MONDAY OF SEXAGESIMA WEEK

   MONDAY OF SEXAGESIMA WEEK

                The Liturgical Year

              Abbot Dom Guéranger

All flesh had corrupted its way upon the earth. The terrible lesson, then, which men had received, by being driven out of paradise in the person of our first parents, had been without effect. Neither the certainty of death, when they would have to stand before the divine Judge, nor the humiliations which attend man’s first coming into this world, nor the pains and fatigues and trials which beset the whole path of life, had subdued men’s hearts, or brought them into submission to that sovereign Master whose hand lay thus heavy upon them. They had the divine promise that a Saviour should be given to them, and that this Redeemer (who was to be the Son of her that was to crush the serpent’s head), would not only bring them salvation, but would moreover reinstate them in all the happiness and honors they had lost. But even this was not enough to make them rise above the base passions of corrupt nature. The example of Adam’s nine hundred years’ penance, and the admonitions he could so feelingly give who had received such proofs of God’s love and anger, began to lose their influence upon his children; and when he at last descended into the grave, his posterity grew more and more heedless of what they owed to their Creator. The long life, which had been granted to man in this the first age of the world, was made but a fresh means of offending Him who gave it. When, finally, the sons of Seth took to themselves wives of the family of Cain, the human race reached the height of

wickedness, rebelled against the Lord, and made their own passions their god.

     Yet, all this while, they had had granted to them the power of resisting the evil propensities of their hearts. God had offered them His grace, whereby they were enabled to conquer pride and concupiscence. The merits of the Redeemer to come were even then present to divine justice, and the Lamb, slain, as St. John tells us, from the beginning of the world, applied the merits of His Blood to this as to every generation which existed before the great Sacrifice was really immolated. Each individual of the human family might have been just, as Noah was, and, like him, have found favour with the Most High; but the thought of their heart was bent upon evil, and not upon good, and the earth became peopled with enemies of God. Then it was that it repented God that He had made man, as the sacred Scripture forcibly expresses it. He decreed that man’s life on earth should be shortened, in order that the thought of death might be ever before us. He, moreover, resolved to destroy, by a universal deluge, the whole of this perverse generation, saving only one family. The world would thus be renewed, and man would learn from this awful chastisement to serve and love this his sovereign Lord and God.

We find the following liturgical formula in the Mozarabic missal. Nothing could be more appropriate to the season of Septuagesima.

                     MISSA

(Dominica ante carnes tollendas.)

Behold, now are close at hand those days of salvation, which the cycle of the year brings round to us, and in which we desire, by the exercise of salutary abstinence, to apply a remedy to our evil doings. For, as the apostle says: This is the acceptable time, and, these are the days of salvation, wherein a spiritual cure is given to the soul that seeks it, and the evil delights of sin are rooted from the mind. Hereby, we, whose evil habits are ever forcing us to a downward tendency, are by the uplifting mercy of God, encouraged to rise above this earth; that thus, by the devout observance of what these days require, we may not only be delivered from the guilt of our sins, but may moreover deserve to be companions with the elect in eternal bliss. Amen.

     Lessons from the Roman Breviary                            with Responsories

                            Matins

                      Lessons 1 - 3

                       Lesson One

Lesson is taken from the Book of Genesis

                     Genesis 7: 1-4

And the Lord said to him: Go in, thou and all thy house, into the ark: for thee I have seen just before me in this generation. Of all clean beasts take seven and seven, the male and the female. But of the beasts that are unclean two and two, the male and the female. Of the fowls also of the air seven and seven, the male and the female: that seed may be saved upon the face of the whole earth. For yet a while, and after seven days, I will rain upon the earth forty days and forty nights: and I will destroy every substance that I have made, from the face of the earth.

R. In the self-same day entered Noah into the ark, and his sons, and his wife and the wives of his sons.

V. Every living substance was destroyed from the earth, and Noah

only remained alive, and they that were with him in the ark.

R. His wife, and the wives of his sons.

                      Lesson Two

              Genesis 7: 5; 10-12

And Noe did all things which the Lord had commanded him. And after the seven days were passed, the waters of the flood overflowed the earth. In the six hundredth year of the life of Noe, in the second month, in the seventeenth day of the month, all the fountains of the great deep were broken up, and the floodgates of heaven were opened: And the rain fell upon the earth forty days and forty nights.

R. The Lord remembered Noah, and made a wind to pass over the earth, and the waters assuaged, and the rain from heaven was restrained.

V. And the waters returned from off the earth continually, and after the end of the hundred and fifty days the waters were abated.

R. And the rain from heaven was restrained.

                      Lesson Three

             Genesis 7: 13-14; 7:7 

In the selfsame day Noe, and Sem, and Cham, and Japheth, his sons: his wife, and the three wives of his sons with them, went into the ark. They and every beast according to its kind, and all the cattle in their kind, and every thing that moveth upon the earth, according to its kind, and every fowl according to its kind. And the flood was forty days upon the earth: and the waters increased, and lifted up the ark on high from the earth.

R. Forty days and forty nights were the heavens opened, and there went into the ark of all flesh wherein is the breath of life. And the Lord shut them in.

V. In the self-same day entered Noah into the ark, and his sons, and his wife, and the wives of his sons.

R. And the Lord shut them in.

V. Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Ghost.

R. And the Lord shut them in.