There was a certain pastoral logic to the old custom of preparing for Lent by numbering the weeks leading up to it with elegant Latin numbering: Septuagesima, Sexagesima, Quinquagesima. It is hard to take a sudden plunge into Lent “cold turkey” (or “gallopavus frigidus,” as Julius Caesar might have said had he ever seen one) and it is wise to “ease” into the penitential season, in the happy prospect that some of its disciplines might not only strengthen the self, but might become regular and natural year round. Pope Benedict XVI was thinking of Lent months ago and published his Lenten message for 2007 way back, several days before our Thanksgiving Day—there is the turkey again.

The theme for his Lenten reflection was from John 19:37: “They shall look on Him whom they have pierced.” In it he says that the forty days of Lent are a favorable time to learn to stay with Mary and John, the beloved disciple, close to Him who, on the Cross, consummated for all mankind the sacrifice of His life (cf. Jn 19:25).

“It is in the mystery of the Cross that the overwhelming power of the heavenly Father’s mercy is revealed in all of its fullness. In order to win back the love of His creature, He accepted to pay a very high price: the blood of His only begotten Son. Death, which for the first Adam was an extreme sign of loneliness and powerlessness, was thus transformed in the supreme act of love and freedom of the new Adam. One could very well assert, therefore, together with Saint Maximus the Confessor, that Christ ‘died, if one could say so, divinely, because He died freely.’”

Lent is a traditional time to prepare for the blessing of the holy water and the baptisms at Easter. All during Lent the soul is sustained by the Eucharist. When water and blood flowed from the side of Christ on the Cross, they became symbols of Baptism and the Eucharist. So the Pope writes:

“Through the water of Baptism, thanks to the action of the Holy Spirit, we are given access to the intimacy of Trinitarian love. In the Lenten journey, memorial of our Baptism, we are exhorted to come out of ourselves in order to open ourselves, in trustful abandonment, to the merciful embrace of the Father. Blood, symbol of the love of the Good Shepherd, flows into us especially in the Eucharistic mystery: ‘The Eucharist draws us into Jesus’ act of self-oblation … we enter into the very dynamic of His self-giving’ (Encyclical Deus caritas est). Let us live Lent then, as a ‘Eucharistic’ time in which, welcoming the love of Jesus, we learn to spread it around us with every word and deed. . . . May Mary, Mother of Beautiful Love, guide us in this Lenten journey, a journey of authentic conversion to the love of Christ.”

Fr. George W. Rutler