March 12, 2006

Lenten opportunities to practice “mortifications” are gifts that strengthen virtue and kill off vice. This kind of dying of the passions gives life. Overcoming slavery to the self is radical freedom. Gratification which is only self-gratification is bound to disappoint and may even disappoint forever, which is the state of damnation. So there is the anonymous admonition which a woman wrote some time ago:

I was dying to finish school and go to work.
And then I was dying to get married and have a family.
And then I was dying for the children to grow up
     that I might have a career.
And then I was dying to retire.
And now I really am dying and I realize that I forgot to live.

Lent intensifies life, so that we might join the whole Church in the Resurrection. Traditional mortifications are presented by the Church: fasts and abstinences. Prudent voices have suggested some other creative acts of mortification. Among them: Fast one day from TV and radio and the Internet and listen to the world around you and to the sounds of your own soul. Begin a daily plan of prayer, especially praying the forms of Morning and Evening Prayer and other devotions found in prayer books. Give away some clothing or other possession that you have not used in the past year. Calculate how your weekly offering to the Church approaches the Biblical standard of a tithe. Do some chore at home or at work that someone else usually does. Observe people closely and see if they need assistance with some small effort. Memorize a hymn or spiritual poem. Learn a new act of contrition to recite when going to Confession. Use a different examination of conscience before going to Confession. Set aside some time to pray for catechumens preparing to be baptized, for the newly baptized, and for those who have recently died. Write a letter to someone who has not heard from you in a while. Grow in sincere prayer by telling God some doubts about the Faith that you may have or some questions about doctrines. Peter Abelard said: “By doubting we come to enquire, and by enquiring we reach the truth.”

Just as Louis Pasteur broke up old theories of what causes diseases to develop his germ theory, and just as Albert Einstein broke up the old Euclidean notions to attain his new physics, so does health of soul and a profound “meta” physical understanding of human nature require that we break up, by small mortifications, those evidences of selfishness which impede the plan that our Creator has had for each one of us since we were conceived.

“I do not fight as if I were shadowboxing. What I do is discipline my own body and master it, for fear that after having preached to others I myself should be rejected” (I Cor. 9:24-27).

Fr. George W. Rutler