Septuagesima

THOUGHTS ON THE SEPTUAGESIMA SEASON
Saturday before Septuagesima Sunday

Article 1
Get Out That Road Map to Heaven and Start Planning!

From Talking to Walking! From Sitting to Stretching!
The Church selects the following passage for Septuagesima Sunday for a wise purpose: “Know you not that they that run in the race, all run indeed, but one receiveth the prize? So run that you may obtain. And every one that striveth for the mastery, refraineth himself from all things: and they indeed that they may receive a corruptible crown; but we an incorruptible one. I therefore so run, not as at an uncertainty! I so fight, not as one beating the air: but I chastise my body, and bring it into subjection” (1 Corinthians 9:24-27).

For the athlete, the race is not something he engages in every single of the week, all year round. The race comes along at certain intervals—but it is the fool who does not plan and prepare for the race beforehand! Heaven is a serious thing and God wants to see if you will take getting there as a serious occupation. Sin is a serious thing and God wants to see how seriously you look upon sin and how ready you are to pay your debts for past sins.

Get Up Off the Couch!
From a purely human and natural perspective, nobody likes or wants Lent. Secretly, most people are probably happy that the current Church law for Lent (under the pain of sin) only binds on two days—Ash Wednesday and Good Friday―which, by reducing fasting from 40 days to merely 2 days, constitutes a 95% discount on penance at a time when sin has probably increased 1000% over the last 50 years.

Yet Our Lady seems to rebuke this attitude at La Salette, when she warns: “The chiefs, the leaders of the people of God, have neglected prayer and penance”, while at Lourdes she emphatically says: “Penance! Penance! Penance!” and at Fatima she asks for much prayer and sacrifice, adding that many of the people who were asking for cures and other favors from her, through the three children, would not receive them until they reformed and changed their sinful lives!

At Quito and also at La Salette, she condemned luxury and pleasure seeking: “The people will think of nothing but amusements … Moreover, in these unhappy times, there will be unbridled luxury which, acting thus to snare the rest into sin, will conquer innumerable frivolous souls who will be lost ... communities can only be preserved at the cost of much penance.”

What Lays Beyond the Couch?
Quite simply—penance! As Our Lord said: “Unless you shall do penance, you shall all likewise perish!” (Luke 13:3). Looking at the flip side of that coin—if you remain laying on the couch, you will likewise perish. Penance goes beyond merely keeping the laws of fasting and abstinence. Penance is what you make of it: “For what things a man shall sow, those also shall he reap. For he that soweth in his flesh, of the flesh also shall reap corruption. But he that soweth in the spirit, of the spirit shall reap life everlasting” (Galatians 6:8). “He who soweth sparingly, shall also reap sparingly” (2 Corinthians 9:6). You get what you put into it—the more penance you do now, the less there will be to do hereafter.

Plan Your Penances
Though fasting and praying are the staple diet or foundation of Lent, there is much more that you can do besides. You can approach your additional penance from various angles—from the viewpoint of your five senses; or the locations in which you live, work, worship, pray and socialize; or the people in your life; or the seven Capital Sins; or your duties of state; or the Ten Commandments; the seven corporal works of mercy; the seven spiritual works of mercy; or any other aspect of your life. We will, over the course of the next 16 days that lead up to Ash Wednesday, help you start putting into practice—as a warm-up stretching session—these additional penances.

Don’t Go Through Lent in One Gear!
Just a monotone speaker quickly loses the interest and attention of his audience, likewise a ‘monotone’ Lent, or a Lent with little or no variety in penance, will quickly lose the interest and perseverance of the penitent. To go through Lent with a one-dimensional penance means that we have failed to grasp both the purpose and potential of Lent. We are like blind persons, trying to walk though Lent.

Our calling is not just to do penance, but to become holy—to become saints. Giving-up things and not-doing things is only one aspect of Lent in particular and the acquisition of holiness in general. Holy Scripture gives us both sides of the coin: “Turn away from evil and do good” (Psalm 33:15). Turning away from evil is the “not doing” or “giving-up” side of things, whereby we give-up and no longer participate in the sinful behavior that we had fallen into. The other side of the coin is the “doing good”, which means the acquisition and practice of virtues that we do not yet possess.

Lent and the Three Stages of the Spiritual Life
This links into the Three Stages or Three Conversions of the Spiritual Life, that the spiritual writers and masters talk about. These three stages or levels that everyone MUST pass through if they wish to get to Heaven. It is the height of pride to imagine oneself to be exempt from these three stages—much like it would be the height of pride to bypass the three chief areas of education—whether educated at home or at school—namely, Lower School level, Middle School level and High School level.

To expect to get the best jobs without any education is arrogant and ridiculous. To expect to get to Heaven without passing through those three states is equally arrogant and ridiculous. Yet how many are there who refuse or neglect to study this “Road Map” to Heaven? The vast majority! Don’t be like the vast majority. There is no such thing as “safety in numbers” in the spiritual life. For the majority—or the “numbers” are not safe, but lost.

As Our Lord Himself clearly and unambiguously says: “Enter ye in at the narrow gate: for wide is the gate, and broad is the way that leadeth to destruction, and many there are who go in thereat. How narrow is the gate, and strait is the way that leadeth to life: and few there are that find it! …

"Not everyone that saith to Me: ‘Lord! Lord!’ shall enter into the Kingdom of Heaven: but he that doth the will of My Father, Who is in Heaven, he shall enter into the Kingdom of Heaven. Many will say to Me in that day: ‘Lord! Lord! Have not we prophesied in Thy Name, and cast out devils in Thy Name, and done many miracles in Thy Name?’ And then will I profess unto them: ‘I never knew you! Depart from Me, you that work iniquity!’

'Everyone, therefore, that heareth these My words, and doth them, shall be likened to a wise man that built his house upon a rock, and the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and they beat upon that house, and it fell not, for it was founded on a rock. And every one that heareth these My words, and doth them not, shall be like a foolish man that built his house upon the sand, and the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and they beat upon that house, and it fell, and great was the fall thereof” (Matthew 7:13-27).

The Road Map to Heaven
The above mentioned three stages in the spiritual life are, first of all, (1) the Way of Beginners or otherwise called the “The Purgative Way”, wherein we purge ourselves of our sinful behavior, especially with regard to giving-up mortal sin and not falling back into such a lifestyle. The second level is the Way of Proficients otherwise called “The Illuminative Way”, wherein having left mortal sin behind, the soul now begins to acquire and practice virtues, as well as beginning a war against deliberate venial sin. It is extremely important to know the basics of these first two stages of the spiritual life, because they show us the correct ways (not our self-imagined ways) on what is necessary and obligatory to get to Heaven, they give us, so to speak, the recipe we must follow.

Busy—But With What?
There are people who spend infinitely more hours and effort in learning and following mere vain human food recipes, or mechanical, electrical, computer, software instructions or sports tactics than they do studying, learning, remembering and putting into practice God-given instructions on how to please Him and get to Heaven.

Martha was too busy about material things, while her sister Mary was sat at Our Lord’s feet attentive to His words. “Martha was busy about much serving. Who stood and said: ‘Lord! Hast thou no care that my sister hath left me alone to serve? Speak to her, therefore, that she help me!’ And the Lord answering, said to her: ‘Martha! Martha! Thou art careful, and art troubled about many things! But one thing is necessary! Mary hath chosen the best part, which shall not be taken away from her!’” (Luke 10:40-42).

Our Lord clearly says that “one thing is necessary”—the interior life, the spiritual life. That is why this website is primarily and ceaselessly focused on this “one thing necessary”. What good is mere knowledge about what is going-on all around the world—in the Church, in politics, in social life, in sports, in fashion, in music and the arts, etc., if you neglect your spiritual life and lose your soul, or at best scrape into Purgatory (which, in its deepest parts, is almost like Hell itself!). The spiritual life is the staple that will get you to Heaven—your knowledge about countless other things will not! Do not neglect the “one thing necessary” and do not relegate below all those imaginary ‘necessary’ things that fill your daily life!

To Mother Mariana de Jesus Torres (of Our Lady of Good Success fame), Our Lord complained: “The times will come when doctrine will be commonly known among the learned and the ignorant ... Many religious books will be written. But the practice of the virtues and of these doctrines will be found in only a few souls; for this reason, saints will become rare. And precisely for this reason, My priests and My religious will fall into a fatal indifference. Their coldness will extinguish the fire of divine love, afflicting My Loving Heart!” Our Lord points out the mistake of putting knowledge above living out that acquired knowledge—there are way too many who are ‘constipated’ with their knowledge, while, on the other hand, there are also many who have insufficient knowledge. You cannot love what you do not know, but your knowledge is meant to lead you into action—the action of loving God: “And thou shalt love the Lord thy God, with thy whole heart, and with thy whole soul, and with thy whole mind, and with thy whole strength. This is the first commandment” (Mark 12:30).

Many Find the One “Thing Necessary” Unnecessary
Fr. Garrigou-Lagrange, for many decades the professor of Ascetical and Mystical Theology at the Angelicum (one of Rome’s top seminaries) till his death in 1964—comments on the above Jesus-Martha-Mary incident, saying:

“The one thing necessary which Jesus spoke of―to Martha and Mary (Luke 10:40-42) consists in hearing the word of God and living by it. The interior life, thus conceived, is something far more profound and more necessary in us than intellectual life or the cultivation of the sciences, than artistic or literary life, than social or political life. Unfortunately, some great scholars, mathematicians, physicists, and astronomers have no interior life, so to speak, but devote themselves to the study of their science as if God did not exist. In their moments of solitude they have no intimate conversation with Him. Their life appears to be in certain respects the search for the true and the good in a more or less definite and restricted domain, but it is so tainted with self-love and intellectual pride that we may legitimately question whether it will bear fruit for eternity. Many artists, literary men, and statesmen never rise above this level of purely human activity which is, in short, quite exterior. Do the depths of their souls live by God? It would seem not.

“This shows that the interior life, or the life of the soul with God, well deserves to be called the one thing necessary, since by it we tend to our last end and assure our salvation. This last must not be too widely separated from progressive sanctification, for it is the very way of salvation.

“There are those who seem to think that it is sufficient to be saved and that it is not necessary to be a saint. It is clearly not necessary to be a saint who performs miracles and whose sanctity is officially recognized by the Church. To be saved, we must take the way of salvation, which is identical with that of sanctity. There will be only saints in heaven, whether they enter there immediately after death or after purification in purgatory. No one enters heaven unless he has that sanctity which consists in perfect purity of soul. Every sin though it should be venial, must be effaced, and the punishment due to sin must be borne or remitted, in order that a soul may enjoy forever the vision of God, see Him as He sees Himself, and love Him as He loves Himself. Should a soul enter heaven before the total remission of its sins, it could not remain there and it would cast itself into purgatory to be purified.” (Fr. Garrigou-Lagrange, The Ages of the Interior Life).

That is, quite simply and bluntly, why souls are lost—not that they deliberately want to be lost, but that they deliberately refuse or neglect to study and do what is required to be saved. They invent their own excuses and create their own “home-made” idea about what salvation is all about.

Lent is the embodiment of these two initial stages of the spiritual life: the “Way of Beginners” who purge themselves of mortal sin, and the “Way of Proficients” who rise to a higher level of acquiring the strength of virtue. This is the negative-positive aspect of Lent that we should seek to practice.

No False Sense of Security
Let us not be fooled into thinking that we are at a higher spiritual level than we actually are—that is the temptation of the devil and you can see that temptation to pride being offered to Our Lord by the devil after His 40 days of prayer and fasting in the desert. Remember what Our Lord said to one of His mystics: “If you could see yourself as I see you, then you would die of terror!” Just about everyone rates themselves way above their “true market value”—it’s human nature and Original Sin.

Throughout these days that lead up to Ash Wednesday and the start of Lent, we shall both encourage you and help you start putting together a simple, cohesive. practical and powerful plan for your Lenten exercises. As you sow, so shall you reap. You will only get out of Lent what you put into it! And you will not put very much into it if you don’t plan for it! “For what things a man shall sow, those also shall he reap” (Galatians 6:8).

THOUGHTS ON THE SEPTUAGESIMA SEASON
Septuagesima Sunday

Article 2
Septuagesima : The Reason for the Season!

Septuagesima―The Reason for the Season
The Season of Septuagesima comprises the three weeks immediately preceding Lent. It forms one of the principal divisions of the Liturgical Year, and is itself divided into three parts, each part corresponding to a week: the first is called Septuagesima; the second, Sexagesima; the third, Quinquagesima.

All three are named from their numerical reference to Lent, which, in the language of the Church, is called Quadragesima ― that is, Forty ― because the great Feast of Easter is prepared for by tile holy exercises of Forty Days. The words Quinquagesima, Sexagesima, and Septuagesima, tell us of the same great Solemnity as looming in the distance, and as being the great object towards which the Church would have us now begin to turn all our thoughts, and desires, and devotion.

Spiritual Life Begins With Forty!
Now, the Feast of Easter must be prepared for by a forty-days’ recollectedness and penance. Those forty-days are one of the principal Seasons of the Liturgical Year, and one of the most powerful means employed by the Church for exciting in the hearts of her children the spirit of their Christian vocation. It is of the utmost importance, that such a Season of penance should produce its work in our souls ― the renovation of the whole spiritual life. The Church, therefore, has instituted a preparation for the holy time of Lent. She gives us the three weeks of Septuagesima, during which she withdraws us, as much as may be, from the noisy distractions of the world, in order that our hearts may be the more readily impressed by the solemn warning she is to give us, at the commencement of Lent, by marking our foreheads with ashes.

Forty―Or More or Less!
This prelude to the holy season of Lent was not known in the early ages of Christianity―its institution would seem to have originated in the Greek Church. The practice of this Church being never to fast on Saturdays, the number of fasting-days in Lent, besides the six Sundays of Lent―on which, by universal custom, the Faithful never fasted―there were also the six Saturdays, which the Greeks would never allow to be observed as days of fasting―so that their Lent was short, by twelve days, of the Forty spent by our Savior in the desert. To make up the deficiency, they were obliged to begin their Lent so many days earlier.

The Church of Rome had no such motive for anticipating the season of those privations, which belong to Lent; for, from the earliest antiquity, she kept the Saturdays of Lent, (and as often, during the rest of the year, as circumstances might require,) as fasting days. At the close of the 6th century, St. Gregory tile Great, alludes, in one of his homilies, to the fast of Lent being less than Forty Days, owing to the Sundays which come during that holy season. “There are,” he says, “from this Day (the first Sunday of Lent) to the joyous Feast of Easter, six Weeks, that is, forty-two days. As we do not fast on the six Sundays, there are but thirty-six fasting days; which we offer to Gel as the ‘tithe of our year’” (The sixteenth homily on the Gospels).

The “Fix-It” at Forty
It was, therefore, after the pontificate of St. Gregory, that the last four days of Quinquagesima Week, were added to Lent, in order that the number of Fasting Days might be exactly Forty. As early, however, as the 9th century, the custom of beginning Lent on Ash Wednesday was of obligation in the whole Latin Church. All the manuscript copies of the Gregorian Sacramentary, which bear that date, call this Wednesday the In capite jejunii, that is to say, the beginning of the fast; and Amalarius gives us every detail of the Liturgy of the 9th century, tells us, that it was, even then, the rule to begin the Fast four days before the first Sunday of Lent. We find the practice confirmed by two Councils, held in that century―as shown by Meaux, and Soissons. But, out of respect for the form of Divine Service drawn up by St. Gregory, the Church does not make any important change in the Office of these four days. Up to the Vespers of Saturday, when alone she begins the Lenten rite, she observes the rubrics prescribed for Quinquagesima Week.

Staggered Start
Peter of Blois, who lived in the 12th century, tells us what was the practice in his days. He says: “All Religious begin the Fast of Lent at Septuagesima; the Greeks, at Sexagesima; the Clergy, at Quinquagesima; and the rest of Christians, who form the Church militant on Earth, begin their Lent on the Wednesday following Quinquagesima” (Sermon xiii). The secular Clergy, as we learn from these words, were bound to begin the Lenten Fast somewhat before the laity: though it was only by two days, that is, on Monday, as we gather from the Life of St. Ulric, Bishop of Augsburg, written in the 10th century. The Council of Clermont, in 1095, at which Pope Urban the Second presided, has a decree sanctioning the obligation of the Clergy beginning abstinence from meat at Quinquagesima. This Sunday was called, indeed, Dominica carnis privii, and Carnis privium Sacerdotum (that is, Priests’ Carnival Sunday) ― but the term is to be understood in the sense of the announcement being made, on that Sunday, of the abstinence having to begin on the following day. We shall find, further on, that a like usage was observed in the Greek Church, on the three Sundays preceding Lent. This law, which obliged the Clergy to these two additional days of abstinence, was in force in the 13th century, as we learn from a Council held at Angers, which threatens with suspension all priests who neglect to begin Lent on the Monday of Quinquagesima Week.

This usage, however, soon became obsolete; and in the 15th century, the secular Clergy, and even the Monks themselves, began the Lenten Fast, like the rest of the Faithful, on Ash Wednesday.

There can be no doubt, but that the original motive for this anticipation ― which, after several modifications, was limited to the four days immediately preceding Lent ― was to remove from the Greeks the pretext of taking scandal at the Latins, who did not fast a full Forty days. Ratramnus, in his Controversy with the Greeks, clearly implies it. But the Latin Church did not think it necessary to carry her condescension further, by imitating the Greek ante-lenten usages, which originated, as we have already said, in the eastern custom of not fasting on Saturdays

The Gallican [French] Liturgy had retained several usages of the Oriental Churches, to which it owed, in part, its origin: hence, it was not without some difficulty, that the custom of abstaining and fasting on Saturdays was introduced into Gaul. Until such time as the Churches of that country had adopted the Roman custom, in that point of discipline, they were necessitated to anticipate the Fast of Lent.

The first Council of Orleans, held in the early part of the 6th century, enjoins the Faithful to observe, before Easter, Quadragesima (as the Latins call Lent) and not Quinquagesima, in order, says the Council, that unity of custom may be maintained.

Towards the close of the same century, the fourth Council held in the same City, repeals the same prohibition, and explains the intentions of the making such an enactment, by ordering that the Saturdays during Lent should be observed as days of fasting. Previously to this, that is, in the years 511 and 541, the first and second Councils of Orange had combated the same abuse, by also forbidding the imposing on the Faithful the obligation of commencing the Fast at Quinquagesima.

The introduction of the Roman Liturgy into France; which was brought about by the zeal of Pepin and Charlemagne, finally established, in that country, the custom of keeping the Saturday as a day of penance; and, as we have just seen, the beginning Lent on Quinquagesima was not observed excepting by the Clergy.

In the 13th century, the only Church in the Patriarchate of the West, which began Lent earlier than the Church of Rome, was that of Poland its Lent opened on the Monday of Septuagesima, which was owing to the rites of the Greek Church being much used in Poland. The custom was abolished, even in that country, by Pope Innocent the fourth, in the year 1248.

Thus it was, that the Roman Church, by this anticipation of Lent by four days, gave the exact number of Forty Days to the holy Season, which she had instituted in imitation of the Forty Days spent by our Savior in the desert. Whilst faithful to her ancient practice of looking on the Saturday as a day appropriate for penitential exercises, she gladly borrowed from the Greek Church the custom of preparing for Lent, by giving to the Liturgy of the three preceding weeks a tone of holy mournfulness.

