Return to the Roots of Christian Celebration
Holy fasts and feasts lead to victory, peace, and joy. St. Martin's Lent, anciently observed, begins to turn aright a world turned upside-down.
Tired of the bad news yet? Take a fast. I mean it.
A friend of mine just reported on LinkedIn that he’s taken a 35-day fast from the apps as he powered down and also went on pilgrimage. The benefits to him were amazing.
They are waiting for us to discovery them, too.
Freedom is the condition in which we were created. Freedom is what the human race loses in sin. Freedom from sin is what Christ wins back from us, if we are brave enough and disciplined enough to take hold of the freedom and live in it.
Every year for the past several years, I’ve undertaken the Exodus 90 exercise, although I am wide outside the demographic for which it is intended. If you haven’t yet taken the exercise and you are a man (it’s for men), I suggest strongly that you do so: it will change your life. One of the disciplines is no media and no internet beyond what is strictly necessary. That discipline clears the head.
After Exodus 90, continue with the exercises that follow on. You’ll grow in interior freedom: you’ll notice less dependency upon outside stimuli for a sense of well-being; perhaps you’ll be irritable at some point as the junk in your life that needs resolution begins to rise to the surface. Perhaps you’ll grow in virtues and get a better handle on your sins and vices. You’ll be both happier and more pleasant to be around.
Here’s an activity that doesn’t need to wait until next year. St. Martin’s Lent is just around the corner. St. Martin’s Feast is November 11, and it was the traditional European Thanksgiving Day. At the end of World War One, the Armistice was meant to go in effect on November 11 at 11:11:11. The digits of 11:11:11 add up to 6, the number of man. 11:11:11 on 11/11 add up to 10, which number signifies not just perfection but also, and importantly here, the end of one cycle and the beginning of the next. That was the point of the Armistice at that date and time: out with God, and up with man. The Armistice was supposed to signal the final end of the ancien regime and the beginning of a new world order — you’ve heard that phrase before, doubtless. That’s what the war was really about; that’s why monarchy ended in Germany, Russia, and Austria-Hungary. It was about making the world safe for democracy, remember? The ancien regime was the regime steeped in faith — in the Christian faith, the ones the powers of the world have hated since it first arose, since the faith promises freedom to all and limits the range of action of the powerful, for whom enough is never enough. The ancien regime had to go, and so, too, did the Faith that created and sustained it.
The ancien regime was steeped in fasting and in celebration. Did you know, for instance, that Advent as a four-week preparatory period for Christmas is relatively new? Preparation for Christmas used to begin on November 12, the day after St. Martin’s Feast. The preparation was a fast, as we clean out the stables of our souls to make them fit for the Savior there to take up his abode. There were no Christmas parties in Advent! Give them up this year, and work the post-Christmas sales as you celebrate the Twelve Days of Christmas: you’ll save a lot of money and have lots of Christmas joy. Sick of Christmas by then? Yes, that’s the point: turn Christmas into a commercial extravaganza that begins earlier and earlier each fall until by Christmas Day you’re sick and tired of it, and don’t want to hear or celebrate the astounding Good News of the Incarnation of the Lord, the coming of salvation. Black Friday started during the Depression as a way of jump-starting the economy. Best way to vitiate a feast is to empty it of its real significance. Don’t fast, don’t abstain: buy, and party. Invert the meaning of the feast. Eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow you will die! We know how things ended for that fellow.
You won't be sick of Christmas by Christmas if you keep a holy St. Martin’s Fast and a holy Advent.
What about Thanksgiving Day? I admit, that’s a tough one, especially since it is a civil and not liturgical holiday. I’m not recommending turkey-flavored tofu, though I am sure there are many who will and I hasten to add there’s nothing wrong with it at all, if that’s the sort of thing you do. Since St. Martin’s Lent is not established in canon law as a liturgical season, there is no problem with eating turkey on Turkey Day — and I think you will find that after entering seriously into St. Martin’s Lent, you’ll be glad for the break and then eager for the return.
