octave of Pentecost stands for heavenly blessing. And you know, all eternity, please, God will be all be in heaven. Well, what's the meaning of the name set to a g asthma? Where does that come from? What's that all about? Okay. A dom and selves shot a benedict and wrote many years ago. According to Holy Mother Church, two places have referenced two these two seasons before and after Easter. The two places are Babylon and Jerusalem. Babylon is the type of the world fallen into sin with a Christian must spend his time of trial Jerusalem, the type of the heavenly father land and whose bosomy rests from all conflicts. The people of Israel who's history is a picture of that of the whole world. We're exile from Jerusalem and held in captivity in Babylon. This captivity lasted 70 years to set forth this mystery.
Speaker 0 01:58 The Church has chosen the number 70 for the days of expiation. Step two a jazzma means the 70th day. Now it's not literally, this is 63 days from, from Easter at 63 days from now, but that's what they picked because it stands for the 70 years in exile. We're an exile here. The whole idea of being in in the violet is true. Remind, we're an exile. It's a time of a penance and suffering and all that. We're not where we were meant to be had Adam not sinned. So here we are for these liturgical 70 days like groaning, so to speak, in, in slavery to sin and the current human condition and urinate to get to heaven, which is what the Easter season signifies. So that's what the violet, why we violet during, during this season, why we're right violet self signifying planets and the mortification, the kind of things we have to do in this life and then white during the Easter season signifying course.
Speaker 0 02:52 Heavenly joy there. Okay. The third question and what we do in a fourth question, why don't we sing the Ali Lou yet? Although he is gone till the till Easter vigil, you know, and then there's a whole Gob of them on the Easter virtual. It's pretty cool. All right, well here's Abbott Rupert writing about this. A letter just from the Middle Ages. Oddly Luhya is like a stranger amidst our other words. It's mysterious. Beauty is as though a drop of heavens overflowing. Joy had fallen down on earth. The patriarchs and prophets relished it, and then the holy ghost put it on the lips of the apostles from whom it flowed even to us. It signifies the eternal feast if the angels and saints, which consists in their endless praise of God and in Cecily singing there ever new admiration of the beauty of the God and whose face they are to gays for everlasting ages.
Speaker 0 03:43 This mortal life of ours can in no way attain such bliss as this, but to know where it is to be found and to have a fourth taste of it by the happiness of hope and to hunger and thirst for what we does taste. This is the perfection of the saints here below. For this reason, that word Hallelujah has not been translated, has been left in its original Hebrew. It means praise. Praise God. It's been lifted. Its original Hebrew is a stranger to tell us what there's a joy in his native land which could not dwell on ours. He has come among us to signify rather than to express that joy. So that's the meaning of <inaudible>. So we're sharing in with with the angels and saints. When we say that, well, why don't we sing it right now? Will they understand that? We'll turn to the book of Psalms in Psalms one 36 is a Sama.
Speaker 0 04:28 Read the first six lines of it. This is a song that's written by you. It's a psalm a day, but it's written about the people in exile in Babylon. So there they are in Babylon and they're longing to be back in the promised land. They're in XL, they've been taken down and chains. And so here's the inspired word of God upon the rivers of Babylon. There we sat and wept when we remembered seeing them on the willows in the midst thereof. We hung up our instruments for their they, they that let us into captivity asked of us the words of songs and they carried us away, said, sing you to us a hymn of the songs of cm. How should we sing the song of the Lord in a strange land? If I forget the Old Jerusalem, let my right hand be forgotten that my tongue cleave to my jaws.