Even as early as the beginning of the 9th century, as we learn from Amalarius, the Alleluia and Gloria in excelsis were suspended in the Septuagesima Offices. The Monks conformed to the custom, although the Rule of St. Benedict prescribed otherwise.

Finally, in the second half of the 11th century, Pope Alexander the Second enacted, that the total suspension of the Alleluia should be everywhere observed, beginning with the Vespers of the Saturday preceding Septuagesima Sunday. This Pope was but renewing a rule already sanctioned, in that same century, by Pope Leo IX, and which was inserted in the body of Canon Law (Cap. Hi duo. De consec. Dist. 1).

So There We Have It!
Thus was the present important period of the Liturgical Year, after various changes, established the Cycle of the Church. It has been there upward of a thousand years. Its name, Septuagesima (Seventy), expresses, as we have already remarked, a numerical relation to Quadragesima (the Forty Days); although, in reality, there are not seventy but only sixty-three days from Septuagesima Sunday to Easter. We will speak of the mystery of the name in the following Chapter. The first Sunday of Lent being called Quadragesima (Forty), each of the three previous Sundays has a name expressive of an additional ten: the nearest to Lent being called Quinquagesima (Fifty); the middle one, Sexagesima (Sixty); the third, Septuagesima (Seventy).

The Keys to the Season
As the season of Septuagesima depends upon time of the Easter celebration, it comes sooner or later, according to the changes of that great Feast. The 18th of January and the 22nd of February called the Septuagesima Keys, because the Sunday, which is called Septuagesima, cannot be earlier in the year, than the first, nor later than the second, of these two days.

THOUGHTS ON THE SEPTUAGESIMA SEASON
Monday after Septuagesima Sunday

Article 3
Stop the Talking! Start the Walking!

From Talking to Walking! From Sitting to Stretching!
“Know you not that they that run in the race, all run indeed, but one receiveth the prize? So run that you may obtain. And every one that striveth for the mastery, refraineth himself from all things: and they indeed that they may receive a corruptible crown; but we an incorruptible one. I therefore so run, not as at an uncertainty! I so fight, not as one beating the air: but I chastise my body, and bring it into subjection” (1 Corinthians 9:24-27).

Get Up Off the Couch!
From a purely human and natural perspective, nobody likes or wants Lent. Secretly, most people are probably happy that the current Church law for Lent (under the pain of sin) only binds on two days—Ash Wednesday and Good Friday. Yet Our Lady seems to rebuke this attitude at La Salette, when she warns: “The chiefs, the leaders of the people of God, have neglected prayer and penance”, while at Lourdes she emphatically says:“Penance! Penance! Penance!” and at Fatima she asks for much prayer and sacrifice, adding that many of the people who were asking for cures and other favors from her, through the three children, would not receive them until they reformed and changed their sinful lives!

At Quito and also at La Salette, she condemned luxury and pleasure seeking: “The people will think of nothing but amusements … Moreover, in these unhappy times, there will be unbridled luxury which, acting thus to snare the rest into sin, will conquer innumerable frivolous souls who will be lost ... communities can only be preserved at the cost of much penance.”

What Lays Beyond the Couch?
Quite simply—penance! As Our Lord said: “Unless you shall do penance, you shall all likewise perish!” (Luke 13:3). Looking at the flip side of that coin—if you remain laying on the couch, you will likewise perish. Penance goes beyond merely keeping the laws of fasting and abstinence. Penance is what you make of it: “For what things a man shall sow, those also shall he reap. For he that soweth in his flesh, of the flesh also shall reap corruption. But he that soweth in the spirit, of the spirit shall reap life everlasting” (Galatians 6:8). “He who soweth sparingly, shall also reap sparingly” (2 Corinthians 9:6). You get what you put into it—the more penance you do now, the less there will be to do hereafter.

Plan Your Penances
Though fasting and praying are the staple diet or foundation of Lent, there is much more that you can do besides. You can approach your additional penance from various angles—from the viewpoint of your five senses; or the locations in which you live, work, worship, pray and socialize; or the people in your life; or the seven Capital Sins; or your duties of state; or the Ten Commandments; the seven corporal works of mercy; the seven spiritual works of mercy; or any other aspect of your life. We will, over the course of the next 17 days that lead up to Ash Wednesday, help you start putting into practice—as a warm-up stretching session—these additional penances.

Don’t Go Through Lent in One Gear!
Just a monotone speaker quickly loses the interest and attention of his audience, likewise a ‘monotone’ Lent, or a Lent with little or no variety in penance, will quickly lose the interest and perseverance of the penitent. To go through Lent with a one-dimensional penance means that we have failed to grasp both the purpose and potential of Lent. We are like blind persons, trying to walk though Lent.

Our calling is not just to do penance, but to become holy—to become saints. Giving-up things and not-doing things is only one aspect of Lent in particular and the acquisition of holiness in general. Holy Scripture gives us both sides of the coin: “Turn away from evil and do good” (Psalm 33:15). Turning away from evil is the “not doing” or “giving-up” side of things, whereby we give-up and no longer participate in the sinful behavior that we had fallen into. The other side of the coin is the “doing good”, which means the acquisition and practice of virtues that we do not yet possess.

Lent and the Three Stages of the Spiritual Life
This links into the Three Stages or Three Conversions of the Spiritual Life, that the spiritual writers and masters talk about. These three stages or levels that everyone MUST pass through if they wish to get to Heaven, are, first of all, (1) the Way of Beginners or otherwise called the “The Purgative Way”, wherein we purge ourselves of our sinful behavior, especially with regard to giving-up mortal sin and not falling back into such a lifestyle. The second level is the Way of Proficients otherwise called “The Illuminative Way”, wherein having left mortal sin behind, the soul now begins to acquire and practice virtues, as well as beginning a war against deliberate venial sin.

Lent is the embodiment of these two initial stages of the spiritual life: the Way of Beginners who purge themselves of mortal sin, and the Way of Proficients who rise to a higher level of acquiring the strength of virtue. This is the negative-positive aspect of Lent that we should seek to practice.

Throughout the next 17 days we shall both encourage you and help you start putting together a simple, cohesive. practical and powerful plan for your Lenten exercises. As you sow, so shall you reap. You will only get out of Lent what you put into it!

THOUGHTS ON THE SEPTUAGESIMA SEASON
Tuesday after Septuagesima Sunday

Article 4
Isn't It a Bit Too Early to be Talking About Lent?

Isn’t This Overkill?
The Sundays of Septuagesima, Sexagesima and Quinquagesima are, in themselves, a countdown to Lent—they are not Lent itself. Isn’t this a bit much, talking about penance weeks before Lent has even arrived? Isn’t it overdoing it?

At first glance, that seems like a very plausible comment—until you look upon in the light of human nature and bad habits! How many people truly and thoroughly prepare for Lent in advance? Very few indeed—especially these days, when Lent is effectively reduced to fasting only on two out of its Forty Days (Ash Wednesday and Good Friday) and abstaining from meat on the Fridays of Lent—which most people do not do anyway! Of course, there is a small band of serious Catholics who are equally serious about their Lenten observance, but even then it is more of a minimalist approach rather that one of “What more can I do?”

Lethargy Can’t Be Cured Last Minute!
Let’s face it—for many if not most, Lent is an “Okay, here it comes! I’d better do something!” It is a thing we prefer to leave to the last minute, rather than chomping at the bit as we can’t wait for it all to start! With regard to Lent, we are like a typical child being told to do their homework instead of going out to play! Lent is more of reluctance—that is if it is done properly. Of course, a lukewarm Lent is no problem—but what good is an aspirin if you have cancer? In times of disease we need a more powerful medicine and we need to take it often. The number of those who expect to get to Heaven for a pittance are to be pitied--“The perverse are hard to be corrected, and the number of fools is infinite” (Ecclesiastes 1:15).

Lethargy and Foolishness
Speaking of this lethargy and fools, we are reminded in Holy Scripture of the lethargy of the foolish virgins, who were unprepared for the coming of the bridegroom and consequently were excluded from the marriage feast! “Then shall the kingdom of heaven be like to ten virgins, who taking their lamps went out to meet the bridegroom and the bride. And five of them were foolish, and five wise. But the five foolish, having taken their lamps, did not take oil with them; but the wise took oil in their vessels with the lamps. And, the bridegroom tarrying, they all slumbered and slept. At midnight there was a cry made: ‘Behold the bridegroom cometh! Go ye forth to meet him!’ Then all those virgins arose and trimmed their lamps. And the foolish said to the wise: ‘Give us of your oil! For our lamps are gone out!’ The wise answered, saying: ‘Lest perhaps there be not enough for us and for you, go ye rather to them that sell, and buy for yourselves!’ Now whilst they went to buy, the bridegroom came: and they that were ready, went in with him to the marriage, and the door was shut. But at last come also the other virgins, saying: ‘Lord! Lord! Open to us!’ But he answering said: ‘Amen I say to you, I know you not!’” (Matthew 25:1-11).

Sowing and Reaping
There is an inescapable connection between preparation and results, between efforts and fruits. Nowhere is this more evident than in the Parable of the Talents—where some of the servants who received talents put in much effort and produced much fruit, yet one man buried his talent and produced nothing with it—he had the talent taken away from him and was cast outside where there was the “weeping and gnashing of teeth” (Matthew 25:15-30).

We know what we ought to do, but we don’t really want to do it! The consequences, as Our Lord points out, as severe: “And that servant who knew the will of his lord, and prepared not himself, and did not according to his will, shall be beaten with many stripes!” (Luke 12:47). St. Paul thus adds: “For what things a man shall sow, those also shall he reap. For he that soweth in his flesh, of the flesh also shall reap corruption. But he that soweth in the spirit, of the spirit shall reap life everlasting” (Galatians 6:8).

Wallowing in Lenten Mediocrity
How many years have we wallowed in Lenten mediocrity? If we are serious about our spiritual life, then each year, like a child progressing through the grades at school, we should have been taking on more work of a more difficult nature. We are not meant to stay in once grade or once class all our lives! In his book, The Three Ages of the Interior Life, Fr. Garrigou-Lagrange speaks of the spiritual progression that is a necessity in each person’s spiritual life.

Fr. Garrigou-Lagrange writes: “St. Thomas compares the three ages of the spiritual life with those of the corporeal life: childhood, adolescence, and maturity. We should note this analogy, and in particular the transition from one period to another.

“It is generally admitted that first childhood ceases on the awakening of reason about the seventh year. This period is followed by a sort of second childhood which lasts until the period of adolescence, about the fourteenth year. Adolescence extends from the fourteenth to the twentieth year; then comes maturity, which is divided into the period which precedes full maturity, and that which, from about the thirty-fifth year onward, follows before the decline of old age.

“Psychologists point out that mentality changes with the transformations of the organism. The child follows chiefly the imagination and the impulses of the sensible appetites. He does not yet discern, nor does he organize rationally; even when his reason begins to awaken, it remains extremely dependent on his senses. On leaving childhood, about the fourteenth year, at the period of puberty, there is not only an organic, but a psychological, intellectual, and moral transformation. The adolescent is no longer content to follow his imagination; he begins to reflect on the affairs of human life, on the necessity of preparing himself for a certain profession or life-work. This period of transition, called the awkward age, is not without difficulty: then, about the fourteenth year, the adolescent's moral personality begins to take shape with a sense of honor and of good reputation, or he may become perverted and begin to go wrong, unless he becomes a retarded, unstable, abnormal person.

“Here the analogy throws light on the spiritual life. We shall see that the beginner who does not become a proficient, as he should, turns out badly or remains a retarded, tepid soul, and, as it were, a spiritual dwarf. As the Fathers, particularly St. Bernard, so often say: ‘He who does not advance, falls back.’ To refuse to become better, is to fall back, whereas to tend persistently toward perfection, is, in a sense, already to possess it.

“To continue the analogy, if the crisis of puberty, which is at once both physical and moral, is a difficult period through which to pass, the same is true of another crisis, which may be called that of first liberty, which introduces the adolescent into maturity at about the twentieth year. The young man, who is then fully formed physically, must begin to take his place in the life of society. Some pass through this period badly, abuse the liberty given them, and, like the prodigal son, confound liberty with license. On the other hand, the adult who develops normally and takes the good road concerns himself with matters of individual, family, and social life in a manner superior to that of the adolescent. The adult is engrossed in more general questions. Unless he has received a higher vocation from God, he himself founds a home that he may in his turn become an educator.

“Something similar exists in the spiritual life. When the proficient who is, so to speak, in the period of spiritual adolescence, reaches the more advanced age of the perfect, his mentality rises as it becomes spiritual, and it grows more arid more supernatural. He sees with increasing clearness not only the things that pertain to individual, family, and social life, but those that have to do with the reign of God or the life of the Church in their relation to eternal life.

“We should like particularly to emphasize here the differences which separate the three ages of the spiritual life and to explain how the transition is made from one to the other. As St. Thomas observes: ‘The divers degrees of charity are distinguished according to the different pursuits (studia) to which man is brought by the increase of charity. For at first it is incumbent on man to occupy himself chiefly with avoiding sin and resisting his concupiscences, which move him in opposition to charity. This concerns beginners, in whom charity has to be fed or fostered lest it be destroyed. In the second place, man's chief pursuit is to aim at progress in good, and this is the pursuit of the proficient, whose principal aim is to strengthen their charity by adding to it: man's third pursuit is to aim chiefly at union with God and enjoyment of Him: this belongs to the perfect who ‘desire to be dissolved and to be with Christ’ (Philippians 1:23)."

The Disease of Ill-Preparedness
In a 2012 US NEWS article, on how badly US high-school graduates are prepared for college, we read:

“College entrance exam scores show most students aren’t prepared for college. Nearly 1.7 million high school graduates took the ACT college entrance exam in 2012, testing their knowledge of four core subjects—English, math, science, and reading. But most of those students are not prepped for success in college or the workforce, according to a report released by ACT, Inc.

“More than a quarter of 2012 graduates fell short of college readiness benchmarks that ACT sets for all four subjects, and 60 percent of students tested missed the mark in at least two of the four subjects, the report states. Only 31 percent of students demonstrated the level of science expertise needed to succeed in entry-level college courses, and more than half were not prepared for college math courses. ‘The best way to help students prepare for successful futures is by monitoring their achievement ... and providing help whenever we find they are not on track for success,’ says Jon Whitmore, chief executive officer at ACT. Ensuring these high school students, particularly minority students, are prepared to enter the workforce is critical not only to the students' success, but to economic success, as many companies struggle to find graduates with the requisite skill set. ‘We need to do more to ensure that our young people improve,’ Whitmore says.”

A report entitled “Falling Short? College Learning and Career Success”, issued this year, 2015, by the Association of American Colleges & Universities, it states: “The majority of employers say that improvements are needed to better prepare college graduates for success in the workplace. 58% of employers say that improvements are needed to prepare students for success in entry-level positions. More than 67% say that improvements are needed to prepare students for advancement and promotion in today’s workplace. Only 25% of employers say that recent graduates are well prepared in critical thinking and analytic reasoning, written and oral communication, complex problem solving, innovation and creativity, and applying knowledge and skills to real world settings. About 30% say they are well prepared in the area of ethical judgment and decision making and 37% say they are well prepared in teamwork skills.”

In January of last year, 2015, The Wall Street Journal, in an article entitled “Test Finds College Graduates Lack Skills for White-Collar Jobs” it was stated that 40% of students were below standard with regard to the needs of the business world: “Four in 10 U.S. college students graduate without the complex reasoning skills to manage white-collar work, according to the results of a test of nearly 32,000 students. The test, which was administered at 169 colleges and universities in 2013 and 2014 and released Thursday, reveals … so many start at such a deficit, that many still graduate without the ability to read a scatterplot, construct a cohesive argument or identify a logical fallacy. “Even if there is notable growth over four years, many students are starting at such a low point they may still not be proficient at the point of graduation,’ said Jessalynn K. James, a program manager at the Council for Aid to Education, which administered the test.”

The Illinois State school Superintendent Christopher Koch, says: “Many students do start college and do not finish, and we want to make sure they are able to complete college!” The Buffalo School Superintendent Kriner Cash shocked a School Board audience with data showing that only 1 of every 100 ninth-graders in the district go on to earn a college degree. Likewise, many persons are baptized and do not get to Heaven. We need to make sure they complete the journey and do not end up in Hell.

What is true for the educational demise of today’s students, can also be said to be true of the spiritual demise of today’s Catholics. Too many are not sufficiently instructed or prepared for living a true spiritual life and attaining Heaven. Failure, in this case, has eternal consequences!

What is true for the educational demise of today’s students, can also be said to be true of the spiritual demise of today’s Catholics. Too many are not sufficiently instructed or prepared for living a true spiritual life and attaining Heaven. Failure, in this case, has eternal consequences!

“Spiritual sloth is gravely sinful when it reaches the point of giving up the religious duties necessary for our salvation and sanctification. When it leads us to omit religious acts of lesser importance without a reason, the sin is only venial; but if we do not struggle against this negligence, it soon becomes more serious, placing us in a genuine state of tepidity or spiritual relaxation. This state is a sort of moral anemia, in which evil tendencies awaken little by little, seek to prevail, and manifest themselves by numerous deliberate venial sins, which dispose us to still graver faults, just as bodily anemia prepares the way for the invasion of the germ of a disease, the beginning of a serious illness” (Fr. Garrigou-Lagrange, Three Ages of the Interior Life).

THOUGHTS ON THE SEPTUAGESIMA SEASON
Wednesday after Septuagesima Sunday

Article 5
Start Mapping It Out

Lent is Sent for us to Repent!
As we now enter the ante-chamber of Lent, let us take a brief look at what the website may have in store for this holiest of holy seasons—God willing, for man proposes, but God disposes!

Lent is God sent for us to repent! That will be the general theme or backbone of the postings throughout this Septuagesima and Lenten season.

Our Lady bewails Lack of Penance
At La Salette, in 1846, Our Lady complained that the leaders of the Church would forget about penance: “The spirits of darkness will spread everywhere a universal slackening of all that concerns the service of God ... The chiefs, the leaders of the people of God, have neglected prayer and penance … People will think of nothing but amusement ... Disorder and the love of carnal pleasures will be spread all over the earth.”

At Lourdes, in 1858, we have seen Our Lady asking for penance; she even said most emphatically those haunting words: “PENANCE! PENANCE! PENANCE!” She repeatedly asked Bernadette to kiss the ground and do other penances, not only for others, but for herself too! The Rosary was an integral part of the apparitions, with Our Lady appearing during the recitation of the Rosary by Bernadette, usually disappearing once it was finished. So we have La Salette’s complaint repeated and prayer and penance insisted upon—especially and implicitly the prayer of the Rosary.

At Fatima, in 1917, Our Lady did not hesitate to show the three children a vision of Hell, and added that so many souls go there because there is nobody to pray and offer sacrifices for them (just as she had requested at Lourdes 59 years earlier). She asked for sacrifices (penance) for sinners and here she explicitly demanded the Rosary be prayed, saying that only Our Lady of the Rosary could help the world now.

