Lent with the Early Church Fathers Day 29

Day 29

Lent with the Early Church Fathers

A daily post from Tom Bandy 

Based on A Year with the Church Fathers (Ed. Mike Aquilina, St. Benedict Press, 2010) 

Learn good habits during Lent 

St. Gregory the Great 

As the Easter Festival approaches, we keep the greatest and most binding fast. The observation of it is imposed on all the faithful without exception. No one is so holy that he or she ought not to be holy earth, and so devout that he or she might not be more devout. 

Who in the uncertainty of this life is either exempt from temptation or free from fault? Who would not wish for more virtue or less vice? 

Adversity harms us, and prosperity spoils us. It is dangerous not to have what we want, and to have everything we want. There is a trap in the abundance of riches, and a trap in the straights of poverty; the one makes us proud, the other makes us complain. Health tries us, sickness tries us; the one makes us careless, the other sad. There is a trap insecurity and a trap in fear. It does not matter whether the mind given over to earthly thoughts is taken up with pleasures or with cares – it is equally unhealthy to languish in empty delights or to labor under racking anxiety. 

Blessed is the mind, therefore, that passes the time of its pilgrimage in chaste sobriety and does not linger in the things it has to walk through, so that – as a stranger rather than the owner of its earthly home – it does not lack human affections, and yet rests on the divine promises. 

And no season, dear friends, requires and gives this fortitude more than Lent, when, by observing special strictness, we acquire a habit in which we must persevere. 

TGB: Preoccupation with oneself is the greatest barrier to Lenten reflection. Whether we are grateful for our life, or anxious about our life, we are still preoccupied with our own life. Lent is the season when we realize that oneself is not the center of the universe. God’s the center. And we rotate around God, whether in wealth or in poverty, health or sickness. And it is upon God that we are wholly dependent for joy (on the one hand) and strength (on the other hand) so that it is the glory of God that we celebrate no matter what state we are in.