Speaker 0 05:13 If I do not remember the, if I may knock Jerusalem, the beginning of my joy. So in the song again, it's this type, then Babylon, they can't sing these beautiful songs. The promise then because they're there and they're moaning and groaning, you know, cause here we are. How can we sing about the beauty of our homeland when we're stuck here in Babylon? That's the very idea and the liturgy. How can we send this all Illumio when we're here in Babylon so to speak. And so that's what the church is bringing forward to us. Here's forward to us. Here's the great incorruptible benedict and dom, Karen Shay, the of slim congregation on this very thing quote, during the season of step two agism or we have to gain a clear knowledge of the miseries of our banishment. It was therefore necessary that we should be put on our guard against the luminance of our place of exile is with this view that the church taking pity on our blindness and our dangers gives us this solemn warning by taking from us our Alitalia.
Speaker 0 06:09 She virtually tells us that our lips must first be cleansed before they again be permitted to utter this word of angels and saints and that our hearts be filed as they are by sin and attachment to earthly things must be purified by repentance. Let us then comply with the law the Church thus imposes upon us. If spiritual joy is thus taken away from us, what are we to think of? The frivolous amusements of this world and the vanities and follies are insults to the spirit of <inaudible> would not send me an intolerable outrage on that same spirit. We've been too long slaves of sin, our savior as soon to appear bearing his cross and his sacrifice is to restore fallen man to all his rights. Surely we can never allow that precious blood to fall uselessly on our souls as the morning dew that rains and the parch sands of a desert.
Speaker 0 07:03 Let us with humble hearts confessed that we are sinners and like the Publican of the Gospel who dared not so much as to raise up his eyes. Let us acknowledge that it's only right that we should be forbidden at least for a few weeks. Those divine songs of joy with which are guilty lips who become too familiar and that we should interrupt these sentiments of presumptuous confidence, which prevented our heart from having the holy fear of God. So I'll do is put away to remind us of where we are and to remind us not to fond so much, so much in love with things of the world, but to start detaching ourselves, the violet, the fact that it's more sober right now. And then of course as we go on to let it gets even more strict and sober. All these things are to remind us of these realities.
Speaker 0 07:48 Okay. What about lim? Why is lent 40 days long? Before I get into that, in the very early days during Saint Gregory, the great, because the weeks it's been moved up to two exactly 40 days, but it used to be 36 it was 48 when you have a six weeks long, it's 42 days, but all the Sundays come out of it. So 42 minus six is 36 days in a Saint Gregory. The great point of it was the ties of the year. We were paying a tie by our penances on the whole year because we're here to sanctify times two and so by doing our pendants for that, it was the ties on the whole year that we're offering to God. Anyway, St Jerome, it's now literally 40 days with Ash Wednesday cause it's Sundays fall out. Of course, St Jerome tells us that the number 40 symbolizes punishment and affliction as a punishment for the sins and crimes.
Speaker 0 08:38 Man. Of course, during the great flood, the rain fell for 40 days and 40 nights. Moses spent 40 days in fasting and prayer in order to prepare himself to approach God and receive the 10 commandments as dependents for their sins. The people of Israel wandered for 40 years in the desert before they could cross over into the promised land. We all know that our lord spent 40 years fasting in the desert before he set out on his public ministry. So, according to Saint Leo, the great and Saint Jerome lent goes all the way back to apathetic times. We receive this from the apostles. So why is it 40 days long? The 40 days of pennant shore willingness to suffer in this life, in reparation for our sins and to hold back the just anger of God whom we have offended so much, even though he loved us so deeply and done so much for us.
Speaker 0 09:31 So why the fasting? What's the purpose of fasting? The idea of fasting, reparation for soon stretches all the way back to Adam. Why is that? According to the great fathers and doctors of the church, Saint Bays and the Great St John Chris' system, St Jerome at Saint Gregory, the great, the commandment that God gave to Adam and Eve was that they were supposed to abstain from one particular kind of food. They weren't supposed to eat the fruit from one tree, but in their pride they reached out and took of that fruit and ate it. So it's easy for us to see the symmetry there, Huh? Between the first sin, which was not abstaining from food and make you reparation for sin by fasting, which is abstaining from food. There's another important aspect to fasting when we commit a sin are so wills the evil, but generally speaking, our body cooperates because of this.
