A Sexagesima Sunday Thought to Start the Week Off Right
It's Sexagesima Sunday in the traditional liturgical calendar of the Latin Rite of the Roman Catholic Church. Similar to last Sunday, we're reminded that Lent is coming soon: time to prepare.
But first, let's take a moment to recall that we've been following the chapters of The Inner Life of the Soul by R. L. Emery, most Sundays this year. This wonderful work, published at the beginning of the 20th century, includes entries for every Sunday of the Liturgical Year, along with some for certain feast days. For the three Sundays before Ash Wednesday - Septuagesima, Sexagesima, and Quinquagesima Sunday - our author appropriately refers to each as "meditations." They're intended to help us enter into that penitential spirit that marks us during the coming Holy Season of Lent.
This week, for Sexagesima Sunday, we'll consider the serious commitment to prayer, penance, and almsgiving we should make during Lent.
Now, ideally, you're already praying, performing acts of penance, as well as almsgiving throughout the year. For Lent, thought, the idea is to either increase or intensify in some way what you're already doing. There's no one way to do this; it'll be different for each of us. But once you get some idea of what you want to do, then commit. Don't just think about it. Tell Our Lord what you're planning to do, then make up your mind to do it persistently and consistently.
(In one of my exercise videos, the instructor wears a t-shirt that says: Decide, Commit, Succeed. He rightly points out that any of us can decided and commit. To succeed, though, isn't always in our hands. We simply do our best. Sometimes we'll hit our targets, sometimes we fall short. But nothing happens unless we decide what we want to do and commit to it.)
If you have a good spiritual director, he's likely going to make recommendations. If you don't, you can do this on your own. This shouldn't take hours of agonized research and analysis. But it is serious business. So spend some serious time in meditation and prayer to settle on what sort of commitment makes sense in your individual circumstances. As was the case last week, our author relies on St. Paul to grab our attention and get us properly focused.
"Thrice I was beaten with rods, once I was stoned, thrice I suffered shipwreck, a night and a day I was in the depths of the sea. In journeying often, in perils of waters, in perils of robbers, in perils from my own nation, in perils from the Gentiles, in perils in the city, in perils in the wilderness, in perils in the sea, in perils from false brethren. In labor and painfulness, in much watchings, in hunger and thirst, in fastings often, in cold and nakedness...
"This is what one man could do, whose intense devotion was to the same Lord God we serve.
"How are we going to imitate him?"
Got your attention? Okay. So what's your answer? Think about this. Meditate on it. You're not being asked to literally imitate St. Paul. But I think you'll agree that something like giving up chocolate won't really get us where we need to be here.
We next turn to great St. Augustine to gain some understanding of just how we may hope to be tempered by our increased devotion to prayer, penance, and almsgiving. (And remember here that almsgiving encompasses not only the charitable giving of our material substance, but also acts of kindness, patience, the giving of ourselves - our time and attention - for the benefit of others.) Recall that St. Augustine, like St. Paul, experienced a great conversion from sinner to saint, albeit not in a singular moment in time. Once converted, though, both fought for good and opposed evil, with heroic virtue, as do all saints. Here's what St. Augustine tells us:
"When the soul has taken its flight towards God (and it is love that makes it take that upward flight), marvelously free and superior to all the torments of the flesh, it extends its magnificent wings, and strong with its chaste love, it darts forward to God, Who calls it, to lose itself in His embrace."
Notice the central role of love here. When we decide on our Lenten commitment, love must be what motivates us. Love of God - both directly as well as through love of neighbor - must be our ultimate intention.
Giving up things you enjoy with love, performing acts of penance with love, almsgiving with love: that's how we should be thinking about all this.
At the end of his meditation, our author imagines St. Paul and St. Augustine now:
"We fancy that they walk and talk together in the fair fields of Paradise...The battle they fought so valiantly is ended. They stand there in the court of their King forever, father and son by a spiritual birthright...proofs incontrovertible of what the love of God has power to do."
We pray to these, and all the saints, now to assist us in our determination to live up to our commitment during this coming Holy Season of Lent.
"Let us beseech them to obtain for us the unflinching courage of their convictions and the tireless might of their love. O my God! grant to us cowards one spark of it, to set our cold, dull, earth-bound hearts on fire. Make us long to sacrifice everything for Thee...Grant us courage to prove our love by our complete self-sacrifice, and by our thoroughly despising all things else in our devotion to Thee, O God, alone!"