At Akita, Japan, in 1973, Our Lady gave her third message on October 13, 1973, the actual anniversary of the final visions and miracle of Fatima. It is as follows: "As I told you, if men do not repent and better themselves, the Father will inflict a terrible punishment on all humanity. It will be a punishment greater than the deluge, such as one will never have seen before. Fire will fall from the sky and will wipe out a great part of humanity, the good as well as the bad, sparing neither priests nor faithful. The survivors will find themselves so desolate that they will envy the dead. The only arms which will remain for you will be the Rosary and the Sign left by my Son. Each day, recite the prayers of the Rosary.” Again, the complaint about the lack of repentance and penance, and once again insistence on the Rosary.

Catholics Oblivious to Mary's Message
Sister Lucia of Fatima would relate the fact that Our Lady complained to her that nobody was listening, heeding and acting upon her message—not even good people, who were caught up in doing their own thing.

Focus on Rosary
Therefore, so as not to fall into the same fault and sin, of indifference and lukewarmness to the demands of Heaven, we will, throughout Lent, make these two things the backbone of the material that will be posted. The Rosary will be thoroughly examined, meditations will be provided, and a whole plethora of ideas, suggestions and aids will be furnished to help you improve what Heaven has designated to be the weapon of our age.

Focus on Penance
The other chief aspect will be Penance (and Mortification), with which, as Our Lord said, we will perish. The devil despises true penance just as he despises the Rosary. His constant war on penance has seen the Church diminish the requirements that once existed throughout the whole of Lent, reducing the obligation, under of pain of sin, to do penance to a mere paltry two days out of the Forty Days of Lent—Ash Wednesday and Good Friday! The devil must be singing and dancing as a consequence! This laxity and lukewarmness was predicted and forewarned by Our Lady at the above mentioned apparitions. Now it has come true! Let us not be lax and lukewarm in our penances.

Sin is No Big Deal!
One of the reasons why people rarely do penance is that they have lost sight of the price of sin. Sin, for most people, is no big deal! If you sin, they say, just go to confession and all is put right! That is bad theology! The only thing that is put right in the confessional is the removal of the guilt for sin (if we are sorry, of course). The debt for sin remains.

The meager, paltry penance that the priest gives to the penitent, is not the full price or cost of sin, but only a small portion of the penance that God demands from the sinner—it is like the first payment of a mortgage. The priests rarely give the heavy penances that once used to be given, because they fear we are too weak-willed to fulfill them. So they give us forgiveness for a token ‘down-payment’ and leave it to God’s justice to exact the rest of the payment, either by temporal punishment in this life, or by the horrendous fires of Purgatory in the next.

For this reason—the loss of the sense of sin—we will regularly point out, during this Lenten season, the true price of sin, by relating accounts of some poor souls from Purgatory, who have been allowed, by Divine Justice and Mercy, to appear to those left on earth and manifest the rigors and punishments of Purgatory. Out of sight means out of mind; so we will bring into view what goes on in Purgatory, so we may draw salutary benefits from what God has deliberately allowed to be revealed to us.

Acquiring Virtues
One of the best penances we can do, and one of the best ways of reducing the Purgatory we have already accumulated, is the acquisition of virtues. Acquiring virtues is not easy, it is hard, and it is a penance. It is also the positive side of the spiritual life. Penance is all about paying for evil; virtue is all about becoming good, better and hopefully, one day, perfect. As the Bible says: “Do good and avoid evil.”Our life is not just about the past (which is what penance relates to), but it also about the future (which is what virtue focuses upon). Therefore, we will run a mini-series on the key virtues; giving suggestions as to how one may best acquire them and giving example of saints who showed us how to practice them.

Passion of Our Lord
Devotionally, a chief factor will be the Passion and Death of Our Lord Jesus Christ. This is the best and most fruitful topic of meditation and contemplation, as testified by so many saints and spiritual writers. Most people do not fully grasp the extent of Our Lord’s sufferings; they gloss over them too readily and easily. We will look at His Passion and Death in great depth, starting well before Holy Week.

Another devotional aspect will be devotion to the Sorrowful Heart of Mary, which is a devotion that God wants in our age, and wishes it to be placed on a pedestal alongside devotion to her Immaculate Heart—both have been seriously neglected by Catholics in the modern era.

These are just some of the many aspects of our approach to Lent this year. We want your Lent to be a good Lent. A holy Lent. A serious Lent. A fruitful Lent. Even to point of possibly paying for ALL the many sins (venial, mortal or both) that you have committed in your life so far, so that, with all debt for sin removed, if you were to die, you would go straight to Heaven. That HAS to be the attitude and desire of any and every serious Catholic! Let it also be our desire this Lent.

However, no matter what we put before you, only YOU can make your Lent successful—you can lead a horse to water, but cannot make it drink that water. Likewise, we can provide sources of grace for you, but we cannot guarantee that you will take that grace on board—that depends on YOU and YOU ALONE. But Our Lady is the Mediatrix of all Grace. If we are serious about obtaining those graces, then she will be serious about helping us—for she is also the Help of Christians, the Refuge of Sinners and the Mother of Mercy. With her, in her, and through her, that grace will be won!

THOUGHTS ON THE SEPTUAGESIMA SEASON
Thursday after Septuagesima Sunday

Article 6
No Ideas, No Plans, No Goals = No Chance

Lost Without A Plan!
“Prepare yourselves by your houses and families” (2 Paralipomenon 35:4). “It is the part of man to prepare the soul” (Proverbs 16:1). “But he did evil, and did not prepare his heart to seek the Lord” (2 Paralipomenon 12:14).

Go build a house without a plan! Go coach a team and send them out to play a powerful opponent without a plan! Go start a business without a plan! Send an army into battle without a plan! Try restore your health without a plan! Go teach or run a school without a plan! Build a city without a plan! You will quickly see that no plan means little or no success. The same can be said for our spiritual life in general, and Lent in particular.

An Interesting Study!
Forbes, an American business magazine, published a remarkable study about goal-setting that was carried out in the Harvard MBA Program (Master of Business Administration Program). Harvard’s graduate students were asked if they had set clear, written goals for their futures, as well as if they had made specific plans to transform their fantasies into realities. The result of the study showed that only 3% of the students had written goals and plans to accomplish them, 13% had goals in their minds, but hadn’t written them down anywhere and 84% had no goals at all.

We can apply the same survey to Goals for Lent. Which group do you belong to. What has your typical approach to Lent been like over the past years of your life?

After 10 years, the same group of students were interviewed again and the conclusion of the study was totally astonishing.

The 13% of the class who had goals, but did not write them down, earned twice the amount of the 84% who had no goals. Whereas the 3% who had written goals, were earning, on average, 10 times as much as the other 97% of the class combined.

People who don’t write down their goals tend to fail easier than the ones who have plans. When you don’t have a plan, you don’t know how you will reach your destination. Sure, you know what your destination is and you have a general idea about how you can reach it, but it’s not something that will lead you there for sure.

Think of it like driving in a foreign country. Let’s say you are in Paris, France, and you want to go to Rome, Italy. The only thing you do is get into your car and choose a road mostly based on luck or instinct. Then you just drive. You search for signs that will help you find Munich, but it’s difficult to find the correct way. You don’t have a map or GPS to guide you. You just drive until you reach your destination. The possibility that you will find the correct way to Rome is very minimal. If you do get there, then it will most likely be many days or even weeks after someone who had a road-map or a GPS. The added expense will also be phenomenal—with additional hotel bills and extra gas usage. This is quite similar to having goals that are not specific goals and roaming freely and vaguely inside your head. You know only where you want to go, but you don’t know the exact path that will lead you there. Your road-map or GPS can be likened to having written goals.

Planning Your Lent
Lent is part of the road that leads to Heaven—we could compare it to an interstate highway. It can speed up our journey considerably. There are a few souls—though rare today—who stay on the interstate of Lent for most of the year! When you know you are on the right and best road to your destination (Heaven), why take a lesser road that takes you through cities with their attractions, but will delay or even prevent you from reaching your destination?

Impreciseness, vagueness, generalization, procrastination, and such like attitudes, easily scupper and sink our Lent before we even get into gear. It’s not hard to be easy on yourself when the Church reduces fasting from 40 days to a mere 2 days!—Ash Wednesday and Good Friday! What a discount price! If the leaders of the Church offer such a cheap Lent, who are we to argue? We could say that they have reduced Lent to “Ash” and for “Good”! Yet we must take this with a pinch of salt—for Our Lady warned us that the future Church would become easy-going and that its leaders would lose both the spirit and the Faith:

“Disorder and the love of carnal pleasures will be spread all over the Earth … People will think of nothing but amusement … there will be unbridled luxury which will conquer innumerable frivolous souls, who will be lost ... The secular Clergy will leave much to be desired, because priests will become careless in their sacred duties and they will become attached to wealth and riches, which they will unduly strive to obtain.” (La Salette & Quito).

“The chiefs, the leaders of the people of God, have neglected prayer and penance, and the devil has bedimmed their intelligence. They have become wandering stars which the old devil will drag along with his tail to make them perish ... Lucifer, together with a large number of demons, will be unloosed from Hell; they will put an end to Faith little by little, even in those dedicated to God. They will blind them in such a way, that, unless they are blessed with a special grace, these people will take on the spirit of these angels of Hell; several religious institutions will lose all Faith and will lose many souls.” (La Salette).

Don’t Look to False Shepherds for Guidance
In 1957, Sr. Lucia of Fatima warns us not to take things too lightly, when she says to Fr. Fuentes: “Father, we should not wait for an appeal to the world to come from Rome on the part of the Holy Father, to do penance. Nor should we wait for the call from our bishops in our dioceses, nor from the religious congregations. No! Our Lord has already, very often, used these means and the world has not paid attention. That is why now it is necessary for each one of us to begin to reform ourselves spiritually. Each person must not only save his own soul, but also the souls that God has placed on our path.”

Don’t try and do an “Adam and Eve” move, which tries to place the blame on others. We know we are sinners, we know that the state of the world is worse than it has ever been. We know that is why Our Lady warns that God will punish in a manner not seen since the Great Flood and will wipe out the majority of the human race. We know she has repeatedly called for more and more prayer and penance. We know Holy Scripture says that unless we do penance, we will perish.

So if some leaders of the Church suddenly say we need little or no penance—who will we believe? Common sense, Holy Scripture and Our Lady? Or the isolated irrational pronouncement that we need to do less penance? Remember the warning of St. Paul: “There are some that trouble you, and would pervert the Gospel of Christ. But though we, or an angel from Heaven, preach a Gospel to you besides that which we have preached to you, let him be anathema. As we said before, so now I say again: ‘If any one preach to you a gospel, besides that which you have received, let him be anathema!’” (Galatians 1:7-9). “For such false apostles are deceitful workmen, transforming themselves into the apostles of Christ. And no wonder: for Satan himself transformeth himself into an angel of light” (2 Corinthians 11:13-14). We listen to the false gospel because it is an easy gospel—but it is also an easy way to Hell!

So, as Sr. Lucia said: “We should not wait for an appeal to the world to come from Rome on the part of the Holy Father, to do penance. Nor should we wait for the call from our bishops in our dioceses, nor from the religious congregations. Our Lord has already, very often, used these means and the world has not paid attention. That is why now it is necessary for each one of us to begin to reform ourselves spiritually.” There is no excuse! There is no “passing the buck”! The buck stops with you! There is no loophole—only the hole you might dig for yourself! There is no avoiding it “on a technicality”! Penance or perish! Pray or perish! Plan or perish!

So How Shall We Plan?
Know this—whatever plan you choose to follow, know that on it will depend, to a large extent, how much debt you will remove from the sum total of temporal punishment your sins have thus far earned. Your plan ends up being your payment plan. The more you pay now (in easy payments on Earth) the less you will have to pay later (in excruciating payments in Purgatory, or, God forbid, in Hell). So you see, a lot depends upon what kind of plans you make for Lent. “God loveth a cheerful giver” (2 Corinthians 9:7). “He who soweth sparingly, shall also reap sparingly: and he who soweth in blessings, shall also reap blessings” (2 Corinthians 9:6). “For what things a man shall sow, those also shall he reap. For he that soweth in his flesh, of the flesh also shall reap corruption. But he that soweth in the spirit, of the spirit shall reap life everlasting” (Galatians 6:8).

Don’t Be A Minimalist!
The philosophy of the world is to get the biggest kick-back for least effort—to get the “biggest bang for your buck.” Whereas Heaven says: ““He who soweth sparingly, shall also reap sparingly!” and Our Lord says: “But he that knew not, and did things worthy of stripes, shall be beaten with few stripes. And unto whomsoever much is given, of him much shall be required: and to whom they have committed much, of him they will demand the more!” (Luke 12:48). By being given the grace of the Catholic Faith, we have received far more than most—only 1 in 7 people of the world’s population are Catholic. We have been given more, therefore more is demanded of us. In fact, the sins of a Catholic are more serious than those of a non-Catholic—therefore we need to pay more for our sins.

Balance the Books--Settle Your Accounts
Now calculate into the equation the fact that sin is the greatest evil in the world—I know you don’t believe that, but it is true. Sin is the most expensive thing in the world. St. Paul, in the New Testament, tells us: “the wages of sin is death” (Romans 6:23). Our catechisms tell us that: “Sin is the only evil upon Earth” … “Mortal sin is a great evil, the greatest evil in the world, a greater evil than disease, poverty, or war, because it separates us from God … [venial sin] is second only in evil consequences to mortal sin” (The Catechism Explained, Spirago-Clarke; My Catholic Faith, Bishop Morrow, STD).

The Budget and Balance of Sin
Fr. Schouppe, in his book Purgatory, quotes Fr. Mumford of the Society of Jesus, and his “Treatise on Charity towards the Departed,” in which Fr. Mumford bases the long duration of Purgatory on a calculation of probability, which we shall give in substance. He goes out on the principle that, according to the words of the Holy Ghost, “The just man falls seven times a day” (Proverbs 24:16), that is to say, that even those who apply themselves most perfectly to the service of God, notwithstanding their good-will, commit a great number of faults in the infinitely pure eyes of God.

We have but to enter into our own conscience, and there analyze before God our thoughts, our words, and works, to be convinced of this sad effect of human misery—we might even be capable of committing sin “seven times a minute” on a bad day, never mind “seven times a day”. Oh, how easy it is to lack respect in prayer, to prefer our ease to the accomplishment of duty, to sin by vanity, by impatience, by sensuality, by uncharitable thoughts and words, by want of conformity to the will of God! The day is long; is it very difficult for even a virtuous person to commit, I do not say seven, but twenty or thirty of this kind of faults and imperfections?

Let us take a moderate estimate, and suppose that you commit about ten faults a day; at the end of 365 days you will have a sum of 3,650 faults. Let us diminish, and, to facilitate the calculation, place it at 3,000 per year. At the end of ten years this will amount to 30,000, and at the end of twenty years to 60,000. Suppose that of these 60,000 faults you have expiated one half by penance and good works, there will still remain 30,000 to be atoned for.

Let us continue our hypothesis: You die after these twenty years of virtuous life, and appear before God with a debt of 30,000 faults, which you must discharge in Purgatory. How much time will you need to accomplish this expiation? Suppose, on an average, each fault requires one hour of Purgatory. This measure is very moderate, if we judge by the revelations of the saints; but at any rate this will give you a Purgatory of 30,000 hours. Now, do you know how many years these 30,000 hours represent? Three years, three months, and fifteen days. Thus a good Christian who watches over himself, who applies himself to penance and good works, finds himself liable to three years, three months, and fifteen days of burning in the fires of Purgatory.

A Low-End Estimate Only
The preceding calculation is based on an estimate which is lenient in the extreme. Now, if you extend the duration of the pain, and, instead of an hour, you take a day for the expiation of a fault, if, instead of having nothing but venial sins, you bring before God a debt resulting from mortal sins, more or less numerous, which you formerly committed, if you assign, on the average, as St. Frances of Rome says, seven years for the expiation of one mortal sin, remitted as to the guilt, who does not see that we arrive at an appalling duration, and that the expiation may easily be prolonged for many years, and even for centuries? See the chart below for an idea of what kind of bill we might well be running up!

Years and centuries in torments! If we would only think of this more often, with what care should we not avoid the least faults! With what fervor should we not practice penance to make satisfaction in this world!

Settle Out of Court While You Can!
Tomorrow we shall begin to help you with planning out your payment plan! Get that pen and paper ready! Get your spiritual check book ready! We all owe far, far more than we imagine and we have all been doing far, far too little in paying back the damage we have caused by our sins! Better to try to settle now—out of court—than appear with those debts in the court of God the day we die!

THOUGHTS ON THE SEPTUAGESIMA SEASON
Friday after Septuagesima Sunday

Article 7
Choose Your Payment Plan!

Pay What Thou Owest!
We have all heard the parable of the Unmerciful Servant with a massive debt, who, after being let-off his debt, failed to show the same mercy to a fellow servant who owed him a relative pittance. What we perhaps fail to realize—not knowing the value of the terms used (talent and penny)—is that the one debt was $105 million in today’s money and the other was a measly debt of $175.

“Therefore is the kingdom of heaven likened to a king, who would take an account of his servants. And when he had begun to take the account, one was brought to him that owed him ten thousand talents ($105 million). And as he had not wherewith to pay it, his lord commanded that he should be sold, and his wife and children and all that he had, and payment to be made.

But that servant falling down, besought him, saying: ‘Have patience with me, and I will pay thee all! And the lord of that servant being moved with pity, let him go and forgave him the debt. But when that servant was gone out, he found one of his fellow servants that owed him an hundred pence ($175) and laying hold of him, throttled him, saying: ‘Pay what thou owest!’ And his fellow servant falling down, besought him, saying: ‘Have patience with me, and I will pay thee all!’ And he would not: but went and cast him into prison, till he paid the debt.

Now his fellow servants seeing what was done, were very much grieved, and they came and told their lord all that was done. Then his lord called him; and said to him: ‘Thou wicked servant! I forgave thee all the debt, because thou besoughtest me! Shouldst not thou then have had compassion also on thy fellow servant, even as I had compassion on thee?’ And his lord being angry, delivered him to the torturers until he paid all the debt” (Matthew 18:23-34).

Our Lord really hammered the point home as regards debt. For a talent was 750 ounces of silver, which at today’s rate of $14 per ounce, would put the debt of $105,000,000 or $105 million (1 talent would be worth $10,500 multiplied by 10,000). Whereas the lower debt of a hundred pence would be merely $175—for the Roman penny was the eighth part of an ounce of silver (100 pence would be 12½ ounces, multiplied by $14 an ounce).

Wow! Is It That Expensive?
We have often looked at items in the store that we really wanted to buy—until we came up close and saw the price tag! Sometimes we might even dispute the price, thinking it to be way over the top. With sin, there is a similar approach—we look at the sin from a distance and it looks desirable. We do not realize the price tag that is attached to it. We may even start munching, eating, sipping and drinking the very appetizing looking sin without even looking at the price tag! Once we have taken a bite—like Adam and Eve—there is no going back! We have sampled the ‘goods’ and we have to pay!

Once again, there is no harm in reminding ourselves that St. Paul tells us: “the wages of sin is death” (Romans 6:23)—just as it was for Adam and Eve. Nor is there any harm in repeating what our catechisms tell us, that: “sin is the only evil upon Earth” …and that “mortal sin is a great evil, the greatest evil in the world, a greater evil than disease, poverty, or war, because it separates us from God … [venial sin] is second only in evil consequences to mortal sin” (The Catechism Explained, Spirago-Clarke; My Catholic Faith, Bishop Morrow, STD). That is price tag attached to the ‘goods’ we desire to sample. You take a bite, you pay the price! Pay we must—but there are many different ways in which we can pay. Each sin has its price. Each sin must be punished—either punished (in other words “paid for”) in this world by ourselves or by God; or punished (“paid for”) in the next in either Purgatory or Hell. “Woe to us, because we have sinned!” (Lamentations 5:16).