Speaker 0 10:25 Pennants has two essential things. We have to have contrition in our soul and mortification in our flesh, fasting, which is eating less food than normal in reparation for sin and at peace. The anger of God has been a key bodily mortification right since the fall of Adam. Okay, so what is the relationship between meat and fasting? What is the significance there? There's two important aspects to fasting. The first is to deprive ourselves of some portion of food, and the second is abstinence, which now has a signification of depriving us ourselves to some degree from the, the practice of abstinence goes all the way back to the days just after the flood. There were two things that happen. Noah first made wine and meat became a regular man, part of man's diet. According to St Jerome, men had picked and eaten grapes before the great flood, but no was the first man to have made wine.
Speaker 0 11:24 St John Chris <inaudible> notes that no first made wine for the express purpose of strengthening and cheering the labors that weakness of men and Saint Durham points out that Noah didn't realize how powerful wine actually was, which is why he wasn't guilty of a sin when he got drunk on the first batch of wine made in the history of the world. Dom Garren Jay points out that since men's lives were weakened and shortened after the flood, this is what God permitted men to eat me to give them additional strength, and he inspired Noah to make wine, to give them additional nourishment. And since the time of the flood, Fascia's meant giving up meat to some degree as Tom Garren shape points out, quote, this food was given to man by God out of condescension to his weakness and not as one absolutely essential for the maintenance of life. It's privation is essential to the very notion of fast and close quote, well, what does wine have to do with it?
Speaker 0 12:17 Isn't abstinence only with me, in the olden days, fasting and abstinence included abstinence from wine, but now even in the more traditional Lee minded eastern rights like the Ukrainian Catholics and so forth, they've dropped the practice of, of abstaining from wine. Most people realize for many centuries, eggs and milk products were all substained from since their animal food. Even this day, they're forbidden in eastern churches like the Ukrainian Catholics. The reason that's where we get the idea of given Easter, Yay each other Easter eggs at Easter because our ancestors couldn't eat eggs until Easter, so it was a neat present. He hadn't, he hadn't had an egg during all that time, so given each other Easter eggs. Okay, now wait a minute. Do you see the couldn't eat eggs until Easter? I thought that besides Ash Wednesday, abstinence only pertained to Fridays in recent times. That's true. It has only pertained to Fridays, but that's because we leave and weak piping times.
Speaker 0 13:13 In the olden days. That wasn't true for roughly the first thousand years. The Latin church during lat only one meal a day was allowed except on Sundays at this one meal that was allowed. Now this is for the first thousand years if our ancestors, here's what they couldn't have, they couldn't have meat, eggs, butter, cheese, milk or wine. Those foods were also banned on Sundays. In other words, no, no meat, no eggs, no butter, no lardo cheese, none at all. Were eating during land Sunday or not? None. If that wasn't tough enough, as if it wasn't during holy week, they upped the ante. All they then was bread, salt, herbs in water, and finally, just to make sure they were really serious about it. They weren't eating until after sundown to sunup to sundown. They had abstinence. They didn't eat that one meal till after sun down and that was flat straight through right till Easter.
Speaker 0 14:08 Okay. In the 10th century. Then they began to relax a little bit. The mealtime prep down till three o'clock then by the 14th century, the meal time crept down to mid day after the 14th century. The practice of taking a small bit of food in the evening called the coalition began to gain ground about 200 years ago. The custom of taking a crust of bread and some coffee in the morning was introduced gradually over time the Holy See, relaxed, the regulations, so you could eat meat during that, but only once a day at the meal. First they loud meet on Sundays. Then gradually a lot on two week days, then three, then four, then all five in the u s in the early 19 hundreds now this is the only a hundred years ago during the lat, the first and last Saturday or the second last Saturday's Atlanta and every Wednesday and Friday were days of abstinence. All the weekdays were days of fast, all of them and he couldn't have meat on the first and earn a second last Saturdays and all the Wednesdays and Fridays.
