Christ fell three times beneath the cross. He also got up three times. We fall all the time. The whole human race fell in its first generation. The Fall of Man is misery writ large. What matters for our eternal happiness is that we get up again. So a great saint said, oblivious to his own sanctity: "Not all the saints started well, but they finished well."

The Fourth Sunday of Lent is a chance to reflect on progress and stumbles, to make an inventory of body and soul, and to get up and start again. We are not the ones to judge if we are making progress. Only God can judge that. But it is sufficient that we don't stay down. Discouragement is a chief strategy of the Prince of Lies. He plays on human pride in two ways, alternating between the presumptuous posture that thinks we are doing fine, and the defeatist posture that assumes we are hopeless. The fable of the tortoise and the hare is a pleasant pagan analogy of this. Aesop told it some six centuries before St. Paul spoke of enduring the race, and the word he uses for the race, "agonizomai," is the Greek word for contest which we dramatize into our term "agony." He is quite cheerful about it, really, and what he emphasizes is that there is hope of a great victory provided we realize that the spiritual journey is more like a marathon than a sprint. In fact, people who only sprint in life's journey will enjoy an occasional spiritual "rush" but they will be disappointed in time of trial.

The Fourth Sunday of Lent is called "Laetare" because like "Gaudete" Sunday in Advent, it is provided to encourage the runner not to give up. "Rejoice, Jerusalem." The penitential tone is lessened, and a hint of the Resurrection seeps in. As Abelard wrote, "Now, in the meanwhile, with hearts raised on high,/ We for that country must yearn and must sigh,/ Seeking Jerusalem, dear native land,/ Through our long exile on Babylon's strand."

One recently read of a television personality who deals with bouts of depression by hanging upside down. Sometimes the same people who do that sort of thing mock the Church's precepts for mortifying the senses. Hanging upside down may actually be helpful for the bones and brain. I do not know. But it seems to me more fitting for bats than for saints. St. Peter was crucified upside down, but not because he was depressed. His was a joy that is promised to all those who follow the Lord. "Wherefore seeing we also are compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which so easily besets us, and let us run with patience the race that is set before us" (Hebrews 12:1).

Fr. George W. Rutler