From Thomas A. Kempis’s The Imitation of Christ:

If you cannot recollect yourself continuously, do so once a day at least, in the morning or in the evening. In the morning make a resolution and in the evening examine yourself on what you have said this day, what you have done and thought, for in these things perhaps you have often offended God and those about you.

Arm yourself like a man against the devil’s assaults. Curb your appetite and you will more easily curb every inclination of the flesh. Never be completely unoccupied, but read or write or pray or meditate or do something for the common good. Bodily discipline, however, must be undertaken with discretion and is not to be practiced indiscriminately by everyone.

Devotions not common to all are not to be displayed in public, for such personal things are better performed in private. Furthermore, beware of indifference to community prayer through love of your own devotions. If, however, after doing completely and faithfully all you are bound and commanded to do, you then have leisure, use it as personal piety suggests.

Not everyone can have the same devotion. One exactly suits this person, another that. Different exercises, likewise, are suitable for different times, some for feast days and some again for weekdays. In time of temptation we need certain devotions. For days of rest and peace we need others. Some are suitable when we are sad, others when we are joyful in the Lord.

About the time of the principal feasts good devotions ought to be renewed and the intercession of the saints more fervently implored. From one feast day to the next we ought to fix our purpose as though we were then to pass from this world and come to the eternal holyday.

During holy seasons, finally, we ought to prepare ourselves carefully, to live holier lives, and to observe each rule more strictly, as though we were soon to receive from God the reward of our labors. If this end be deferred, let us believe that we are not well prepared and that we are not yet worthy of the great glory that shall in due time be revealed to us. Let us try, meanwhile, to prepare ourselves better for death.

“Blessed is the servant,” says Christ, “whom his master, when he cometh, shall find watching. Amen I say to you: he shall make him ruler over all his goods.”

Yet temptations, though troublesome and severe, are often useful to a man, for in them he is humbled, purified, and instructed. The saints all passed through many temptations and trials to profit by them, while those who could not resist became reprobate and fell away. There is no state so holy, no place so secret that temptations and trials will not come. Man is never safe from them as long as he lives, for they come from within us—in sin we were born. When one temptation or trial passes, another comes; we shall always have something to suffer because we have lost the state of original blessedness.
Many people try to escape temptations, only to fall more deeply. We cannot conquer simply by fleeing, but by patience and true humility we become stronger than all our enemies. The man who only shuns temptations outwardly and does not uproot them will make little progress; indeed they will quickly return, more violent than before.

…

Above all, we must be especially alert against the beginnings of temptation, for the enemy is more easily conquered if he is refused admittance to the mind and is met beyond the threshold when he knocks. — Thomas Kempis, The Imitation of Christ

Quite a collection of books by the Saints here, which is a mirror of the original collection here.  Me, I intend to grab the collection and when I get five spare minutes make a donation in thanks for the work it took to get these online.

Wow.  That is all.

I know, it doesn’t seem like much of an Ash Wednesday topic, but as we’ve covered quite thoroughly here I’m wired a little strangely.  With that out of the way…

On the way to my house I pass a very proper non-denominational church with a very prominently displayed sign right near the road.  They clearly take pride in making sure there are witty statements on broad display – they even left a very fond farewell notice for the previous sign-poster-person (what do you call that position anyway, a Minister of the Signage?).  For the past week or so they have had this statement on display, “One person praying is more effective than ten preaching.”

As Lent has approached I’ve been mulling over that statement quite a bit.  We often see the tension between the “do-ers” and the “pray-ers” in the Church, from the earliest Martha vs. Mary comparisons to present day pro-life discussions about whether it is better to pray for conversion or witness to women on abortuary sidewalks.  Now, this being Lent with our focus on prayer, fasting and abstinence, you’re probably expecting me to go for agreeing with the above sign-statement.  I do.  And I don’t.

First, yes, Catholicism is a religion of “both-and” rather than “either-or” so I recognize the positive value of the “both” approach.  But this statement is clearly positing one over the other, straining towards but not quite completely suggesting that it is better.  With my Dominican leanings I’ve had to wonder, “then what does that say for preaching?”

Rather than continuing to circle around the question, let me put it shortly here.  Prayer is, without a doubt, the most powerful weapon we have in our arsenal against the forces of this world.  Without it we walk naked into the most dangerous battle in history, nearly begging the Enemy to strike us.  But then I’m reminded of Luther’s most hated Epistle, where James tells us “faith without works is dead” (James 2:17).

There are a plethora of quaint sayings I could quote here and I’m sure at least one or two have flitted through your mind if you’ve made it this far.  Let me turn one slightly on its ear:  “We are given two ears and one mouth, that we might listen more than we speak.”  Indeed, I say, let us listen with the ears of our heart, with the ears of faith.  But let us then speak what we have heard and offer words of encouragement.  Let us take this time of Lent to draw nearer to God, but at the same time let us draw others closer to Him as the chances allow.  God does not cease to present to us people with needs merely because it is Lent.