Not One Sin Shall Go Unpunished
“Say not: ‘I have sinned, and what harm hath befallen me?’” As Jesus said: “I say unto you, that every idle word that men shall speak, they shall render an account for it in the Day of Judgment” (Matthew 12:36). “Be not without fear about sin forgiven, and add not sin upon sin … Nor bind sin to sin: for even in one sin thou shalt not be unpunished” (Ecclesiasticus 5:5; 7:8). “Sin shall be destroyed with the sinner [if the sinner will not repent]” (Ecclesiasticus 27:3).

If you don’t believe that, then just look at what Our Lady said is coming our way: “If my people do not wish to submit themselves, I am forced to let go of the hand of my Son … Woe to the inhabitants of the Earth! God will exhaust His wrath upon them, and no one will be able to escape so many afflictions together … Mankind must expect to be ruled with an iron rod and to drink from the chalice of the wrath of God … In order that the world might know His anger, the Heavenly Father is preparing to inflict a great chastisement on all mankind … As I told you, if men do not repent and better themselves, the Father will inflict a terrible punishment on all humanity. It will be a punishment greater than the deluge, such as one never seen before. Fire will fall from the sky and will wipe out a great part of humanity, the good as well as the bad, sparing neither priests nor faithful. The survivors will find themselves so desolate that they will envy the dead” (La Salette & Akita).

Better Listen to Your Mother!
If have a wrong or complacent attitude towards sin, then this error of the mind can lead to fatal negligence and terrible consequences. In speaking to the Venerable Mary of Agreda, Our Lady revealed some truths about the consequences of sin. She said:

“Strive then with all thy heart to avoid offending Him either in great or in small things; do not force Him to relinquish thee and to deliver thee over to the beastly disorders of sin; for thou knowest that this would be a greater misfortune and punishment than if He consign thee to the fury of the elements, or to the wrath of all the wild animals, or even to the rage of the demons. If all these were to execute their anger upon thee, and if the world were to heap upon thee all its punishments and insults, all would do thee less damage than one venial sin against the God Whom thou art obliged to serve and love in all things and through all things. Any punishment of this life is less dreadful than sin; for it ends with mortal life, but the guilt of sin, and with it punishment, may be eternal.

“In this life, any punishment, or tribulation, fills mortals with fear and dread, merely because it affects the senses and brings them in close touch with it through them, but the guilt of sin does not affect them, nor fill them with dread. Men are entirely taken up by that which is visible, and they therefore do not look upon the ultimate consequences of sin, which is the eternal punishment of Hell. Though this is imbibed and inseparably connected with sin, the human heart becomes so heavy and remiss that it remains as if it were stupefied in its wickedness, because it does not feel it present in its senses. Though it could see and feel it by Faith, this itself remains listless and dead, as if it were wanting entirely. O most unhappy blindness of mortals! O torpid negligence, that holds so many souls, capable of reason and of glory, oppressed in deceit! There are not words or sentences sufficient to describe this terrible and tremendous danger.

“Take notice also of the ugliness of sin, in order that by the opposite thou mayest come to so much the better understanding of the beauty of grace; for neither darkness, nor rottenness, nor the most horrible, the most dreadful, nor the foulest of creatures can ever be compared to sin and to its ugliness. The martyrs and saints understood much of this mystery, who in order to secure the beauty of grace and preserve themselves from the ruin of sin, did not fear fire, nor wild beasts, nor the sword, nor torments, nor prisons, ignominies, pains, afflictions, nor death itself, nor prolonged and perpetual suffering” (Our Lady to the Venerable Mary of Agreda, The City of God).

Why Pay For Sin If You Think You Have Not Sinned?
“Who can say: ‘My heart is clean, I am pure from sin!’?” (Proverbs 20:9). “Thou hast said: ‘I am without sin and am innocent: and therefore let Thy anger be turned away from me!’ Behold, I will contend with thee in judgement, because thou hast said: ‘I have not sinned!’” (Jeremias 2:35). “If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us” (1 John 1:8). “For all have sinned” (Romans 3:23).

Foolish Fallacies
Our neglect to pay for our sins comes from one or several fallacies or false reasonings that me make ourselves believe. One fallacy is the foolish Protestant notion that “Jesus paid for all our sins.” If that is the case, they why did that same Jesus say: “No, I say to you: but unless you shall do penance, you shall all likewise perish!” Why does the Church teach its doctrine on Purgatory? No! Jesus died for our sins and took away the guilt (but only if we repent of our sins), but He did not take away the temporal punishment (which means punishment for sin in this world, and, if not accepted, then punishment in the next).

Another foolish fallacy is that of thinking that the penance the priest gives us in Confession, is all the penance that is needed to pay for our sins! The few paltry prayers that the priest imposes upon is not the total price of sin, but merely the first down-payment as one of many payments we still have to make. The acceptance of this “first-payment” shows that we acknowledge having sinned and accept that we have some restitution to make, both to God and man. Look upon like a credit card debt—the credit card company sends you a bill requesting a minimum payment for the month—it does say that the minimum payment is all you have to pay. The vast majority of the debt you have racked-up still exists and still has to be paid.

Don't Haggle Over the Price—Just Pay It!
There are some souls who always want to argue about things, who disagree with the way things are being done, who think they know better or that their evaluation is more correct. Sadly, we can get to be the same way with God—making excuses, down-playing our guilt and blaming others like Adam and Eve tried to do.

God knows better than we do! If there truly is an extenuating or excusing factor, then God will certainly see it better than we imagine, and will evaluate it more justly than we could ever do. Leave it to Him—just pay your debt! If your payments end up being partially “refunded”, then fine, but leave the calculations to God. Let’s be honest—sin is the greatest evil in the world! If we are guilty of the greatest evil in the world, then let us show some humility and not try haggle or wrangle our way out of our responsibility and accountability!

The Payment for Sin is a Lifelong Mortgage!
As has been said—and will be said many times in the future—sin is expensive because it is the greatest evil in the world. Just sit and think about that in monetary terms—for it seems that we grasp the material values and implications far better than we grasp spiritual values and implications. Imagine the financial cost of repairing or putting right the damage caused by one of the greatest disasters the world has ever seen. It will be well into billions and billions of dollars.

Sin is worse than that! Look at how long it takes to pay-off a measly mortgage or student loan! That is not even a drop of water in an ocean when compared to the payments owed for our sins. Read Fr. Schouppe’s book on Purgatory and see the immense sufferings God justly inflicts upon even venial sins that have not been paid for in this life. Our valuation—or devaluation—of sin is an insult to God. Let us not, therefore, insultingly relegate penance to some superficial and mild forms of sacrifice that are performed on two days—Ash Wednesday and Good Friday—in every year. What about the other 363 days?

God is so generous as to allow to do penance in this life, so as to avoid having to inflict His must more stringent penance of Purgatory upon us after our death. By comparison, paying in this life is like paying one cent on every hundred dollars owed! Whereas, if we neglect God’s kind offer in this life, then we will find an incredibly high interest rate tacked-on to our debt for sin when we hit Purgatory!

However, unless we put things right in our mind and thereby change our outlook and attitude, we are heading for the high-rate of Purgatorial interest which will make us wish—but to no purpose—that we had decided to pay while yet alive! Choose the current payment plan with its hefty discount rates, rather than the high rate of painful interest in Purgatory, or, God forbid, Hell.

THOUGHTS ON THE SEPTUAGESIMA SEASON
Saturday after Septuagesima Sunday

Article 8
Septuagesima Sloth & Lenten Lukewarmness!

Lovely Lazy Lukewarmness
What is it with lukewarmness in that it does not shock our system, but, on the contrary, feels nice and pleasant? This is what makes it so dangerous! For things that cause pain, are things that we instinctively avoid; but things that are pleasurable, we tend to welcome, or, at least, we do not resist them.

The salesman knows this, and, in the sales industry, they call it the "Pleasure Principle." Modern man, following the modern trends and tendencies sown by the modern crop of insane naturalistic psychologists, like Sigmund Freud, are ruled by the "Pleasure Principle." This principle is the instinctual seeking of pleasure and avoiding of pain in order to satisfy biological and psychological needs. The pleasure principle is the driving force guiding the world today.

Spiritual Sugar Kills
Yet, as with sugar in the area of nutrition and diet, so too with pleasure in the spiritual life. They can both be a massive danger and the source of so many ills, diseases and deaths. Lukewarmness is sugary sweet too! And it too, kills or sucks the spiritual lifeblood out of so many souls. It is one of the devil's favorite poisons. We should spit-out any poison out if we have the misfortune to taste it; or if it is swallowed, then we should try vomit it out. And it is lukewarmness or, more correctly, the lukewarm that God threatens to spit out and vomit out of His mouth: "Because thou art lukewarm, and neither cold, not hot, I will begin to vomit thee out of My mouth" (Apocalypse 3:16).

Faber's Lukewarmness Diagnosis
The remainder of this article is taken from the Venerable Fr. Faber's book, Growth in Holiness, chapter 25 "Lukewarmness." In it, he traces the causes and effects of lukewarmness, before proceeding to recommend some cures. We will cover this chapter of his in two articles, this being the first of the two.

"Lukewarmness is in no sense a beginning. We may begin by being cold, but not by being lukewarm. For lukewarmness implies that a great deal has gone before, that a height has been climbed, and that we have come down from it. He who was never fervent can never be lukewarm. Cold he may be, and low, and mean, and ungenerous, and a poltroon, but not lukewarm.

"I prefer therefore to consider lukewarmness in this place, because the knowledge we have now gained of the various appliances of the spiritual life will enable us the better to understand its true nature; and also because all the component parts of the spiritual life being also, when spoiled, the component parts of lukewarmness, this is the natural place it occupies. In fact, all that has gone before of struggle, issues simply in one of two states, lukewarmness or fervor. Either we are lukewarm, or we are fervent.

"There is nothing in the spiritual life which arrests our attention so forcibly as lukewarmness because of the unusual language in which it has pleased God to express His ineffable disgust with it, and the startling doctrine which accompanies the declaration of His loathing, that coldness is less offensive to Him than tepidity. Who is it then with whom God is so exceedingly displeased, that He is sick of His own redeemed creature? We tremble at the answer.

"The diseases and evils of the body are in a great degree typical of the miseries and misfortunes of the soul. If we seek the correlative of lukewarmness, we shall find it in blindness. It is a blindness which does not know even its own self, and does not suspect that it is blind, or that other men see better than itself. It is a judicial blindness, because it once saw better itself, and now does not remember either what it saw, or that it ever saw at all.

THIS BLINDNESS IS OWING PRINCIPALLY TO THREE CAUSES:

1. the frequency of venial sins,
2. habitual dissipation of mind and
3. the ruling passion.

"The frequency of venial sins is like traveling in the wilderness, where the bright air is imperceptibly filled with fine sand. Habitual dissipation of mind is like reading in the sunshine, and living in a light too strong for our eyes. The ruling passion is an external violence which menaces us and makes us shut our eyes, and have them always shut, that we may not see what it would fain hide, and so when we open them after long being used to darkness, it is the very light itself which blinds us.

THE IMMEDIATE RESULTS OF THIS BLINDNESS ARE THREE:

"1. In the first place conscience becomes untrue. The body does not move firmly and in a straight line in the dark. So the conscience also must see in order to keep its balance. But if we falsify the oracle, and still believe it, what is the consequence but error and corruption everywhere? If the light that is in us be darkness, says Our Lord, how great is that darkness! So first there comes a false conscience.

"2. Bad instincts grow stronger. But in proportion as conscience becomes dark, and so cold, and finally numb, in the same proportion the bad instincts of the human spirit, like owls at night, get more far‑sighted, animated and vivacious. These instincts lead us with uncommon tact to avoid anything which will restore animation to the conscience. For their purpose it had best remain under chloroform for life. Thus they make us shrink from anything like vigorous spiritual direction. We suspect we shall be awakened, and driven, and made too good. Discretion, that is, the discretion of the blind conscience, tells us this shrinking is wisdom and sagacity. We must, it says, be moderate in everything, but, of all things, amazingly moderate in the love of God?!

"So in hearing sermons, reading books, cultivating acquaintances, patronizing works of mercy, it draws back from everything that is likely to come too near or hit too hard. It is the old story of the earthen jug and the brazen jar, as they went down the stream together. Here is the second result of this blindness, which renders the cure still less likely. Indeed it is a characteristic of tepidity that everything we do while we are in that state has a tendency to confirm us as incurable.

"3. Out of the two preceding results flows a third, which is a profane use of the Sacraments. To go to Holy Communion when we are physically drowsy, yawning and half asleep, or to make our general confession half stupefied with laudanum would be fair types of the way in which we morally use the Sacraments.Thus frequent or even daily Communion seems to have only a negative effect upon us. We do not know how bad it might be without it; and that is all.

"Weekly confession gives us no additional power over our commonest imperfections. Matters look as if they had come to a standstill, if there were any such phase of the spiritual life. But no! we are blind men, whose faces have been turned unwittingly. We are retracing our steps; and the only wonder is that the easier task of going down hill does not by its contrast make us suspicious of some mistake. Alas, we are asleep as well as blind! The finest things we do now are no better than feats of somnambulism."

THOUGHTS ON THE SEPTUAGESIMA SEASON
Sexagesima Sunday

Article 9
Learning About Lukewarmness With Tepid Teresa!

A Lukewarm Saint
St Teresa of Avila fell into a pattern. While ill, she would pray fervently. When she was better, she wouldn't pray as much, or would stop praying at all. This is the lukewarmness that she talks about; a period of 15 years. When she turned 40, it all changed. By God's grace, she was able to see, admit and combat her lukewarmness.

Here is what St. Teresa had to say about that vision:
"Ever since that time, as I was saying, everything seems endurable in comparison with one instant of suffering such as those I had then to bear in Hell. I am filled with fear when I see that, after frequently reading books which describe in some manner the pains of Hell, I was not afraid of them, nor made any account of them. Where was I? How could I possibly take any pleasure in those things which led me directly to so dreadful a place? Blessed forever be Thou, O my God! And oh, how manifest is it that Thou didst love me much more than I did love Thee! How often, O Lord, didst Thou save me from that fearful prison! And how I used to get back to it contrary to Thy will."

In one of the many versions of her Autobiography, the Preface states:
“There are souls whom God, in a way, constrains to enter on the way of perfection, and who, if they relaxed in their fervor, could not keep a middle course, but would immediately fall into the other extreme of sins, and for souls of this kind it is of the utmost necessity that they should watch and pray without ceasing; and, in short, there is nobody whom lukewarmness does not injure. Let every man examine his own conscience, and he will find this to be the truth … I firmly believe that if God for a time bears with the lukewarm, it is owing to the prayers of the fervent”(Preface of David Lewis to the Autobiography of St. Teresa of Avila’s life).

How Dare You Say That?!?!
If you mention the word "lukewarmness" to some people, they begin to bristle and feel uncomfortable; some are even downright insulted at what they perceive to be an accusation or an association with the word! It is like bringing-up a taboo subject at a family gathering; the response is one of "We don't talk about those kind of things here!"

Yet we see that great saint, St. Teresa of Avila, a Doctor of the Church, no less, openly admit to being lukewarm in the earlier years of her life. Why can she admit to that? Because she is both honest and humble. It is our pride and self-deceit that leads us to make a false image of ourselves.

Most Souls ARE Lukewarm
Yet Our Lord sees us as we are, not as we imagine ourselves to be; and the truth of the matter is that most souls are lukewarm for a greater or lesser part of their lives. The lukewarmness of souls was already the complaint of the Sacred Heart to St. Margaret Mary in 1673! How much worse is not the world today? The Venerable Fr. Faber adamantly states this at the end of his chapter on lukewarmness in his bookGrowth in Holiness, saying:

"I fear this evil of lukewarmness is very common, and that at this moment it is gnawing the life out of many souls who suspect not its presence there. It is a great grace, a prophecy of a miraculous cure, to find out that we are lukewarm; but we are lost if we do not act with vigor, the moment we make this frightening discovery. It is like going to sleep in the snow, almost a pleasant tingling feeling at the first, and then‑lost forever" (Growth in Holiness, chapter 25, "Lukewarmness").

Another great spiritual authority and master, Fr. Garrigou-Lagrange, O.P., is of the opinion that most souls are not even beginners in the spiritual life. Speaking of the lukewarm or tepid souls, he writes:

"After conversion there ought to be a serious beginning of the purgative life, in which beginners love God by avoiding mortal sin and deliberate venial sin, through exterior and interior mortification and through prayer. But in actual fact this purgative life is found under two very different forms: in some, admittedly very few, this life is intense, generous; it is the narrow way of perfect self-denial described by the saints. In many others the purgative life appears in an attenuated form, varying from good souls, who are a little weak, down to those tepid and retarded souls, who from time to time fall into mortal sin" (The Three Conversions of the Spiritual Life, Fr. Garrigou-Lagrange).

Let's Be Honest!
Let us not be afraid of admitting our lukewarmness, whether it be acute or chronic,, temporary or long-term; for if you hide your symptoms from the doctor, there is nothing he can do for you. As the Preface of St. Teresa's autobiography states:"there is nobody whom lukewarmness does not injure."

Let us then read St. Teresa's interesting account and admission on how she became so lukewarm in the first place, so that we may find a lesson therein fro our own lives. In the next article article, we will read of St. Teresa's recommendations on how cure the spiritual disease. The subtitles will be our own, so as to enable the mind to have a clear overview of what St. Teresa presents.

CHAPTER TWO OF ST. TERESA'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY

False Reasoning and Complacency
1. What I shall now speak of was, I believe, the beginning of great harm to me. I often think how wrong it is of parents not to be very careful that their children should always, and in every way, see only that which is good; for though my mother was, as I have just said, so good herself, nevertheless I, when I came to the use of reason, did not derive so much good from her as I ought to have done—almost none at all; and the evil I learned did me much harm.

She was very fond of books of chivalry; but this pastime did not hurt her so much as it hurt me, because she never wasted her time on them; only we, her children, were left at liberty to read them; and perhaps she did this to distract her thoughts from her great sufferings, and occupy her children, that they might not go astray in other ways.

It annoyed my father so much, that we had to be careful he never saw us. I contracted a habit of reading these books; and this little fault which I observed in my mother was the beginning of lukewarmness in my good desires, and the occasion of my falling away in other respects. I thought there was no harm in it when I wasted many hours night and day in so vain an occupation, even when I kept it a secret from my father. So completely was I mastered by this passion, that I thought I could never be happy without a new book.

Superficiality
2. I began to make much of dress, to wish to please others by my appearance. I took pains with my hands and my hair, used perfumes, and all vanities within my reach—and they were many, for I was very much given to them. I had no evil intention, because I never wished any one to offend God for me. This fastidiousness of excessive neatness lasted some years; and so also did other practices, which I thought then were not at all sinful; now, I see how wrong all this must have been.

