Ven. Abbot Dom Guéranger ora pro nobis!
PRACTICE
DURING PASCHAL TIME
The Liturgical Year
Ven. Abbot
Dom Guéranger
The practice for this holy Season mainly consists in the spiritual Joy,
which it should produce in every soul that is risen with Jesus. This Joy is a
foretaste of eternal happiness, and the Christian ought to consider it a duty
to keep it up within him, by ardently seeking after that Life which is in our
Divine Head, and by carefully shunning sin which causes Death. During the last
nine weeks, we have mourned for our sins and done penance for them; we have
followed Jesus to Calvary; but now, our holy Mother the Church is urgent in
bidding us rejoice. She herself has laid aside all sorrow; the voice of her
weeping is changed into the song of a delighted Spouse.
In order that she might
impart this Joy to all her children, she has taken their weakness into account.
After reminding them of the necessity of expiation, she gave them forty days
wherein to do penance; and then, taking off all the restraint of Lenten
mortification, she brings us to Easter as to a land where there is nothing but
gladness, light, life, joy, calm, and the sweet hope of Immortality. Thus does
she produce in those of her children, who have no elevation of soul, sentiments
in harmony with the great Feast, such as the most perfect feel; and by this
means, all, both fervent and tepid, unite their voices in one same hymn of
praise to our Risen Jesus.
The great Liturgist of the
12th century, Rupert, Abbot of Deutz, thus speaks of the pious artifice used by
the Church to infuse the spirit of Easter into all: There are certain carnal
minds, that seem unable to open their eyes to spiritual things, unless roused
by some unusual excitement; and for this reason, the Church makes use of such
means. Thus, the Lenten Fast, which we offer up to God as our yearly tithe,
goes on till the most sacred Night of Easter; then follow fifty days without so
much as one single Fast. Hence it happens, that whilst the body is being
mortified, and is to continue to be so till Easter Night, that holy Night is
eagerly looked forward to even by the carnal-minded; they long for it to come; and,
meanwhile, they carefully count each of the Forty Days, as a wearied traveler
does the miles. Thus, the sacred solemnity is sweet to all, and dear to all,
and desired by all, as light is to them that walk in darkness, as a fount of
living water is to them that thirst, and as a Teat which the Lord hath pitched
for wearied wayfarers.
What a happy time was that,
when, as St. Bernard expresses it, there was not one in the whole Christian
Army, that neglected his Easter duty, and when all, both just and sinners,
walked together in the path of the Lenten Observances!
Alas! those days are gone, and Easter has
not the same effect on the people of our generation! The reason is, that a love
of ease and a false conscience lead so many Christians to treat the law of
Lent, with as much indifference as though there were no such law existing.
Hence, Easter comes upon them as a Feast, it may be, as a great Feast; but
that is all: they experience little of that thrilling Joy which fills the heart
of the Church during this Season, and which she evinces in every thing she
does. And if this be their case even on the glorious Day itself, how can it be
expected that they should keep up, for the whole Fifty, the spirit of Gladness,
which is the very essence of Easter?
Fasting removed from Newchurch bible!
And he said to
them: This kind can go out by nothing, but by prayer and fasting. Catholic Bible
(Douay-Rheims)
They have not observed the Fast, or the Abstinence, of
Lent: the mitigated form in which the Church now presents them to her Children,
in consideration of their weakness, was too severe for them! They
sought, or they took, a total dispensation from this law of Lenten mortification,
and without regret or remorse.
The Alleluia
returns, and it finds no response in their souls: how could it? Penance has not
done its work of purification; it has not spiritualized them; how, then, could
they follow their Risen Jesus, whose Life is henceforth more of heaven than of
earth?
But these reflections are
too sad for such a Season as this: let us beseech our Risen Jesus to enlighten
these souls with the rays of his victory over the world and the flesh, and to
raise them up to himself. No, nothing must now distract us from Joy. Can the children of the Bridegroom mourn, as
long as the Bridegroom is with them? Jesus is to be with us for forty days;
he is to suffer no more, and die no more; let our feelings be in keeping with
his now endless glory and bliss. True, he is to leave us, he is to ascend to
the right hand of his Father; but he will not leave us orphans; he will send us the Divine Comforter, who will abide with
us for ever. These sweet and consoling words must be our Easter text: The children of the Bridegroom cannot mourn,
as long as the Bridegroom is with us. They are the key to the whole Liturgy
of this holy Season. We must have them ever before us, and we shall find by
experience, that the Joy of Easter is as salutary as the contrition and penance
of Lent. Jesus on the Cross, and Jesus in the Resurrection, it is ever the same
Jesus; but what he wants from us now, is that we should keep near him, in
company with his Blessed Mother, his Disciples, and Magdalene, who are in
ecstasies of delight at his Triumph, and have forgotten the sad days of his
Passion.