But first, let's take a moment to recall that we've been following the chapters of The Inner Life of the Soul by R. L. Emery, most Sundays this year. This wonderful work, published at the beginning of the 20th century, includes entries for every Sunday of the Liturgical Year, along with some for certain feast days. For the three Sundays before Ash Wednesday - Septuagesima, Sexagesima, and Quinquagesima Sunday - our author appropriately refers to each as "meditations." They're intended to help us enter into that penitential spirit that marks us during the coming Holy Season of Lent.
This week, for Sexagesima Sunday, we'll consider the serious commitment to prayer, penance, and almsgiving we should make during Lent.
Now, ideally, you're already praying, performing acts of penance, as well as almsgiving throughout the year. For Lent, thought, the idea is to either increase or intensify in some way what you're already doing. There's no one way to do this; it'll be different for each of us. But once you get some idea of what you want to do, then commit. Don't just think about it. Tell Our Lord what you're planning to do, then make up your mind to do it persistently and consistently.
(In one of my exercise videos, the instructor wears a t-shirt that says: Decide, Commit, Succeed. He rightly points out that any of us can decided and commit. To succeed, though, isn't always in our hands. We simply do our best. Sometimes we'll hit our targets, sometimes we fall short. But nothing happens unless we decide what we want to do and commit to it.)
If you have a good spiritual director, he's likely going to make recommendations. If you don't, you can do this on your own. This shouldn't take hours of agonized research and analysis. But it is serious business. So spend some serious time in meditation and prayer to settle on what sort of commitment makes sense in your individual circumstances. As was the case last week, our author relies on St. Paul to grab our attention and get us properly focused.
"Thrice I was beaten with rods, once I was stoned, thrice I suffered shipwreck, a night and a day I was in the depths of the sea. In journeying often, in perils of waters, in perils of robbers, in perils from my own nation, in perils from the Gentiles, in perils in the city, in perils in the wilderness, in perils in the sea, in perils from false brethren. In labor and painfulness, in much watchings, in hunger and thirst, in fastings often, in cold and nakedness...
"This is what one man could do, whose intense devotion was to the same Lord God we serve.
"How are we going to imitate him?"
Got your attention? Okay. So what's your answer? Think about this. Meditate on it. You're not being asked to literally imitate St. Paul. But I think you'll agree that something like giving up chocolate won't really get us where we need to be here.
We next turn to great St. Augustine to gain some understanding of just how we may hope to be tempered by our increased devotion to prayer, penance, and almsgiving. (And remember here that almsgiving encompasses not only the charitable giving of our material substance, but also acts of kindness, patience, the giving of ourselves - our time and attention - for the benefit of others.) Recall that St. Augustine, like St. Paul, experienced a great conversion from sinner to saint, albeit not in a singular moment in time. Once converted, though, both fought for good and opposed evil, with heroic virtue, as do all saints. Here's what St. Augustine tells us:
"When the soul has taken its flight towards God (and it is love that makes it take that upward flight), marvelously free and superior to all the torments of the flesh, it extends its magnificent wings, and strong with its chaste love, it darts forward to God, Who calls it, to lose itself in His embrace."
Notice the central role of love here. When we decide on our Lenten commitment, love must be what motivates us. Love of God - both directly as well as through love of neighbor - must be our ultimate intention.
Giving up things you enjoy with love, performing acts of penance with love, almsgiving with love: that's how we should be thinking about all this.
At the end of his meditation, our author imagines St. Paul and St. Augustine now:
"We fancy that they walk and talk together in the fair fields of Paradise...The battle they fought so valiantly is ended. They stand there in the court of their King forever, father and son by a spiritual birthright...proofs incontrovertible of what the love of God has power to do."
We pray to these, and all the saints, now to assist us in our determination to live up to our commitment during this coming Holy Season of Lent.
"Let us beseech them to obtain for us the unflinching courage of their convictions and the tireless might of their love. O my God! grant to us cowards one spark of it, to set our cold, dull, earth-bound hearts on fire. Make us long to sacrifice everything for Thee...Grant us courage to prove our love by our complete self-sacrifice, and by our thoroughly despising all things else in our devotion to Thee, O God, alone!"
Happy Sexagesima Sunday!
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