Bad (or Lukewarm) Friends and Relatives
3. I had some cousins; for into my father's house no others were allowed an entrance. In this he was very cautious; and would to God he had been cautious about them!—for I see now the danger of conversing, at an age when virtue should begin to grow, with persons who, knowing nothing themselves of the vanity of the world, provoke others to throw themselves into the midst of it. These cousins were nearly of mine own age—a little older, perhaps. We were always together; and they had a great affection for me. In everything that gave them pleasure, I kept the conversation alive—listened to the stories of their affections and childish follies, good for nothing; and, what was still worse, my soul began to give itself up to that which was the cause of all its disorders. If I were to give advice, I would say to parents that they ought to be very careful whom they allow to mix with their children when young; for much mischief thence ensues, and our natural inclinations are unto evil rather than unto good.

Frivolity and Worldliness
4. So it was with me; for I had a sister much older than myself, from whose modesty and goodness, which were great, I learned nothing; and learned every evil from a relative who was often in the house. She was so light and frivolous, that my mother took great pains to keep her out of the house, as if she foresaw the evil I should learn from her; but she could not succeed, there being so many reasons for her coming. I was very fond of this person's company, gossiped and talked with her; for she helped me in all the amusements I liked, and, what is more, found some for me, and communicated to me her own conversations and her vanities. Until I knew her, I mean, until she became friendly with me, and communicated to me her own affairs—I was then about fourteen years old, a little more, I think—I do not believe that I turned away from God in mortal sin, or lost the fear of Him, though I had a greater fear of disgrace.

This latter fear had such sway over me, that I never wholly forfeited my good name—and, as to that, there was nothing in the world for which I would have bartered it, and nobody in the world I liked well enough who could have persuaded me to do it. Thus I might have had the strength never to do anything against the honor of God, as I had it by nature not to fail in that wherein I thought the honor of the world consisted; and I never observed that I was failing in many other ways. In vainly seeking after it I was extremely careful; but in the use of the means necessary for preserving it I was utterly careless. I was anxious only not to be lost altogether.

Bad Companions
5. This friendship distressed my father and sister exceedingly. They often blamed me for it; but, as they could not hinder that person from coming into the house, all their efforts were in vain; for I was very adroit in doing anything that was wrong. Now and then, I am amazed at the evil one bad companion can do—nor could I believe it if I did not know it by experience—especially when we are young: then is it that the evil must be greatest. Oh, that parents would take this warning by me, and look carefully to this! So it was; the conversation of this person so changed me, that no trace was left of my soul's natural disposition to virtue, and I became a reflection of her and of another who was given to the same kind of amusements.

Losing the Fear of God
6. I know from this the great advantage of good companions; and I am certain that if at that tender age I had been thrown among good people, I should have persevered in virtue; for if at that time I had found any one to teach me the fear of God, my soul would have grown strong enough not to fall away. Afterwards, when the fear of God had utterly departed from me, the fear of dishonor alone remained, and was a torment to me in all I did. When I thought that nobody would ever know, I ventured upon many things that were neither honorable nor pleasing unto God.

Small Seeds Grow into Big Trees
7. In the beginning, these conversations did me harm—I believe so. The fault was perhaps not hers, but mine; for afterwards my own wickedness was enough to lead me astray, together with the servants about me, whom I found ready enough for all evil. If any one of these had given me good advice, I might perhaps have profited by it; but they were blinded by interest, as I was by passion. Still, I was never inclined to much evil—for I hated naturally anything dishonorable—but only to the amusement of a pleasant conversation. The occasion of sin, however, being present, danger was at hand, and I exposed to it my father and brothers. God delivered me out of it all, so that I should not be lost, in a manner visibly against my will, yet not so secretly as to allow me to escape without the loss of my good name and the suspicions of my father.

You Can Lead a Horse to Water, but...
8. I had not spent, I think, three months in these vanities, when they took me to a monastery in the city where I lived, in which children like myself were brought up, though their way of life was not so wicked as mine. This was done with the utmost concealment of the true reason, which was known only to myself and one of my relatives. They waited for an opportunity which would make the change seem nothing out of the way; for, as my sister was married, it was not fitting I should remain alone, without a mother, in the house.

Excessive Blind Love
9. So excessive was my father's love for me, and so deep my dissembling, that he never would believe me to be so wicked as I was; and hence I was never in disgrace with him. Though some remarks were made, yet, as the time had been short, nothing could be positively asserted; and, as I was so much afraid about my good name, I had taken every care to be secret; and yet I never considered that I could conceal nothing from Him Who seeth all things. O my God, what evil is done in the world by disregarding this, and thinking that anything can be kept secret that is done against Thee! I am quite certain that great evils would be avoided if we clearly understood that what we have to do is, not to be on our guard against men, but on our guard against displeasing Thee.

Pride and Vanity
10. For the first eight days, I suffered much; but more from the suspicion that my vanity was known, than from being in the monastery; for I was already weary of myself—and, though I offended God, I never ceased to have a great fear of Him, and contrived to go to confession as quickly as I could. I was very uncomfortable; but within eight days, I think sooner, I was much more contented than I had been in my father's house. All the nuns were pleased with me; for our Lord had given me the grace to please everyone, wherever I might be. I was therefore made much of in the monastery. Though, at this time, I hated to be a nun, yet I was delighted at the sight of nuns so good; for they were very good in that house—very prudent, observant of the rule, and recollected.

Religious and Worldly
11. Yet, for all this, the devil did not cease to tempt me; and people in the world sought means to trouble my rest with messages and presents. As this could not be allowed, it was soon over, and my soul began to return to the good habits of my earlier years; and I recognized the great mercy of God to those whom He places among good people. It seems as if His Majesty had sought and sought again how to convert me to Himself. Blessed be Thou, O Lord, for having borne with me so long! Amen.

THOUGHTS ON THE SEPTUAGESIMA SEASON
Monday after Sexagesima Sunday

Article 10
St. Teresa's Easy Life!

In the previous article, we spoke of the frequency of lukewarmness and the discomfort or even hatred people have in acknowledging the fact that they are lukewarm. Yet St. Teresa of Avila has no problem in doing so, she even admits to it publicly in her own writings. This is, at the same time, consoling, strengthening and inspirational: for it shows us that saints are like us, they have the same problems, difficulties and temptations as we do; yet they show us a way through all these things and out of all these things. With that in mind, we shall let St. Teresa continue with her most enlightening and instructive account of her lukewarmness, with its causes and effects. We shall add a few comments, in purple, in an attempt to relate what St. Teresa says to our present day and age.

CHAPTER SEVEN OF ST. TERESA'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY

World is Fun, God is Not
1. So, then, going on from pastime to pastime, from vanity to vanity, from one occasion of sin to another, I began to expose myself exceedingly to the very greatest dangers: my soul was so distracted by many vanities, that I was ashamed to draw near unto God in an act of such special friendship as that of prayer. As my sins multiplied, I began to lose the pleasure and comfort I had in virtuous things: and that loss contributed to the abandonment of prayer. I see now most clearly, O my Lord, that this comfort departed from me because I had departed from Thee.

Doing Only the Minimum
2. It was the most fearful delusion into which Satan could plunge me—to give up prayer under the pretense of humility. I began to be afraid of giving myself to prayer, because I saw myself so lost. Seeing that in my wickedness I was one of the most wicked, I thought it would be better for me to live like the multitude—to say only the prayers which I was bound to say, and say those prayers vocally: not to practice mental prayer, nor commicate with God so much; for I deserved to be with the devils, and was deceiving those who were lived around me, because I made an outward show of goodness; and therefore the community, in which I dwelt, is not to be blamed; for with my cunning I so managed matters, that all had a good opinion of me; and yet I did not seek this deliberately by pretending or simulating devotion. [Too often we fall into the same temptation—"to be like the rest." We know what is right and proper, but "we go along to get along" and shy away from "rocking the boat." Yet we forget that the multitude is not saved, and that the majority lose their souls: “Enter ye in at the narrow gate: for wide is the gate, and broad is the way that leadeth to destruction, and many there are who go in thereat. How narrow is the gate, and strait is the way that leadeth to life: and few there are that find it!” (Matthew 7:13-14). The devil, human respect and the desire to be liked, blinds us to this truth, so "we go along to get along" for fear of what others may think, say or do if they see us getting to be too religious!]

For in all that relates to hypocrisy and ostentation (doing things so that everyone notices)—glory be to God!—I do not remember that I ever offended Him, so far as I know. The very first movements towards hypocrisy and ostentation gave me such pain, that the devil would depart from me with loss, and the gain remained with me; and thus, accordingly, he never tempted me much in this way. Perhaps, however, if God had permitted Satan to tempt me as sharply herein as he tempted me in other things, I should have fallen also into this; but His Majesty has preserved me until now. May He be blessed for evermore! It was rather a heavy affliction to me that I should be thought so well of; for I knew my own secret.

Vanity Knows How to Manipulate
3. The reason why they thought I was not so wicked was this: they saw that I, who was so young, and exposed to so many occasions of sin, withdrew myself so often into solitude for prayer, read much, spoke of God, that I liked to have His image painted in many places, to have an oratory of my own, and furnish it with objects of devotion, that I spoke ill of no one, and other things of the same kind in me which have the appearance of virtue. Yet all the while—I was so vain—I knew how to procure respect for myself by doing those things which in the world are usually regarded with respect.

Too Much Freedom
4. In consequence of this, they gave me as much freedom as they did to the oldest nuns, and even more, and had great confidence in me; for as to taking any liberty for myself, or doing anything without leave—such as conversing through the door, or in secret, or by night—I do not think I could have brought myself to speak with anybody in the monastery in that way, and I never did it; for Our Lord held me back. It seemed to me—for I considered many things carefully and of set purpose—that it would be a very evil deed on my part, wicked as I was, to risk the credit of so many nuns, who were all good—as if everything else I did was well done! In truth, the evil I did was not the result of deliberation, as this would have been, if I had done it, although it was too much so.

[Though, in the next few paragraphs, St. Teresa speaks of life in the monastery or convent, we can very readily and easily apply this to Catholic family life or the Catholic school. For the Catholic family should be like a cloister that protects its members from the world and its worldly influences, just like the monastery or convent should protect the religious, who live within its walls, from the spirit of the outside world. We can also apply these paragraphs to our Catholic schools, which should also be cloisters for Catholic children, likewise protecting them from the world and its worldliness. Looked at from this perspective, the next few paragraphs teach us a great deal].

A Monastery (School or Home) Without Walls
5. Therefore, I think that it did me much harm to be in a monastery that was not not enclosed [meaning that the nuns had frequent contact with the world]. The freedom or liberty, which those who were good might have with advantage—they not being obliged to do more than they do, because they had not bound themselves to enclosure—would certainly have led me, who am wicked, straight to Hell, if Our Lord, by so many remedies and means of His most singular mercy, had not delivered me out of that danger—and it is, I believe, the very greatest danger—namely, a monastery of women unenclosed—yea, more, I think it is, for those who tend to or want to be wicked, a road to Hell, rather than a help to their weakness.

This is not to be understood of my monastery; for there are so many there who in the utmost sincerity, and in great perfection, serve Our Lord [likewise, not all Catholic families or schools are lax and worldly], so that His Majesty, according to His goodness, cannot but be gracious unto them; neither is it one of those which are most open, because all religious observances are kept in it; and I am speaking only of others which I have seen and known. [How many parents, principals and teachers do the work of the devil for him, by not building 'walls' that will enclose and protect the children from the world. It is not enough to protect them from only the worst things, but also the little things, because forest fires are started by a small spark, and adult criminals were once merely naughty undisciplined children].

Calling Some Sins 'Virtues'!
6. I am exceedingly sorry for these houses, because Our Lord must of necessity send His special inspirations not merely once, but many times, if the nuns therein are to be saved, seeing that the honors and amusements of the world are allowed among them, and the obligations of their state are so ill-understood. God grant they may not count that to be virtue which is really a sin, as I did so often! It is very difficult to make people understand this; it is necessary Our Lord Himself should take the matter seriously into His own hands. [Alas! Those amusements of the world! How many families and schools think nothing of allowing the 'amusements' of the world into the home and school environment; some even encourage, praise and extol them! Our Lady bewailed this at La Salette, when, speaking of future times, she said that "The chiefs, the leaders of the people of God, have neglected prayer and penance, and the devil has bedimmed their intelligence. They have become wandering stars which the old devil will drag along with his tail to make them perish. God will allow the old serpent to cause divisions among those who reign in every society and in every family ... Lucifer, together with a large number of demons, will be unloosed from Hell; they will put an end to faith little by little, even in those dedicated to God ... the spirits of darkness will spread everywhere a universal slackening of all that concerns the service of God ...disorder and the love of carnal pleasures will be spread all over the earth ...People will think of nothing but amusement."]

Take Care Where You Allow Your Children to Go!
7. If parents would take my advice, now that they are at no pains to place their daughters where they may walk in the way of salvation, without incurring a greater risk than they would do if they were left in the world, let them look at least at that which concerns their good name. Let them marry them to persons of a much lower degree, rather than place them in monasteries of this kind, unless they be of extremely good inclinations, and God grant that these inclinations may come to good! Or let them keep them at home. [What St. Teresa is saying here is that even though a monastery is a monastery, it is not necessarily a good monastery, but it may be a bad monastery and therefore a danger to the soul. Likewise, just because a home or school is a Catholic home or school, does not necessarily make it a good Catholic home or school. It does not take much to light the fuse that will eventually lead to the destruction of a child's (or an adult's) soul. Just like the example of the mustard seed that Our Lord gives in the Bible, a little tiny seed grows into a massive plant. Likewise, a little exposure to evil or bad example, will sow the seed that will grow into future sin].

If they will be wicked at home, their evil life can be hidden only for a short time; but in monasteries it can be hidden long, and, in the end, it is Our Lord that discovers it.They injure not only themselves, but all the nuns also. And all the while the poor things are not in fault; for they walk in the way that is shown them. Many of them are to be pitied; for they wished to withdraw from the world, and, thinking to escape from the dangers of it, and that they were going to serve Our Lord, have found themselves in ten worlds at once, without knowing what to do, or how to help themselves. Youth and sensuality and the devil invite them and incline them to follow certain ways which are of the essence of worldliness. They see these ways, so to speak, considered as safe there. [Many Catholic schools today, even some of the most conservative or traditional, can be hotbeds of corruption, because they do only the minimal in keeping out the world and worldliness from within its walls. They forget the words of Scripture, which warn us: “The life of man upon earth is a warfare” (Job 7:1) and “Be sober and watch: because your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, goeth about seeking whom he may devour.” (1 Peter 5:8). The hallmark of Liberalism is not to offend anyone, to be nice to everyone, to 'understand' others—even if those 'others' are destroying everything!! Alas, how many good schools have fallen in battle with this Liberal approach!]

Blinded to Truth
8. Now, these seem to me to be, in some degree, like those wretched heretics who will make themselves blind, and who will consider that which they do to be good, and so believe, but without really believing; for they have within themselves something that tells them it is wrong. [It is amazing how much willful blindness there is amongst Catholics; they see, but they see as they want to see, they see things as they would like them to be, but they see not reality. Almost like the heretics that St. Teresa speaks of, they deform and reform certain parts of the Faith so that it fits with their mindset and attitude. This kind of way of thinking and acting is the essence of Liberalism and Modernism, and it is rampant today. It is so prevalent, that most people think there is nothing wrong with it!]

Trying to Serve God and Mammon
9. Oh, what utter ruin! Utter ruin of religious persons—I am not speaking now more of women than of men, but of both—where the rules of the Order are not kept; where the same monastery offers two roads: one of virtue and observance, the other of inobservance, and both equally frequented! I have spoken incorrectly: they are not equally frequented; for, on account of our sins, the way of the greatest imperfection is the most frequented; and because it is the broadest, it is also the most in favor.

[Again we have to say: “Enter ye in at the narrow gate: for wide is the gate, and broad is the way that leadeth to destruction, and many there are who go in thereat. How narrow is the gate, and strait is the way that leadeth to life: and few there are that find it!” (Matthew 7:13-14). This is true of so many, many Catholic families and schools, who live in a false sense of security, sheltering under the complacency of the false idea of safety in numbers!].

The way of religious observance is so little used, that the friar and the nun who would really begin to follow their vocation thoroughly have reason to fear the members of their communities more than all the devils together. They must be more cautious, and dissemble more, when they would speak of that friendship with God which they desire to have, than when they would speak of those friendships and affections which the devil arranges in monasteries. [This friendship with the world and the worldly is the ruin of so many souls: “Know you not that the friendship of this world is the enemy of God? Whosoever therefore will be a friend of this world, becometh an enemy of God" (James 4:4). “Seek ye first the Kingdom of God and His justice” (Luke 12:31). We are commanded to love God first; our neighbor only comes after God!].

I know not why we are astonished that the Church is in so much trouble, when we see those, who ought to be an example of every virtue to others, so disfigure the work which the spirit of the Saints departed wrought in their Orders. May it please His Divine Majesty to apply a remedy to this, as He sees it to be needful! Amen. [As Our Lady said at La Salette: "Woe to the Princes of the Church who think only of piling riches upon riches to protect their authority and dominate with pride ... [who] by their wicked lives, by their irreverence and their impiety in the celebration of the holy mysteries, by their love of money, their love of honors and pleasures ... are asking vengeance, and vengeance is hanging over their heads ... Rome will lose the Faith ... and a great number of priests and members of religious orders will break away from the true religion; among these people there will even be bishops"].

THOUGHTS ON THE SEPTUAGESIMA SEASON
Tuesday after Sexagesima Sunday

Article 11
St. Teresa's Easy Life!

Since St. Teresa is in a mood for admitting to her faults, let us keep the focus on her and see what benefits we can draw from what he says. As before, the accounts from her autobiography will be interspersed with our comments in purple text.

Praying Less and Less
“I had become so dissipated, and had ceased to pray, and yet saw that he [Teresa’s father] still thought I was what I used to be, I could not endure it, and so undeceived him. I had been a year and more without praying, thinking it an act of greater humility to abstain … When that blessed man [her father], having that good opinion of me, came to visit me, it pained me to see him so deceived as to think that I used to pray to God as before. So I told him that I did not pray; but I did not tell him why. I put my infirmities forward as an excuse … My father believed me when I gave him that for a reason, as he never told a lie himself; neither should I have done so …[Alas, how true it is that we make excuses, exaggerate, twist, hide or deny the truth, just so that we can continue in our ‘hidden’ state of lukewarmness. St. Teresa publicly admits to it in her autobiography, we, on the other hand deny it and hide it].

Double Standards
“At this time, that illness befell my father of which he died; it lasted some days. I went to nurse him, being more sick in spirit than he was in body, owing to my many vanities—though not, so far as I know, to the extent of being in mortal sin—through the whole of that wretched time of which I am speaking; for, if I knew myself to be in mortal sin, I would not have continued in it on any account ... [that is a typical, common and universal trait of lukewarmness: “mortal sin never, venial sin forever!” For the lukewarm, venial sin is sometimes not even ‘on the radar’! The only thing that worries them is mortal sin. There is no real love of God in this attitude: for both mortal sin and venial sin are the TWO GREATEST EVILS in the world, as our catechism teaches us. To put it into concrete terms, it is like saying: “I will not knife or shoot Our Lord (mortal sin), but I have no problems in punching Him, kicking Him, spitting at Him and mocking Him (venial sin)!” Lukewarmness is this walking contradiction. If any lukewarm soul manages to escape Hell, it is not through their pretended ‘love’ of God, but simply because of God’s pity and mercy upon their pitiable state.]