But this Easter of ours will
have an end; the bright vision of our Risen Jesus will pass away; and all that
will be left to us, will be the recollection of his ineffable glory, and of the
wonderful familiarity wherewith he treated us. What shall we do, when He who
was our very Life and Light, leaves us, and ascends to heaven? Be of good
heart, Christians! you must look forward to another Easter. Each year will give
you a repetition of what you now enjoy. Easter will follow Easter, and bring
you, at last, to that Easter in Heaven, which is never to have an end, and of
which these happy ones of earth are a mere foretaste. Nor is this all. Listen
to the Church. In one of her Prayers she reveals to us the great secret, how we
may perpetuate our Easters, even here in our banishment: Grant to thy servants,
O God, that they may keep up, by their manner of living, the Mystery they have
received by their believing! So, then, the mystery of Easter is to be ever
visible on this earth: our Risen Jesus ascends to heaven; but he leaves upon us
the impress of his Resurrection, and we must retain it within us until he again
visits us.
And how could it be that we
should not retain this divine impress within us? Are not all the mysteries of
our Divine Master ours also? From his very first coming in the Flesh, he has
made us sharers in everything he has done. He was born in Bethlehem: we were
born together with him. He was crucified: our old man was crucified with him. He was buried: we were buried with him. And, therefore, when he rose from the grave, we,
also, received the grace that we should walk in the newness of life.
Such is the teaching of the
Apostle, who thus continues: We know that Christ rising again from the dead, dieth now no more; death shall no more have
dominion over him: for in that he died to sin, (that is, for sin,) he died once; but in that he liveth, he
liveth unto God. He is our Head, and we are his Members: we share in what is his. To die again by sin, would be to renounce him, to separate ourselves
from him, to forfeit that Death and Resurrection of his, which he mercifully
willed should be ours. Let us, therefore, preserve within us that Life, which
is the Life of our Jesus, and, yet, which belongs to us as our own treasure;
for he won it by conquering death, and then gave it to us, with all his other
merits. You, then, who, before Easter, were Sinners, but have now returned to
the Life of Grace, see that you die no more: let your actions bespeak your
Resurrection. And you, to whom the Paschal Solemnity has brought growth in
grace, show this increase of more
abundant Life by your principles and your conduct. Tis thus all will walk in the newness of life.
With this for the present,
we take leave of the lessons taught us by Jesus' Resurrection: the rest we
reserve for the humble commentary we shall have to make on the Liturgy of this
holy season. We shall then see, more and more clearly, not only our duty of
imitating our Divine Master's Resurrection, but the magnificence of this
grandest Mystery of the Man-God. Easter, with its three admirable manifestations
of divine love and power, the Resurrection, the Ascension, and the Descent of
the Holy Ghost, yes, Easter is the perfection of the work of our Redemption.
Everything, both in the order of time, and in the workings of the Liturgy, has
been a preparation for Easter. The four thousand years that followed the
promise made by God to our First Parents were crowned by the event that we are
now to celebrate. All that the Church has been doing for us from the very
commencement of Advent had this same glorious event in view; and now that we
have come to it, our expectations are more than realized, and the power and
wisdom of God are brought before us so vividly, that our former knowledge of
them seems nothing in comparison with our present appreciation and love of
them. The Angels themselves are dazzled by the grand Mystery, as the Church
tells us in one of her Easter Hymns, where she says: The Angels gaze with
wonder on the change wrought in mankind: it was flesh that sinned, and now Flesh
taketh all sin away, and the God that reigns is the God made Flesh.
Eastertide, too, belongs to
what is called the Illuminative Life;
nay, it is the most important part of that Life, for it not only manifests, as
the last four seasons of the Liturgical year have done, the humiliations and
the sufferings of the Man-God; it shows him to us in all his grand glory; it
gives us to see him expressing, in his own sacred Humanity, the highest degree
of the creature's transformation into his God. The coming of the Holy Ghost
will bring additional brightness to this Illumination; it shows us the relations
that exist between the soul and the Third Person of the Blessed Trinity. And
here we see the way and the progress of a faithful soul. She was made an adopted
Child of the Heavenly Father; she was initiated into all the duties and
mysteries of her high vocation, by the lessons and examples of the Incarnate
word; she was perfected, by the visit and indwelling of the Holy Ghost. From
this there result those several Christian exercises, which produce within her
an imitation of her divine Model, and prepare her for that Union, to which she is invited by Him, who gave to them that received him power to
be made sons of God, by a birth that is not of blood, nor of the flesh, but of
God.
"Where there is no Prayer and Fasting, there are the demons." -
Theophan the Recluse
And he said to
them: This kind can go out by nothing, but by prayer and fasting. Mark 9: 28 Catholic Bible (Douay-Rheims)
He said to
them, “This kind can only come out through prayer.” Mark 9: 29 Newchurch bible
No comments:
Post a Comment