Well, most of it, anyway.  And besides being far busier than I should have been to get out of Lent what I could have.  But we can beat up on me later.

Just before Ash Wednesday I received a box in the mail from my dear old Irish Catholic grandmother.  As I opened the box the smell that wafted up let me know whatever was inside had been in her house for a long time – there’s just something about the smell of her house I’ll never quite forget.  Inside I found three books and was suddenly struck by a realization both sobering and uplifting.  Her eyesight has been getting worse as she’s gotten older, and her high blood pressure certainly hasn’t helped.  The last time we were together she lamented how difficult it has become for her to read which was painful for her as she has always loved to read spiritual works and particularly the Bible.    While I have no proof I can’t help but be haunted by the thought that she is sending me, as her only family member who is an actively practicing Catholic, bits and pieces of a library she can no longer read.  My previous plans for Lenten reading mattered no more – I had to read whatever it was she sent, and I’m glad I did.

Among the books she sent me was A.G. Sertillanges’ classic What Jesus Saw from the Cross.  The book follows Jesus from multiple points of view – centered on, as one would guess, what He could see upon the Cross, and dives deeply into the events that happened in the places He could and couldn’t see.  Fr. Sertillanges spent time in Jerusalem and his first-hand contact with the Holy Land is evidenced throughout the book.  With an artistic flourish I could only hope some day to imitate in the slightest way he paints the events of those fateful days in the reader’s mind.

More than a historical treatise this is a spiritual work that helps unite the reader with the happenings of those days.  Yet even calling it a spiritual work doesn’t fully encompass what is inside.  It is by turns historical, spiritual, apologetic, and theological – and perhaps a few other things I haven’t quite categorized.  Even though the book is now more than sixty years old so very much of his commentary is still not only relevant but timely.  An example for your edification:

Jesus is not mocked today; but is He not generally forgotten?  Compassion is rare, still rarer is active devotion.  And when we say that Jesus is no longer mocked we are thinking only of His person, to which Jesus Himself attaches far less importance than to His work and to our salvation.

How many insults are hurled at the doctrines, the practices, the ministers, the precepts, the promises, the words, the deeds, the institutions, and the persons connected with the name and work of Jesus crucified!  Here, too, there are those who mock and wag their heads; here, too, are drinkers of win – the wine of sophistry and licentiousness – who sing after Jesus as He passes.

The Passover of mankind still continues.  Men pitch their tents and move on; men drink and dance; men worry and become absorbed in business; men form attachments and break them; men love and hate – and Christ hangs on the Cross.  His sorrow meets only with contempt, and His appeal, His offer of salvation, arouses nothing but a vague and distracted smile.

Lent may now be all but over, but there is never a bad time to read a book so moving, challenging and educational.  Buy two and give one to someone else much like my dear grandmother has done for me.

Besides the fact that it’s just something you should do, occasionally you come across some real spiritual gems.  This one I found timely as a Lenten reflection:

My Lord and my God, take from me everything that distances me from you.

My Lord and my God, give me everything that brings me closer to you.

My Lord and my God, detach me from myself to give my all to you.

– St. Nicholas of Flüe

I’m a couple of days late in posting this, but even with the lag I think it’s too important to just skip.  From AsiaNews:

Following the example of St. Paul, Lent should be marked by a more frequent listening to the word of God, “by more intense prayer, by an austere and penitential style of life, it should be an encouragement to conversion and sincere love for our brothers, especially those who are most poor and in need.” In the Pauline Year, the life of the Apostle of the Gentiles was offered by Benedict XVI as a model of how the Christian should live Lent, in today’s celebration of Ash Wednesday at the ancient Roman basilica of Santa Sabina.

…

“St. Paul,” he continued, “recognizes that everything in him is the work of divine grace, but he does not forget that one must cooperate freely with the gift of new life received in Baptism. In the text of chapter 6 of the Letter to the Romans, which will be proclaimed during the Easter vigil, he writes, ‘Therefore, sin must not reign over your mortal bodies so that you obey their desires. And do not present the parts of your bodies to sin as weapons for wickedness, but present yourselves to God as raised from the dead to life and the parts of your bodies to God as weapons for righteousness’ (6:12-13). We find contained in these words the program for Lent according to its intrinsic baptismal perspective. On the one hand, it affirms Christ’s victory over sin, which took place once and for all with his death and resurrection; on the other, we are urged not to give our members up to sin, meaning not to concede, so to speak, room for sin to make a comeback.

Great things can happen during Lent.  It’s up to us whether we’re willing to cooperate with the Grace God is offering us.