God Sends a Rescuer
St. Teresa continues: “How much the more I am to be blamed for my wickedness; for after seeing such a death [of her father], and knowing what his life had been, I, in order to be in any wise like unto such a father, ought to have grown better. His confessor, a most learned Dominican, used to say that he had no doubt he went straight to Heaven. He had heard his confession for some years, and spoke with praise of the purity of his conscience.

“This Dominican father, who was a very good God-fearing man, did me a very great service; for I confessed to him. He took upon himself the task of helping my soul in earnest, and of making me see the perilous state I was in. He sent me to Communion once a fortnight [at that time people went to Communion very, very rarely, it was only after Pope St. Pius X allowed frequent Communion, in the early 1900’s, that we entered the current period of frequent Communion]; and I, by degrees beginning to speak to him, told him about my prayer life. He commanded me never to omit it: that, anyhow, it could not do me anything but good. So I began to return to my prayer life—though I did not cut off the occasions of sin—and never afterwards gave it up. [Once again, Teresa admits to being a walking contradiction: she wants to love God, yet continues to hold fast to the friendship of the world and its occasions of sin: “Know you not that the friendship of this world is the enemy of God? Whosoever therefore will be a friend of this world, becometh an enemy of God” (James 4:4). Our Lord said that we cannot love and serve both God and mammon].

Under the Microscope of Prayer
St. Teresa says: “My life became most wretched, because I learned in prayer more and more of my faults. On one side, God was calling me; on the other, I was following the world. All the things of God gave me great pleasure; and I was a prisoner to the things of the world. It seemed as if I wished to reconcile two contradictions, so much at variance one with another, as are the life of the spirit and the joys and pleasures and amusements of sense. I suffered much in prayer; for the spirit was slave, and not master; and so I was not able to shut myself up within myself—that was my whole method of prayer—without shutting up with me a thousand vanities at the same time. I spent many years in this way; and I am now astonished that anyone could have borne it without abandoning either the one or the other. [Some people live in this state for more than the “many years” that St. Teresa speaks of; their entire lives are spent in lukewarmness, without even realizing or suspecting that they are lukewarm. This is because, as the already quoted opinions of the spiritual masters state, most of the world is lukewarm; and, as the Ven. Fr. Faber states, lukewarmness is a spiritual blindness, and the blind lead the blind into the pit. Generations of lukewarm families are like one long chain, ‘dancing-the-conga’ into the pit. Like father, like son; like mother, like daughter. Generations of successive lukewarm ‘Pied-Pipers’! A lukewarm tree will produce lukewarm fruit. You cannot give what you haven’t got].

The Need for Spiritual Friends
St. Teresa point out: “It is a great evil for a soul to be alone in the midst of such great dangers; it seems to me that if I had had anyone with whom I could have spoken of all this, it might have helped me not to fall. I might, at least, have been ashamed before him—and yet I was not ashamed before God! For this reason, I would advise those who give themselves to over to prayer, particularly at first, to form friendships; and converse familiarly, with others who are doing the same thing[Birds of a feather flock together. Tell me who your friends are, and I will tell you what you are]. It is a matter of the greatest importance, even if it leads only to helping one another by prayer: how much more, seeing that it has led to much greater gain!

“Now [in secular matters], if in their conversations with one with another, and in the indulgence of human affections, even not of the best kind, men seek with whom they may refresh themselves, and for the purpose of having greater satisfaction in speaking of their empty joys; then I know no reason why it should also not be lawful for him, who is beginning to love and serve God in earnest, to confide to another person his joys and sorrows; for they, who are given to prayer, are thoroughly accustomed to both joy and sorrow. [How little spiritual conversation is heard in the home, at the dinner table, in recreation, in the work place, etc. All this is both an indication of our lukewarmness, and it is also conducive to (leads to) lukewarmness—for there are no logs being thrown on the fires of our love for God, and so, naturally, those fires start to cool and go out. On the contrary, how wonderful and joyful it is to be able to speak for long hours on the things of God with like-minded souls, and how strengthening is such a sublime pursuit!].

Two Heads Are Better Than One
St. Teresa continues: “For if that friendship with God, which he desires, be real, I believe that he who will discuss the matter, with this intention, will profit both himself and those who hear him, and thus will derive more light for his own understanding, as well as for the instruction of his friends. He who in discussing his method of prayer falls into vain-glory, will do so also when he hears Mass devoutly, if he is seen by men, and in doing other good works, which [hearing Mass and doing good works] must be done under pain of being no Christian; and yet these things must not be omitted through fear of vain-glory.

“Moreover, it is a most important matter for those souls who are not strong in virtue; for they have so many people, enemies as well as friends, to urge them the wrong way, that I do not see how this point is capable of exaggeration. It seems to me that Satan has employed this ruse—and it is of the greatest service to him—namely, that men, who really wish to love and please God, should hide the fact, while others, at his suggestion, make open show of their malicious dispositions; and this is so common, that it seems a matter of boasting now, and the offenses committed against God are thus published abroad. [We see this all the more today, where everywhere the world seeks to publish “bad news” but rarely “good news”; we are very quick to speak of the faults of others, but ever so slow or reluctant to speak of their virtues. Why is this? Partially, it is because we are so lukewarm; and, therefore, to expose and point out the sins and failings of others makes us feel less culpable in our lukewarmness: as they say in sports, “attack is the best form of defense.” Speaking of the virtues of others would put us, with our lukewarmness, in bad light and bring unwanted pressure upon us to improve our state.]

Lie of Living Safe Among Worldly Vanities & Pleasures
“I do not know whether the things I am saying are foolish or not ... [but] the things that relate to the service of God are so feebly managed, that it is necessary for those, who would serve Him, to join shoulder to shoulder, if they are to advance at all; for it is considered ‘safe’ to live amidst the vanities and pleasures of the world, and few there be who regard them with unfavorable eyes. But if any one begins to give himself up to the service of God, there are so many people who will suddenly find fault with him, that it becomes necessary for him to seek companions, in order that he may find protection among them, till he grows strong enough not to feel what he may be made to suffer. If he does not, he will find himself in great straits. [Sadly, what she says is all the more true today: “it is considered ‘safe’ to live amidst the vanities and pleasures of the world.” Whether it be in home-life, school-life, work-life or social-life, most Catholics have not only made peace with the vanities and pleasures of the world, but they think more of them, talk more of them and pursue them more often than they do God!]

“This, I believe, must have been the reason why some of the Saints withdrew into the desert. [Today, it is almost necessary to withdraw into a desert within ourselves: we live in the world, we work in the world, but we must strive not to be a part of the world. In a certain sense, the reverse of the image we have of an oasis in a desert, whereby we become a desert of safety surrounded by the many worldly oases of pleasure and vanities. We cannot expect to flirt with danger and save our souls: “He that loveth danger shall perish in it” (Ecclesiasticus 3:27). The world is our danger]. And it is a kind of humility in man, not to trust to himself, but to believe that God will help him in his relations with those [she speaks of the friendship of good persons, not evil persons] with whom he converses; and charity grows by being shared and diffused; and there are a thousand blessings herein which I would not dare to speak of, if I had not known by experience the great importance of it. It is very true that I am the most wicked and the basest of all who are born of women; but I believe that he who, humbling himself, though strong, yet trusteth not in himself, and believeth another who in this matter has had experience, will lose nothing."

Good Friends, Bad Friends
"Of myself, I may say that, if Our Lord had not revealed to me this truth, and given me the opportunity of speaking very frequently to persons given over to prayer, I should have gone on falling and rising till I eventually tumbled into Hell. I had many ‘friends’ to help me to fall; but as to rising again, I was left to myself so much, that I wonder how it was that I was not always on the ground. I praise God for His mercy; for it was He only Who stretched out His hand to me. May He be blessed for ever! Amen.”

Lukewarmness Twists the Truth
There is a danger of falling into a false sense of security, which is what lukewarmness is forever seeking and advocating. Lukewarmness pleads and serenades us with thoughts such as: “Don’t worry! See! Teresa was lukewarm for many years and SHE became a saint! It will be the same for you! Besides, becoming a saint doesn’t happen overnight—it takes time! Soooo, take your time! Anyway, you’re not really lukewarm, you’re just prudent! If you try to do too much too soon, you might pull a spiritual muscle—and then what good will you be?” The false seductive reasoning of the devil is all that this is!

Out of all the hoards of lukewarm persons who lived many years or decades in lukewarmness, how many St. Teresas came out of their ranks? Very few! We sow as we reap; and God “will render to every man according to his works” (Romans 2:6), “Let us therefore cast off the works of darkness, and put on the armour of light” (Romans 13:12). That is why God says in the Book of Apocalypse:

“I know thy works, that thou art neither cold, nor hot. I would thou wert cold, or hot. But because thou art lukewarm, and neither cold, not hot, I will begin to vomit thee out of my mouth. Because thou sayest: ‘I am rich, and made wealthy, and have need of nothing!’ And knowest not, that thou art wretched [a sinner], and miserable[finding joy in the world, not God], and poor [in grace and merits], and blind[lukewarm], and naked [without virtues]. I counsel thee to buy of me gold fire tried [true charity], that thou mayest be made rich; and mayest be clothed in white garments, and that the shame of thy nakedness may not appear; and anoint thy eyes with eye-salve, that thou mayest see. Such as I love, I rebuke and chastise. Be zealous therefore, and do penance” (Apocalypse 3:15-19).

THOUGHTS ON THE SEPTUAGESIMA SEASON
Wednesday after Sexagesima Sunday

Article 12
St. Teresa's Worldly Antidote

Teresa's Medicine Cabinet
Having confessed to her lukewarmness, and having painted a picture to illustrate parts of it, St. Teresa now leads us to the medicine cabinet to look for a cure. In these next paragraphs from her autobiography, she shows us how, after many years of languishing in lukewarmness, she begins to emerge from its consumptive cloud.

There is a saying in the spiritual life, especially encountered in the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius of Loyola, that says: "Agere contra" which literally means"Act against", which in its intended meaning says: "Do the opposite." If we are tempted to be mean, let us be generous; if we are tempted to be angry, let us be meek; if we are tempted to be proud, let us be humble, and so on.

In her 'confessions', St. Teresa has been telling us about her lack of prayer. Prayer is a primary source of grace; and without grace we cannot fight the temptations offered to us by the devil, the world and the flesh. Lack of prayer means lack of grace; and lack of grace means lack of strength; and lack of strength means lack of effort; and lack of effort results in lukewarmness.

So, St. Teresa's recommendation is to force ourselves back into prayer, cost what it may, no matter how painful it may be. We must approach it like a 'couch-potato' would have to approach physical exercise: it is an abhorrent thought to him, but it is the only way back to full health, a very painful way at first, but less painful with each week, as the body starts to get accustomed to the increased strains and efforts that are encountered and demanded

Once again, we will quote St. Teresa (this time from chapter 8 of her autobiography) and add occasional comments in purple.

Ignoring the Strong Pillar of Prayer
"1. It is not without reason that I have dwelt so long on this portion of my life. I see clearly that it will give no one pleasure to see anything so base; and certainly I wish those, who may read this, to have me in abhorrence, as a soul so obstinate and so ungrateful to Him Who did so much for me. I could wish, too, I had permission to say how often at this time I failed in my duty to God, because I was not leaning on the strong pillar of prayer.

"I passed nearly twenty years on this stormy sea, falling and rising, but rising to no good purpose, seeing that I went and fell again. My life was one of [supposed]perfection; but it was so mean, that I scarcely made any account whatever of venial sins; and, though of mortal sins I was afraid, I was not so afraid of them as I ought to have been, because I did not avoid the perilous occasions of them."

[Here we see St. Teresa in a kind of 'no-man's land' or 'half-way-house' where she wants to leave the world and go to God, but still feels the gravity or 'pull' of the world more than she feels the 'pull' of God. It makes us recall the words of St. Paul, when he says: “The law is spiritual; but I am carnal, sold under sin ... For I do not that good which I will; but the evil which I hate, that I do ... For the good which I will, I do not; but the evil which I will not, that I do ... For I am delighted with the law of God, according to the inward man: But I see another law in my members, fighting against the law of my mind, and captivating me in the law of sin, that is in my members. Unhappy man that I am, who shall deliver me from the body of this death? The grace of God, by Jesus Christ our Lord. Therefore, I myself, with the mind serve the law of God; but with the flesh, the law of sin” (Romans 7:14-25).

That rescuing grace of God, comes to us mainly through prayer, sometimes very painful prayer, sometimes seemingly ineffective prayer. But just like exercise can seem painful and ineffective at the outset, it quickly becomes, if persevered in, increasingly productive.]

Neither God nor World is Sweet
St. Teresa then adds: "I may say that it was the most painful life that can be imagined, because I had no sweetness in God, and no pleasure in the world." [It is like the 'couch-potato' who finds no fun in his flab, but at the same time finds no fun in exercise either. Yet what a great grace from God: to begin to find dissatisfaction with the world! It is sign of a likely cure to our ills!]

"2. When I was in the midst of the pleasures of the world, the remembrance of what I owed to God made me sad; and when I was praying to God, my worldly affections disturbed me. This is so painful a struggle, that I know not how I could have borne it for a month, let alone for so many years."

[We can relate to her struggles for we have the same struggles, and we should take heart from her struggles to courageously follow her down the path of recovery from the same very same disease with which she was afflicted!]

Courage in Prayer
"Nevertheless, I can trace distinctly the great mercy of Our Lord to me, while thus immersed in the world, in that I had still the courage to pray. I say courage, because I know of nothing in the whole world which requires greater courage than plotting treason against the King, knowing that He knows it, and yet never withdrawing from His presence; for, granting that we are always in the presence of God, yet it seems to me that those who pray, are in His presence in a very different sense; for they, as it were, see that He is looking upon them; while others may be for days together without even once recollecting that God sees them.

[She says: "I still had the courage to pray!" It is that prayer that the devil seeks to uproot from our soul; and if he cannot uproot it, then the next best thing is to make us pray badly (too quickly, distractedly, sleepily, etc). That is why St. Paul tells us:“Pray without ceasing” (1 Thessalonians 5:17) and Jesus says: “We ought always to pray, and not to faint” (Luke 18:1). Prayer is one of the key elements to Our Lady's messages in her modern-day apparitions. But those prayers must be said well, as she asked at La Salette: "Do you say your prayers well?"]

Ups and Downs
"3. It is true, indeed, that during these years there were many months, and, I believe, occasionally a whole year, in which I so kept guard over myself that I did not offend Our Lord, gave myself much to prayer, and took some pains, and that successfully, not to offend Him. I speak of this now, because all I am saying is strictly true; but I remember very little of those good days, and so they must have been few, while my evil days were many. Still, the days that passed over without my spending a great part of them in prayer were few, unless I was very ill, or very much occupied.

Eighteen Years! Can You Believe it?
"4. When I was ill, I was well with God. I contrived that those about me should be so, too, and I made supplications to Our Lord for this grace, and spoke frequently of Him. Thus, with the exception of that year of which I have been speaking, during eight-and-twenty years of prayer, I spent more than eighteen in that strife and contention which arose out of my attempts to reconcile God and the world."

[What amazes is the length of the combat in the arena of lukewarmness and worldliness: eighteen years! It is almost akin to St. Augustine's mother, St. Monica, spending all those years and tears in praying for the conversion of her son from his problems and sins! Hey, soldier! This could be a long battle! Maybe it's already been a long one! Hang on in there!]

Persevere in Prayer! But What Kind of Prayer?
"5. The reason, then, of my telling this at so great a length is that, as I have just said, the mercy of God and my ingratitude, on the one hand, may become known; and, on the other, that men may understand how great is the good which God works in a soul when He gives it a disposition to pray in earnest, though it may not be so well prepared as it ought to be.

"If that soul perseveres in spite of sins, temptations, and relapses—brought about in a thousand ways by Satan—Our Lord will bring it at last—I am certain of it—to the harbor of salvation, as He has brought me myself; for so it seems to me now. May His Majesty grant I may never go back and be lost! He who gives himself to prayer is in possession of a great blessing, of which many saintly and good men have written--I am speaking of mental prayer—glory be to God for it; and, if they had not done so, I am not proud enough, though I have but little humility, to presume to discuss it."

[Now here is the key! The "Prayer" that she is speaking of, is, as she says, MENTAL PRAYER. She is not speaking of just praying Rosaries and the prayers we have in our prayer books, but she talking about putting aside time for MEDITATION, which is what mental prayer really is. Now, of course, you can practice mental prayer and pray the Rosary at the same time, this is what "meditating the mysteries is all about; but how people actually do that? At best it might be a surface, window-shopping, drive-by meditation, rather than the deeper version Our Lady is looking for and which she calls the "soul" of the Rosary].

Pray! No Matter How Bad You Are!
"6. I may speak of that which I know by experience; and so I say, let him never cease from prayer who has once begun it, be his life ever so wicked; for prayer is the way to amend it, and without prayer such amendment will be much more difficult. Let him not be tempted by Satan, as I was, to give it up, on the pretense of humility; let him rather believe that His words are true Who says that, if we truly repent, and resolve never to offend Him, He will take us into His favor again, give us the graces He gave us before, and occasionally even greater, if our repentance deserves it. And as to him who has not begun to pray, I implore him by the love of our Lord not to deprive himself of so great a good."

THOUGHTS ON THE SEPTUAGESIMA SEASON
Thursday after Sexagesima Sunday

Article 13
Sugar Sweet Sin!

Sugar Sweet Sin
Just as Scripture tells us: “O taste, and see that the Lord is sweet” (Psalm 33:9), the devil tries to tell us: “Taste and see how sin is sweet!” The devil's masterstroke is to always try to make sin look and taste sweet. “Evil shall be sweet in his mouth” (Job 20:12). It is how he worked on Eve; making her see the sin of eating the forbidden fruit as something desirable. To do this, he has to use false reasoning—he has to lie—and then make us believe and accept that lie.

Sugar Sweet Satan
“Now the serpent was more subtle than any of the beasts of the earth which the Lord God had made. And he said to the woman: ‘Why hath God commanded you, that you should not eat of every tree of paradise?’ And the woman answered him, saying: ‘Of the fruit of the trees that are in paradise we do eat: but of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of paradise, God hath commanded us that we should not eat; and that we should not touch it, lest perhaps we die.’ And the serpent said to the woman: ‘No, you shall not die the death! For God doth know that in what day soever you shall eat thereof, your eyes shall be opened: and you shall be as Gods, knowing good and evil.’ And the woman saw that the tree was good to eat, and fair to the eyes, and delightful to behold: and she took of the fruit thereof, and did eat, and gave to her husband who did eat” (Genesis 3:1-6).

Sugar Sweet Speech
We all know fruit is usually sugary and sweet; and you can bet your life that the fruit that Eve tasted was sweet as can be! (Otherwise she would not have passed it on to Adam!). When something is sweet and pleasant, then we are more likely to accept it and indulge in it than if faced with something sour and unpleasant. The devil knows this and that is why Hell's cosmetic industry is the largest in the universe! He has to put 'make-up' on all his sinful suggestions and he has to make-up his own version of the truth (which is nothing but a lie). The Book of Genesis calls him "more subtle than any of the beasts of the earth" and Our Lord says of him: “The devil...was a murderer from the beginning, and he stood not in the truth; because truth is not in him. When he speaketh a lie, he speaketh of his own: for he is a liar, and the father thereof” (John 8:44).