Fasting is a knightly thing to do, if you’re inclined, as I am, to take matters and notions of Christian chivalry seriously. Knightliness is about discipline, self-denial, sublimation of desire in favor of goods higher than the immediate and the transitory. Overweight knights don’t fight well. Knights distracted by the pleasures and cares of the world don’t fight well. Warfare requires focus, and it requires self-denial.
Oh, you might say, but St. Martin’s Lent is not required. True enough, I answer. Much that is good for us is not required. It does not for that lack cease to be good. When the Church lifted the Friday Abstinence in the wake of the Council, she never said we shouldn’t abstain from penance. She said, rather, that you can still abstain from meat if you wish, and if you don’t wish, you should substitute some other penance because every Friday of the year is penitential — unless a solemnity falls on it. She has nothing but praise for those who take on extra devotions and penance. She even has a special term for it: supererogatory works. That means works that go beyond what is strictly required. We will never win the spiritual war we are in if we do merely what is strictly required — which isn’t very much.
We are just finishing October, the month of the Rosary. We forget what the saints, doctors of the Church, Popes, and theologians tell us: the Rosary is a principal weapon in the battle for souls, a powerful tool to extend the Kingdom of God for which we pray every time we pray the Our Father. Consider the feasts of the month: just before it begins, we celebrate the great Archangels who do battle with the enemies of God, and, a few days later, we celebrate the guardian angels. The Feast of Our Lady of the Rosary used to be called the Feast of Our Lady of Victory, as it celebrated the Christian victory over Muslim navies and armies at the Battle of Lepanto. Muslims have never stopped in their desire to conquer the world for Islam, and they never will: they speak openly now of establishing sharia in the West and the nations that arose out of the West. They are aided by others, of other religions and none at all, who for their own reasons also hate the Faith. No amount of interreligious dialogue will deter them from their goal, which they believe is nigh. Only the Savior’s love will: and he wants to spread that love through us.
Look at the liturgical calendar for October and see all the saints who died as martyrs, as teachers of prayer, as missionaries. Dominus Jesus, published by the then-Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith at the order of Pope St. John Paul II on the Feast of the Transfiguration, 2000, reminds us of the Church’s permanent missionary mandate. The importance and ongoing relevance of the document cannot be understated, for ourselves and for the life of the world: for when Christ conquers through the love of God transmitted to souls in holy baptism and nurtured thereafter by Word and Sacrament, warfare ceases and peace abounds. But only if we do the work. “We are more than conquerors,” St. Paul tells us in Romans. This is so, because the Faith does not subjugate: it liberates.
We will not be more than conquerors unless we conquer ourselves first. We will not be men and women who live in the freedom of Christ and extend it to others unless and until we fight our own selves to live in that freedom. As Fr. Lorenzo Scupoli tells us at the beginning of Spiritual Combat, never forget that while you are fighting against self, self is fighting against you. Wise words we should never forget.
The thing is, the deck is more than stacked in our favor. We have the Word of God and the sacraments; we have the intercession of Our Lady, the angels, and saints; we have the Holy Rosary; we have the other devotions that deepen and widen our ongoing conversions.
But the means mean nothing, if they are not used.
Take a fast from everything that stops you from using the means to grow in sanctity, to serve the sick and the poor, and to be heralds of the Good News. Start now! Start small, but be consistent. Then, when we use the means, we will not be looking for the truth, for we will see that we have been found by Him who is the Truth, and the Way and the Life.
As we prepare for All Saint’s Day, we have before us the triumph of those who did use the means, who did become saints by their prayer and their works, all of whom died unheralded by the world. They are praying for us now, and depending upon us to continue their good work.
Fast. Give up the apps, give up the distractions, give up the stuff you tell yourself you need but know you don’t. Your growth in freedom and in joy will be tremendous, and when people ask you what’s different, what’s happened, you’ll have answer that will give them hope, if they but accept it. Your sacrifices will help them and give glory to God.