Speaker 0 15:08 Now there were lots of other days of fast and absence during the year. We're only talking in lent, and that was, you know, this is with, there's still people alive that when they were little, this was going on finally before 1967 when the current rules came into effect, during that absence had been reduced to Ash Wednesday and all the Fridays and fasting was required on all the weekdays except for of course, the feast, Annunciation, and upcoming weeks. I'll put in the bullet and what the regulations were like in 62 here's the bottom line right now in our feminized sissified times, we now have two obligatory days of fasting and all the Latin right Ash Wednesday in Good Friday, and we now have eight days of obligatory abstinence and the Latin right of the Catholic church, Ash Wednesday, Good Friday and all the Fridays on land. We're only required to keep two days of fasting and eight days of abstinence.
Speaker 0 15:59 Folks, we live in sissified family and eyes times what's okay, let's go on making reparation for sin. Is that the whole point of fascinating abstinence? No. One of the most important fruits of a good land is to grow in a virtue called temperance. We want to grow in the virtue of temperance. Quick Review of what temperance does and what for us. Remember since the fall of Adam as if I have to remind anybody our passions aren't rebellion against us. Huh? Hopefully we all remember this $4 word that describes that problem, the rebellion of our passions and our sense appetites. It's concupiscence. Okay. That's the word. Concupiscence is one of the great gifts we've got from Adam. It's his battle we have all the time to keep our appetites and our passions lined up. Concupiscence means the rebellion of our sense appetites like our passions and our emotions against right reason.
Speaker 0 16:51 Okay. If our sense appetites like hunger, thirst or passions like anger, our rebellion against right reason, that means that instead of being led by reason, we can easily be led by our passions and appetites and every single one of us here knows where the lead us. If we let them. That's one of the reasons we have confession, Huh? The whole problem with concupiscence is it inclines his strongly towards sin. That's the condition we're in. In our fallen condition, we're, we're inclined strongly towards sin because it can Coupa since thanks a lot Adam. Okay, so we've got two choices. Either our passion serve us or we serve our passions. There's no middle ground that our passion serve us or we serve our passions. That's the difference. Finally, between being saved and being damned, here's where temperance comes into all this. We control our passions with the virtue of temperance.
Speaker 0 17:43 Temperance is a virtue which governs our rebellious sense appetites. What does it do? It controls our desire for sensual pleasures. It's the virtue that does battle with can Coupa. Since that's what temperance does, since it governs our rebellious sense appetites, that means that temperance governs our desires for food and drink our desires for procreation. No desires for revenge. Temperance governance, our desires for food and drink for procreation and for rearrange. In other words, temperance is the master virtue that fights three deadly sins, the deadly sin of Gluttony, the deadly sin of lust, the deadly sin of anger. Temperance is the virtue there. So how do we grow in temperance? We can grow on temperance by mortifying our appetite for food and drink right away. We can see one of the great things that lent does for us besides make your preparation for sin, we're growing and absolutely key create key virtue for salvation.
Speaker 0 18:46 That's what fasting, not only we making reparation for our sins, we're being strengthened. We're being made combat ready to deal with the actual temptations in the world. So that's the context. Now we can see the absolute importance of fasten abstinence in our own spiritual life and in tradition of the church. Okay? Now, here's the current legislation. The church we've talked about what used to be, here's the current legislation, the church which binds into the pain of mortal sin. All those who are 14 on up all the way, all those who were 14 on up have to abstain from meat on Ash Wednesday. So when you get older, you don't get up from that one that you have to abstain from meat on Ash Wednesday, Good Friday and all six to the Fridays, the land, all those from 18 to 60 half to fast on ash Wednesday and Good Friday.