The devil is a flatterer, a sweet-talker and sweet-liar. Flattery is sweet speech that exaggerates a truth, or even ‘creates a non-existent truth’ for its own manipulative purposes. This is what the devil does. He exaggerates truth, he hides truth, he twists truth, he denies truth. He tries to make the truth look, feel and taste bitter, while, at the same time, making sin look, feel and taste good, sweet and right. But the ‘sweetness’ that the devil offers is a mere sugar-coated bitterness: “The bread of lying is sweet to a man: but afterwards his mouth shall be filled with gravel”(Proverbs 20:17). “To a man that is a fornicator all bread is sweet, he will not be weary of sinning unto the end” (Ecclesiasticus 23:24).

Sugar Sweet Sacrifice
Mankind gradually fell away from God and wallowed in the ‘sweetness’ of sin—a ‘sweetness’ that was to end in bitterness. God would wash away all that ‘sweetness’ with the Great Flood in the time of Noe. After the punishment of the Great Flood,“Noe built an altar unto the Lord: and taking of all cattle and fowls that were clean, offered holocausts upon the altar. And the Lord smelled a sweet savor, and said: I will no more curse the earth for the sake of man” (Genesis 8:20-21). Here we see an allusion to the sweetness of sacrifice, the sweetness of penance. Sacrifice is sweet to God, though bitter for man. Nevertheless God issues the command to“offer it all and burn it all upon the altar for a holocaust, and most sweet savor to the Lord” (Leviticus 1:13). This theme of sacrifice being a “sweet savor” and a “sweet odor” is repeated time and time again throughout the Book of Leviticus and the Book of Numbers. It is almost like a chorus of a song that is incessantly repeated.

In this sense, the Cross of Christ is sweet, as we sing in the glorious chorus or refrain of the Pange Lingua in the liturgy of Good Friday:
“Faithful Cross, O Tree all beauteous,
Tree all pearless and divine.
Not a grove on earth can show us,
Such a leaf and flower as thine.
Sweet the nails and sweet the wood,
Laden with so sweet a load.”

Our Lord asks to taste His chalice: “Can you drink the chalice that I shall drink?”(Matthew 20:22). That chalice of suffering is also a chalice of sweet suffering: “Let a man prove himself: and so let him drink of the chalice” (1 Corinthians 11:28). “O taste, and see that the Lord is sweet” (Psalm 33:9). He asks us to taste the sweetness of love, a sweet sacrificing love: “Greater love than this no man hath, that a man lay down his life for his friends” (John 15:13). That is why He tells us: “If any man will come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow Me” (Luke 9:23). The cross may have a bitter-coating, but, beneath that, it is all sweet: “Sweet the nails and sweet the wood; Laden with so sweet a load.”

Now is the Time of the Desert, the Desserts come later
There is a place for sweetness, but there is no place for exaggerated sweetness or sinful sweetness. Let us not be fooled! Taking a lead from the saying about fooling people some of time, we can say: “You can eat all sugars some of the time; you can eat some sugars all of the time; but you cannot eat all sugars all of the time!” God made things sweet, but the “land of milk and honey” is not meant to be here on earth, but in Heaven. As Our Lady said so sweetly to St. Bernadette: “I do not promise to make you happy in this world, but in the next.” So, just as a meal has the sweet dessert served at the end of the meal, likewise, our sweet desserts will come at the end of our life—in Heaven. For now, we sink our teeth into the meat and bitter herbs, just as Israelites had to do in Egypt, the night before they set-out on their 40-year trek through the desert to the Promised Land of “milk and honey.”Now is the time for the desert, our desserts come later!

Sweetness Can Damage Your Health
We are a ‘sweet-toothed’ world today. Sugar, like sin, is everywhere. It is even added to things that do not naturally possess it and were not intended to have it by God’s creation. I recall a non-American visiting these shores and stating that he was shocked to taste so much sugar in the meat produced by Americans. In his country, meat was not sugared. There are many other foods that have sugar added to them, to seduce and attract the taste-buds of the populace. Yet few stop to consider the consequences of all this sugar, just as they fail to stop and think through the consequences of “sweet-sin.”

► Sugar can suppress your immune system—and sin, even venial sin, suppresses our spiritual immune system.

► Sugar in soda, when consumed by children, results in the children drinking less milk—and sin, when consumed, gives us a distaste for the ‘milk’ of God with which He tries to feed us through His teaching.

► Sugar reduces the body’s ability to defend against bacterial infection—and sin reduces the soul’s ability to fight temptations.

► Sugar contributes to saliva acidity and can lead to an acidic digestive tract—and sin make our soul acidic, whereby we are always criticizing and complaining, especially with regard to the ways and demands of God.

► Sugar can cause tooth decay—and sin decays the ‘teeth’ of the soul. They rot and make us ‘toothless’ with ‘no bite’ just a bark. Our religious diet can only stomach mushy food.

► Sugar can lead to obesity—and sin makes us carry the excess baggage of worldliness and all that comes with it.

► Sugar can cause arthritis—and sin makes our spiritual limbs ache in the service of God, even paralyzing some.

► Sugar can cause heart disease—and sin causes lukewarmness of heart and even hardness of heart in relation to God.

► Sugar causes food allergies—and sin makes us allergic to the word of God and the virtues He wants us to practice.

► Sugar slows food’s travel time through the gastrointestinal tract—and sin slows down our absorption of the words and graces of God. They do not have the beneficial effect upon us that they should have.

► Sugar can cause cataracts—and sin makes us myopic or even half-blind in spiritual and religious matters.

► Sugar can cause headaches, including migraines—and sin gives us a headache; sever at times, when it comes to learning and living our Faith.

► Sugar can cause depression—and sin makes us depressed about all the killjoy elements we see in the Faith.

► Sugar reduces learning capacity—and sin keeps us away from knowing, loving and serving God as we should.

► Sugar can slow the ability of the adrenal glands to function—and sin makes us listless, lazy, indifferent and without energy in our daily spiritual and religious life.

► Sugar can be the cause of a wide variety of cancers, for cancer thrives on sugar—and sin, if not combated, leads to habits of vice that will risk the damnation of our soul.

► Sugar causes inflammation—and sin inflames and feeds our passions.

Sweetness versus Bitterness
Most people prefer sweetness over bitterness. Yet, it is often bitter foods that are the healthiest. Several cloves of garlic will do more good than several sugar candies; a mouthful of lemon juice is healthier than a mouthful of Coca-Cola or some other soda. A day of penance or fasting is healthier for the soul that a day of fun and feasting. While the bitter taste is often the most disliked one, it is, however, one of the most important tastes for promoting healthy digestion.

Hatred of Bitterness can lead to Eternal Bitterness
Because people often don’t love the taste of bitterness, it gets taken out of their life, to the detriment of their digestion! Likewise, people don’t like the bitterness of penance and mortification, and have removed it from their diet, to the detriment of their spiritual well-being and their chances of salvation.

Herbalists have coined the term “bitter deficiency syndrome” to describe the many common digestive complaints that are caused by a lack of bitters in a person’s diet. The herbal world is currently going through a bitter resurgence and they are all the rage right now. This “bitter deficiency syndrome” could be likened to a “penance deficiency syndrome” or a “mortification deficiency syndrome.” This is the underlying cause behind so many problems in the world today: in the Church, in the Nations, in Parishes, in Communities, in our Homes and, above all, in our SOULS!

THOUGHTS ON THE SEPTUAGESIMA SEASON
Friday after Sexagesima Sunday

Article 14
We Have Lost The Sense Of Sin!

Sweet Sin, not Shocking Sin
The gradually erosion of the Faith, in these modern times, has been foreseen and foretold by Our Lord in Holy Scripture, and by Our Lady at La Salette. “The Son of man, when He cometh, shall He find, think you, faith on earth?” (Luke 18:8). Our Lady says:  "Lucifer, together with a large number of demons, will be unloosed from Hell; they will put an end to faith little by little, even in those dedicated to God ... Rome will lose faith ... Several [religious orders] will abandon the faith, and a great number of priests and members of religious orders will break away from the true religion ... several religious institutions will lose all faith and will lose many souls ... The true faith to the Lord having been forgotten, each individual will want to be on his own and be superior to people of same identity"  (Our Lady at La Salette, 1846).

Erosion of Faith brings and Erosion of Guilt
This erosion of Faith also produces the by-product of also eroding our sense of sin.“In the last days there shall come deceitful scoffers, walking after their own lusts”(2 Peter 3:3). Our Lady of La Salette shows the beginnings of this when she says:"People will think of nothing but amusement. The wicked will give themselves over to all kinds of sin ... The spirits of darkness will spread everywhere a universal slackening of all that concerns the service of God ... The chiefs, the leaders of the people of God, have neglected prayer and penance, and the devil has bedimmed their intelligence. They have become wandering stars which the old devil will drag along with his tail to make them perish ... The priests, ministers of my Son, the priests, by their wicked lives, by their irreverence and their impiety in the celebration of the holy mysteries, by their love of money, their love of honors and pleasures, the priests ... are asking vengeance, and vengeance is hanging over their heads. Woe to the priests and to those dedicated to God who, by their unfaithfulness and their wicked lives, are crucifying my Son again!"

Like Father, like Son; like Mother, like Daughter
Some of those who have read the Third Secret of Fatima, have indicated that part of the Third Secret is this corruption within the Church, that, they say, will start (has already started) at the top. If the parents commit sins freely and frequently, then the children will have no problem imitating their parents: "Like father, like son; like mother, like daughter." If the clergy who are in authority start to become lukewarm and faithless, then the laity will happily and readily follow suit. Sadly, the blind leading the blind, and heading for the pit.

From Bitter to Sweet, or at least Bitter-Sweet
Since the fall of Adam and Eve, human nature has been wounded. The consequence of Original Sin is a weak mind, a weak will and powerful passions. In such an environment, if healing and strengthening grace is not sought and used, then sin becomes pretty easy and pretty sweet. At first, of course, sin is bitter—much like certain bitter foods and drinks that we have all experienced; but, if repeatedly tasted and drunk, then the soul starts to get used to that bitterness, and, strangely enough, that bitterness starts to seem less bitter and more sweet. For bitter food and drink, we say it is "an acquired taste"; and similarly, over time, we can acquire a taste for the bitterness of sin. For some it becomes 'sweet', for others only 'bitter-sweet', but as with chronic illness, you get so used to its presence that you almost don't feel the illness or the pain anymore.

Of course, as with the gradual introduction to bitter or spicy foods, it happens little by little; hardly any bitterness or spice is added at first, then it is gradually increased in proportion to the person's tolerance of it. This is how the devil and world (and we ourselves, sadly) approaches what we could call "sin-exposure." Start out with getting the soul to tolerate teeny-weeny, hardly-a-sin-at-all, venial sins; and then, once resistance is overcome and toleration replaces it, gradually "turn up the heat", but only ever so gently!

"It's only a Venial Sin!"
This is why the spiritual masters warn us strongly against venial sin, and scold those who have the idiotic attitude of saying: "Aw, it's only a venial sin, for goodness sakes! I won't go to Hell for that!"  The spiritual masters point out that venial sin is a gradually weakening of the spiritual immune system, and this sets-up the soul for ever more frequent and serious venial sins, till, at last, the teeniest-weeniest mortal sin no longer looks, feels and tastes like a mortal sin at all, but seems to be a serious venial sin, and no more!

Danger of Making Peace with Sin
How does this all happen? It happens through a loss of zeal, or, if we look at the flip side of that coin, we will see lukewarmness on the other side of the same coin. As the Venerable Father Faber points out, in his chapter on Lukewarmness in his bookGrowth in Holiness, that if we want to compare lukewarmness (or lack of zeal) to some physical disease, then, as he says, "we shall find it in blindness. It is a blindness which does not know even its own self, and does not suspect that it is blind, or that other men see better than itself. It is a judicial blindness, because it once saw better itself, and now does not remember either what it saw, or that it ever saw at all. This blindness is owing principally to three causes: (1) the frequency of venial sins, (2) habitual dissipation of mind and (3) the ruling passion. And the immediate results of this blindness are three: (1) In the first place conscience becomes untrue. So first there comes a false conscience. (2) Bad instincts grow stronger. In proportion as conscience becomes dark, and so cold, and finally numb, in the same proportion the bad instincts of the human spirit, like owls at night, get more far‑sighted, animated and vivacious. (3) Out of the two preceding results flows a third, which is a profane use of the Sacraments. To go to Holy Communion when we are physically drowsy, yawning and half asleep, or to make our general confession half stupefied with laudanum would be fair types of the way in which we morally use the Sacraments."

Exaggerated! Ridiculous! Overboard!
From the above account, we can easily see how we so easily lose the sense of sin. The frequency of venial sin gradually darkens and numbs the conscience so that it barely feels the venial sin. The teaching of the catechism, which calls venial sins the second greatest evil in the entire world after that of mortal sin, seems like an exaggerated and ridiculous overstatement. When and if this occurs, then we have already lost the first round to the enemy and given him the upper-hand. He has a foot in the door, and though he may not get the door fully open, we will not be able to fully close the door either!

Now is the Acceptable Time
Lent is a time to recover our lost sense of sin; it is a time to re-evaluate our spiritual values, to correct and re-align them. The only real way to do that is to look at the price of sin and its consequences. This is what any and every serious retreat does during the opening days of the retreat—unless, of course, the retreat is a "warm fuzzy" retreat that does not really seek to improve you, but simply wants you to stay comfortable in your already comfortable lack of zeal mode.

The Last Should Be First
What does this mean in "real terms" and in "concrete terms"? It means reflecting on what the spiritual masters call the "Four Last Things", which are Death, Judgment, Hell and Heaven. These "Four Last Things" are the last things most people wish to think about! They conveniently relegate to the last place on their "To Do List."

St. Thomas Aquinas tells us to always look to the end of things; and he tells us that once we lose sight of the end, then we can wander miles off course. The Imitation of Christ also speaks of the end and the "Last Things", telling us to put them first:

Imitation of Christ on Last Things
"In all things look to the end, and how thou wilt stand before the strict Judge, from Whom there is nothing hid; Who takes no bribes, and receives no excuses, but will judge that which is just. O most miserable and foolish sinner, what wilt thou answer unto God, Who knoweth all thine evil deeds-----thou who art sometimes afraid of an angry man? Why dost thou not provide thee against the day of judgment, when no man can be excused or defended by another, but each one will have enough to do to answer for himself? Now thy labor is profitable, thy tears are acceptable, thy groans are heard, thy sorrow is satisfying and purifieth the soul.

"The patient man hath a great and wholesome Purgatory; who, suffering wrongs, is more concerned at another's malice than at his own injury; who prays freely for his adversaries, forgiving their offenses from his heart; who delays not to ask pardon of others; who is easier moved to pity than to anger; who does frequent violence to himself, and strives to bring his flesh wholly in subjection to the spirit. Better is it to purge away our sins, and cut off our vices now, than to keep them for purgation hereafter. Truly we deceive ourselves, through the inordinate love we bear the flesh.

"What else Will that fire devour but thy sins? The more thou sparest thyself now, and followest the flesh, so much the more dearly shalt thou pay for it hereafter, and the more fuel dost thou lay up for that fire" (The Imitation of Christ, Book 1, chapter 24, "Of the Judgment and Punishment of Sinners").

Study the Price of Sin before Planning Eternal Vacations
Let us then use Lent wisely, and not be afraid to look sin in the eye and see fully its dire consequences. Pick up a good retreat manual, for example the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius, and focus especially on the meditations that are suggested for first two weeks. Alternatively, you could try getting a copy of Fr. Xavier Schouppe's two excellent books on two aspects of the "Four Last Things", namely his book on Hell and How to Avoid It, and the other being his book Purgatory Explained. We will run some extracts from these books in our webpage "How Expensive is Sin?" which will appear soon under the "LENT" tab at the top of the page.

Keep the 'Big Picture' in Sight!
Of course, reading, reflecting and meditating upon the "Four Last Things" risks being a depressing thing (a notion that the devil will play upon and 'milk' unto the last drop), but if it is done, as it always should be done, looking at the 'big picture' that also includes the compassion, mercy and love of God for the sinner, then the effects can and will be truly salutary and sanctifying. Remember that Our Lord was not afraid to speak on the Four Last Things whilst on earth; nor was Our Lady afraid to speak of the Four Last Things in her modern-day apparitions, even going so far as to show three children at Fatima (aged merely 7, 8 and 10 at the time of the first apparition), a horrifying vision of Hell. The result for those children was a very salutary, healthy and sanctifying one! It can be the same for us too!

THOUGHTS ON THE SEPTUAGESIMA SEASON
Saturday after Sexagesima Sunday

Article 15
How's Your Eyesight? Going Blind? "Lord That I May See!"

The Importance of Sight
Sight is beautiful thing! It is, arguably, together with hearing, the most important of the five senses. Catholic philosophy has a saying--“nihil in intellectu nisi praecognitum in sensu”--which means, there is nothing in the intellect that has not come via the senses. Once we know something, then we can work with it, build on it, expand it, or whatever, but initially, the basic building block of knowledge comes through the senses—what I can see, hear, touch, taste and smell.

Symbolism of Sight
Sight and blindness play a prominent part in Holy Scripture. They are usually symbolic of knowledge and ignorance.

“Therefore we have erred from the way of truth, and the light of justice hath not shined unto us, and the sun of understanding hath not risen upon us” (Wisdom 5:6).“The light is come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than the light: for their works were evil” (John 3:19). “Others indeed were worthy to be imprisoned in darkness and deprived of light … the pure light of the law to be given to the world”(Wisdom 18:4).

We have even incorporated that aspect into our everyday language: “I see what you mean!” or “I see what you’re saying!” are expressions that many people use to express the fact that they grasp and understand something. Likewise, expressions such as “I can’t see the point of this!” or “You don’t see what I am trying to say!” are phrases manifesting a lack of comprehension on the part of someone. We even push the expression to the extremes of “You must be blind if you cannot see what is happening to the world today!” or “We are not going to follow them blindly!”meaning that we will not follow another to the point of abdicating our human reasoning, its understanding and judgment.

There are also many other expressions that call “sight” into play: “Seeing is believing” which brings the doubting St. Thomas to mind; or “Love is blind” meaning that we see only in a one-sided manner, noticing only the positive and ignoring the negative; or similarly, “turning a blind eye” whereby we ignore some physical or moral evil.

Seeing Things Rightly
However, seeing is one thing; seeing correctly is another. An amusing saying, that captures the essence of this, is: “Better see rightly on a dollar a week than squint on a million.” However, there is no doubt that, today, most would prefer to see things poorly and pocket a million, than to see things clearly and not have those million dollars. Yet, to play upon a Scriptural quote of Our Lord’s, we could say:“What doth it profit a man if he hath a million shekels, but cannot see the path to Heaven?” As Jesus said: “Enter ye in at the narrow gate: for wide is the gate, and broad is the way that leadeth to destruction, and many there are who go in thereat. How narrow is the gate, and strait is the way that leadeth to life: and few there are that find it!” (Matthew 7:13-14).

It is by the light that we see; without the light it is difficult or even impossible to see. Christ is our light and the Faith He gives us is our light. That light, once received, has to be passed on—for that reason Christ not only calls Himself the light of the world, but He also clearly tells us that we, too, are the light of the world. Jesus is the light of world; the clergy are the light of world; and the lay persons are the light of the world. Yet, those who are supposed to be the light, are, for the most part, blind themselves!