Speaker 0 19:34 I'll repeat that. All those who are 14 on up, no upper limit have to abstain from meat on Ash Wednesday, Good Friday and all the Fridays and land all those from 18 to 60 half to fast on ash Wednesday and Good Friday. This binds under the pain of mortal sin. Let's close, okay? We have to keep these current rules. There's no doubt about that, but let's be serious. In order to get into heaven, you have to do pennants. Our Lord says, unless you do pendants, surely you shall perish. Okay, we have to do penance. We don't have to kill ourselves. We don't have to go on Auschwitz plan or something like that, but we have to do pennants. Period. God said, unless you do pennants, surely you will perish. It's not optional and suddenly the bar hasn't been lowered into get into heaven. The bar has not been lowered at all in terms of getting you to heaven.
Speaker 0 20:30 The bar has been lowered in terms of requirements that the church places on us, but the bar to get to heaven hasn't been lowered because the church doesn't have jurisdiction over that. Keep this in mind. Okay, what's the point? You have to keep new regulations, but barring an actual infused grace from God, this is not sufficient to get and sustain the temperance that we need to deal with the world that we're living in. We live in soft, cushy, sensual times. We're surrounded by all kinds of temptations of the flesh, whether food or drink, you know, even let me throw one out there that many people don't realize. Movies where these revenge movies, whether you have this really bad, you know, nasty, nasty, bad guy, and then they turn around later on. It's good even with them, if you're giving yourself totally over to that as their blowing this guy or up, whatever, that's assumed.
Speaker 0 21:24 Huh? That's a sin against temperance because you're allowing yourself to want to have vengeance. Oh, it's in your mind. I know we can send in our thoughts. So we have to have control of our tamper. We have to have control of our desires to procreate and we have to have control of our desires to eat and drink, huh? All of these things we need from 10 prints. We can't get it with without more serious application. The church has lowered the bar in terms of what she requires of us, but heaven hasn't. Okay. That's reality. You're not going to get away with it. Dom Garrett j wrote almost 140 years ago. This is 140 years ago, quote, how few Christians do we meet who are strict observers have lived even in its present mild form and must there not result from this ever-growing spirit of m artification, a general, a feminist, c of character, which will lead it last to frightful social disorders.
Speaker 0 22:20 Those nations, among his people, his spirit and practice of penance are extinct, are heaping up against themselves, the wrath of God and provoking his justice to destroy them by one or other of these scourges civil discord or conquest. There's an inconsistency which must strike every thinking mind. The observance of the Lord's Day. On the one side, the in observance of days of pendants and fasting on the other. The word of God is unmistakable and unless we do pennants, we shall perish. Close quote in corrupt Dom Garren Jay last. This is something to really meditate on. And then in cyclical written in 1741 pope benedict the 14th states quote, the observance of lent is the very badge of Christian warfare. By it, we prove ourselves not to be enemies of the Cross of Christ. By it, we avert the scourges of divine justice. By it, we gain strength against the princes of darkness for Chealsea this with heavenly help, should mankind grow, run this in their observance of land.
Speaker 0 23:34 It will be a detriment to God's glory, a disgrace to the Catholic religion and a danger to Christian souls. Neither can it be doubted that such negligence would become the source of misery to the world, a public calamity and a private whoa close quote, the vicar of Christ that's worth rereading. The observance of lent is the very badge of Christian warfare, but we prove ourselves not to be enemies of the Cross of Christ. By it, we avert the scourges of divine justice. By it, we gained strength against the prince of darkness, for it shields us with heavenly help. Should mankind grow remiss in their observance of land, it would be a detriment to God's glory, a disgrace to the Catholic religion and a danger to Christian souls. Neither can it be doubted that such negligence would become the source of misery to the world of public calamity and a private wool.
Speaker 0 24:40 We need to be serious about Lynn. When you pick things to do for land run and by your confessor, the way the devil works on pious soul, just try to get you to go to extremes. Don't do that. That's what confessors are there to say, father, this is what I'm thinking about doing for land. And if he says, no, you must obey. He'll tell you what to do. That's why we're here, to make sure that you have a good land, but not an extreme land. Don't go to extremes. The observance of lent is the very badge of Christian warfare. By it, we prove ourselves not to be enemies of the Cross of Christ.