The Eyesight of Many is Failing
“His watchmen are all blind, they are all ignorant: dumb dogs not able to bark, seeing vain things, sleeping and loving dreams” (Isaias 56:10). “They cannot restore the blind man to his sight” (Baruch 6:36). “Let them alone: they are blind, and leaders of the blind. And if the blind lead the blind, both will fall into the pit”(Matthew 15:4).

Our Lady of La Salette echoes this idea: “Lucifer, together with a large number of demons, will be unloosed from Hell; they will put an end to faith little by little, even in those dedicated to God. They will blind them in such a way, that, unless they are blessed with a special grace, these people will take on the spirit of these angels of Hell; several religious institutions will lose all faith and will lose many souls” (Our Lady at La Salette, 1846).

“The priests, ministers of my Son, the priests, by their wicked lives, by their irreverence and their impiety in the celebration of the holy mysteries, by their love of money, their love of honors and pleasures … are crucifying my Son again! … The leaders of the people of God, have neglected prayer and penance, and the devil has bedimmed their intelligence” (Our Lady at La Salette, 1846).

Pit—ifully Blind
As Our Lord said to the Pharisees: “Woe to you blind guides ... Ye foolish and blind; for whether is greater, the gold, or the temple … Thou blind Pharisee, first make clean the inside of the cup and of the dish, that the outside may become clean” (Matthew 23:16-17, 26). “Can the blind lead the blind? Do they not both fall into the ditch?” (Luke 6:39). And Jesus said of the Pharisees: “Let them alone: they are blind, and leaders of the blind. And if the blind lead the blind, both will fall into the pit” (Matthew 15:4). “They have been rebellious to the light, they have not known His ways, neither have they returned by His paths” (Job 24:13).  “The light shall be dark in his tabernacle, and the lamp that is over him, shall be put out” (Job 18:6).

Do You Want to See Better?
The devil blinds, but Jesus heals: “Then was offered to Him one possessed with a devil, blind and dumb: and he healed him, so that he spoke and saw” (Matthew 12:22). “The blind see, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead rise again, the poor have the Gospel preached to them” (Matthew 11:5). But He will only heal us if we truly want to be healed!

One of those who were healed, is shown to us in the Gospel of Quinquagesima Sunday, where St. Luke gives the account of the blind man begging on the Jericho road. “Now it came to pass, when He drew nigh to Jericho, that a certain blind man sat by the way side, begging. And when he heard the multitude passing by, he asked what this meant. And they told him, that Jesus of Nazareth was passing by. And he cried out, saying: ‘Jesus, son of David! Have mercy on me!’ And they that went before, rebuked him, that he should hold his peace: but he cried out much more: ‘Son of David! Have mercy on me!’ And Jesus standing, commanded him to be brought unto Him. And when he was come near, Jesus asked him, saying: ‘What wilt thou that I do to thee?’ But he said: ‘Lord, that I may see!’ And Jesus said to him: ‘Receive thy sight: thy faith hath made thee whole!’ And immediately he saw, and followed Him, glorifying God” (Luke 18:35-43).

Seeing Through the Light
“He hath delivered his soul from going into destruction, that it may live and see the light” (Job 33:28). Christ is that light. “Jesus spoke to them, saying: ‘I am the light of the world: he that followeth Me, walketh not in darkness, but shall have the light of life’” (John 8:12).  “I am come a light into the world; that whosoever believeth in Me, may not remain in darkness” (John 12:46).  “As long as I am in the world, I am the light of the world” (John 9:5). As long we keep Him in our souls, we have that light. But how many hours of daylight are there in our souls, compared to the hours of darkness?
The world and the worldly prefer darkness and, for the most part, reject the light of God. They want few, if any, hours of daylight, but many hours of darkness. “That was the true light, which enlighteneth every man that cometh into this world. He was in the world, and the world was made by Him, and the world knew Him not. He came unto His own, and His own received Him not” (John 1 9-11).  “The light is come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than the light: for their works were evil” (John 3:19).

Turn on Your Light
But having left this world, Jesus leaves the light of God behind in the world. Where is that light? Jesus tells us clearly and boldly: “You are the light of the world.”(Matthew 5:14). You live in the world, yet you must not be part of the world, you must live apart from the world, separated from the world as the light is divided from darkness. “God saw the light that it was good; and He divided the light from the darkness” (Genesis 1:4). Likewise, God wants to divide us from the darkness of the world.

St. John the Baptist was a reflection of the light of God, the light of Christ. What St. John the Evangelist writes of him, he could very well also address to us, because we, too, are, as Jesus said, the light of the world:

“There was a man [you and I] sent from God ...This man came for a witness, to give testimony of the light, that all men might believe through him. He was not the light, but was to give testimony of the light” (John 1 6-8).

We are called to give a testimony of the light, a testimony of God, a testimony of Christ: “You are the light of the world. A city seated on a mountain cannot be hid. Neither do men light a candle and put it under a bushel, but upon a candlestick, that it may shine to all that are in the house. So let your light shine before men, that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father Who is in Heaven”(Matthew 6:14-16). We are the “light of world” not the “darkness of the world”, nor even the “dusk of the world.” We must let the light of Christ shine into our souls, and then let it shine out from our souls—but we cannot give what do not have!

Catholic Blindness
Our Faith has given us ‘supernatural eyes’ with which to see God, praise what see, and to follow God, glorifying Him. Today, however, the world is increasingly blind in many ways. Even if we have the Faith we can still suffer from blindness, as the Venerable Fr. Faber points out, when he says that lukewarmness is a spiritual blindness that does not even realize that it is blind, nor does it remember that it once saw much better than it can see at the present time.

Yet the Catholic world is also suffering from a dogmatic or catechetical blindness, meaning that it is blind in its knowledge of the Faith. The present level of knowledge is becoming increasingly abysmal, with most Catholics no longer possessing even the most rudimentary knowledge of the Faith: they don’t even know (or have forgotten) such simple catechetical truths that were taught in grade school as part of their First Communion and Confirmation preparation class.

Even those who have a deeper knowledge of the Faith, are, more often than not, severely handicapped by it being merely specialized knowledge of one or two particular fields: for example the Sacraments, or some minor aspect of the spiritual life, etc.

Seeing is believing, and we speak often of the “eyes of faith”; but many no longer see God but only the world around them; their “eyes of faith” can no longer see because of the dark sunglasses of the world that are blocking out the light of Christ.“We have groped for the wall, and like the blind we have groped as if we had no eyes: we have stumbled at noonday as in darkness, we are in dark places as dead men” (Isaias 59:10).

St. Paul, initially the persecutor of Christians, was blinded by the light of God, and left blind for three days as a punishment and an indication that he was in a blind rage and acting blindly. He was on his way to Damascus to arrest and bring back in chains any Christians he might find there.

St. Paul Blinded
And as he went on his journey, it came to pass that he drew nigh to Damascus; and suddenly a light from heaven shined round about him. And falling on the ground, he heard a voice saying to him: ‘Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou Me?’ Who said: ‘Who art Thou, Lord?’ And he: ‘I am Jesus Whom thou persecutest. It is hard for thee to kick against the goad.’

And he trembling and astonished, said: ‘Lord, what wilt Thou have me to do?’ And the Lord said to him: ‘Arise, and go into the city, and there it shall be told thee what thou must do.’ And Saul arose from the ground; and when his eyes were opened, he saw nothing. But they leading him by the hands, brought him to Damascus. And he was there three days, without sight, and he did neither eat nor drink. And he saw a man named Ananias coming in, and putting his hands upon him, that he might receive his sight ... And Ananias entered into the house. And laying his hands upon him, he said: ‘Brother Saul, the Lord Jesus hath sent me … receive thy sight, and be filled with the Holy Ghost.’ And immediately there fell from his eyes as it were scales, and he received his sight; and rising up, he was baptized. And immediately he preached Jesus in the synagogues, that he is the Son of God”(Acts 9:1-20).

We Were All Once Blind
Like Saul (Paul), we were all blind and received the light of Christ in our Baptism, where we were given a candle to symbolize the fact that we, having received the light of Christ, must now be the light of the world. St. Paul, who had been punished with blindness, also punished another man with blindness who tried to turn someone away from the light of Christ:

“Paul and Barnabas found a certain man, a magician, a false prophet, a Jew, whose name was Bar-jesu: who was with the proconsul Sergius Paulus, a prudent man. He sending for Barnabas and Saul, desired to hear the word of God. But Elymas the magician (for so his name is interpreted) withstood them, seeking to turn away the proconsul from the faith. Then Saul, otherwise Paul, filled with the Holy Ghost, looking upon him, said: ‘O full of all guile, and of all deceit, child of the devil, enemy of all justice, thou ceasest not to pervert the right ways of the Lord. And now behold, the hand of the Lord is upon thee, and thou shalt be blind, not seeing the sun for a time!’ And immediately there fell a mist and darkness upon him, and going about, he sought someone to lead him by the hand. Then the proconsul, when he had seen what was done, believed, admiring at the doctrine of the Lord” (Acts 13:6-12).

Walk in the Light
We are the light of the world. “Jesus therefore said to them: Yet a little while, the light is among you. Walk whilst you have the light, that the darkness overtake you not” (John 12:35). St. Paul says: “For you were heretofore darkness, but now light in the Lord. Walk then as children of the light.” (Ephesians 5:8). Let us open our eyes and walk in the light of Christ and give testimony to the light of Christ, by bringing others out of their darkness and blindness.

THOUGHTS ON THE SEPTUAGESIMA SEASON
Quinquagesima Sunday

Article 16
Is It Better To Love Than Die?

Love and Live; Sin and Die
Love and death! At first, they conjure up two different emotions: desire and dread; pleasant and unpleasant; magnificent and morbid; delightful and depressing; exhilarating and excruciating! Two irreconcilables! Or are they?

An initial glance at Scripture seems to show their irreconcilability: God, Who is Love itself, is linked to life: "God is charity" (1 John 4:8) and God, Who is good, loves us and seeks to bring eternal life to our souls; the devil, who is evil, does not love us, but hates us and seeks to bring eternal death to our souls. Christ, with His grace, brings eternal life to us; the devil, with sin, brings eternal death to us. Jesus says of Himself: "I am the way, and the truth, and the life ... I am come that they may havelife, and may have it more abundantly" (John 14:6; 10:10); whereas, speaking of the devil, Jesus says: "He was a murderer from the beginning, and he stood not in the truth; because truth is not in him” (John 8:44).

“By one man sin entered into this world, and by sin death; and so death passed upon all men, in whom all have sinned” (Romans 5:12). St. Paul tells us that “the wages of sin is death” (Romans 6:23) and “the sting of death is sin” (1 Corinthians 14:56). God Himself tells us: “everyone shall die for his own sin” (Deuteronomy 24:16).

A God of Extremes
Yet our God is not just a God of extreme justice; He is also a God of extreme mercy:“For God loveth mercy and truth: the Lord will give grace and glory” (Psalm 83:12).“The Lord is merciful and just, and our God showeth mercy” (Psalm 114:5). “The Lord is gracious and merciful: patient and plenteous in mercy. The Lord is sweet to all: and His tender mercies are over all His works” (Psalm 144:8-9). But that mercy is not unconditional, nor is it free. To obtain that mercy, certain things have to be done.

“As I live, saith the Lord God, I desire not the death of the wicked, but that the wicked turn from his way, and live. Turn ye, turn ye from your evil ways: and why will you die? Yea, if I shall say to the just that he shall surely live, and he, trusting in his justice, commit iniquity: all his justices shall be forgotten, and in his iniquity, which he hath committed, in the same shall he die. And if I shall say to the wicked: ‘Thou shalt surely die!’ and he do penance for his sin, and do judgment and justice, and if that wicked man restore what he had robbed, and walk in the commandments of life, and do no unjust thing: he shall surely live, and shall not die. None of his sins, which he hath committed, shall be imputed to him: he hath done judgment and justice, he shall surely live...For when the just shall depart from his justice, and commit iniquities, he shall die in them. And when the wicked shall depart from his wickedness, and shall do judgments, and justice: he shall live in them” (Ezechiel 33:11-19).

Mercy Means Penance! What are the Means of Penance?
Sin must be paid for; our debt must be settled—otherwise we cannot enter Heaven. If we die in a state of unconfessed and unforgiven mortal sin, then the debt will be paid in Hell. If we neglect to pay for our confessed and forgiven sins in this life, then Purgatory awaits, and Jesus says: “thou shalt not go out from thence till thou repay the last farthing” (Matthew 5:26). The obvious solution is to pay now, rather than later. Now we can pay at a greatly 'discounted' price; after death, it will be payments with high interest added; “for the sin is great, and the fierce anger of the Lord hangeth over Israel” (2 Paralipomenon 28:13). What payment plan will we choose? What payment plans are there to choose from?

The Penance of Pain & The Penance of Love
Upon Calvary, alongside the dying Christ, we see two sinners: one dying in pain, the other 'dying' out of grief-stricken love. One is a man, the other a woman. The man is St. Dismas; the woman is St. Mary Magdalen. We may call them saints today, but at the time they were great sinners being transformed into saints. They were living proof that “the Lord is gracious and merciful: patient and plenteous in mercy ... and His tender mercies are over all His works” (Psalm 144:8-9).

The Dismal Pain of Dismas
Dismas has led a dismal life; being a thief, robber, and consequently probably a murderer too, he was doing 'penance' for his sins and proving the truth of the statement that “the wages of sin is death” (Romans 6:23). However, there is another thief suffering and dying with him; he has the same history, he has the same sufferings, but he does not have the same fate. His sufferings will be of no use to him, for he does not accept those sufferings as a just wage for his sins. He could have paid his debt there and then, like the Good Thief, Dismas, but he preferred (knowingly or unknowingly) to pay his debt in Hell.

Dismas would pay his debt alongside Jesus; or rather, he would co-pay with Jesus, for, of himself, he could not pay for any of his sins. Sin is an offense against God, even though we might sin against neighbor — “as long as you did it to one of these My least brethren, you did it to Me” (Matthew 25:40). God is infinite, so any sin is consequently an infinite offense since it offends an infinite God. Therefore, it contracts an infinite debt, which finite man cannot hope to pay. It needs an infinite creature to be able to pay an infinite debt—Jesus is that infinite being, as an infinite God he can pay an infinite debt; as a human being He can pay the human debt for sin. Dismas merely co-pays, just as Our Lady co-redeems. We likewise have to co-pay—it is proof of our admission to guilt and proof of acceptance of responsibility and accountability.

Dismas pays primarily through his body: he is accepting of the pains and tortures of death as a just wage for his sins. It is not pain alone that saves him, it is pain processed and transformed by the soul into something above the natural, into something unnatural for him, into something supernatural. The pain breaks through into his soul and transforms him from a bad thief into a Good Thief who steals Heaven in the last lap of his life, with the last breath of his life. His was a payment plan of pain.
Yet, to say that Dismas died without love would be a grave misunderstanding and misrepresentation of what happened. He had to have some degree of love towards God in his heart for Christ to be able say to him: “This day thou shalt be with Me in Paradise” (Luke 23:43). A variety of things will have contributed to breaking down any hardness of heart that he may have had—we will look at those at later point during Lent—but the pain of suffering undoubtedly opened and softened his heart, and prepared the soil of the soul to receive the seed of divine love. So, in the end, both death and love united in his life, to bring about his salvation.

The Mournful Love of Mary
The other sinner that we spoke of was Mary Magdalen, the sister of Martha, who according the traditional teaching of the Western (Roman) Church is the woman who was caught in adultery, the woman possessed by seven devils and the woman at the banquet of Simon the Leper who was weeping tears over Jesus' feet, wiping them dry with her hair and anointing Jesus with precious alabaster. Like the thief, Dismas, she too was a great sinner.

However, her payment plan was of a different kind—she paid for her sins through love. Jesus Himself confirmed this, when at the banquet He said: "Why do you trouble this woman? Many sins are forgiven her, because she hath loved much"(Matthew 26:10; Luke 7:47). Her payment plan was based upon the Old Testament quote of: "Charity covereth all sins" (Proverbs 10:12) and the same plan was carried over into the New Testament, as testified by St. Peter: "Charity covereth a multitude of sins" (1 Peter 4:8). This is merely a reflection or an echo of the charity that led Jesus to lay down His life for our sins: “Greater love than this no man hath, that a man lay down his life for his friends” (John 15:13). “In this is charity: not as though we had loved God, but because He hath first loved us, and sent His Son to be a propitiation for our sins” (1 John 4:10).

Like Dismas, Mary experienced a blend of love and pain on Calvary. The more she loved Christ, the more she felt the pain of what was happening to Christ. We know this from personal experience: the more we treasure a person or an object, the more agitated, sorrowful and pained we become when suffering a separation or its loss.

Love and Death United
Love and Death, the two things that seemed contradictory and irreconcilable, now find themselves united on Calvary. The words of Christ perform a marriage, so to speak, between Love and Death: “Greater love than this no man hath, that a man lay down his life for his friends” (John 15:13). Death proves Love; and Love leads to Death. Our Lord proves His love for us by dying for us; and that love of His had to go to the very extreme, to the point of death itself. He could not raise the stakes any higher than that.

Similarly, Mary Magdalen 'dies' on Calvary with Christ. In a vaguely analogous way, as Christ dies mystically in each Sacrifice of the Mass, Mary dies mystically in an unbloody manner at the Sacrifice on Calvary. Christ's heart is pierced, she feels the wound—since it is for her benefit and salvation that He undergoes all this, and it is her sins (ours too) that pierce that Sacred Heart. She knows that He is the 'scapegoat' for her sins. She knows that she should be in His place, sentenced to death and dying on the cross.

Just as Christ had spared her a painful physical death from being stoned to death for adultery, He now prevents her spiritual death by dying on the cross. Like a woman watching her child being slain (Massacre of the Innocents) and wishing that she could be slain in the place of her baby; Mary Magdalen must have wished that this Massacre of the Innocent One could have been prevented and that she could be slain in His place. She was grateful to Him when she escaped being stoned to death; she was grateful to Him again for His redeeming death—she died with Him out of love.

A Double Death
So on Calvary, the wage of sin was most certainly death for all involved—to the innocent and guilty alike. Some experienced the pains of death primarily in the body; others felt pain as though they were 'dying' in the soul. But regardless of which manner of death was being experienced, what mattered most was that which was taking place in the soul. Without the presence of a supernatural love, all and any death would be vain, useless and pointless. This is exactly what St. Paul was trying to tell us in the Epistle that the Church put before us on Quinquagesima Sunday: "If I should deliver my body to be burned (or crucified, or whatever form of death it may be), and have not charity, it profiteth me nothing" (1 Corinthians 13:3).

The Soul of Lent
This shows us the indispensable ingredient for our Lenten penances—charity, or a love God. If we perform our penances without that vital, life-giving ingredient, then our penances are mere lifeless corpses, to which we could apply the words of Our Lord and Isaias: “This people honoureth Me with their lips: but their heart is far from Me” (Matthew 15:8). In other words, we will be performing penances in a lifeless manner, without putting our heart into them—and the heart we need to put into them is a contrite heart, a broken heart, a sorrowing heart, a repentant heart, a new heart, but above all a loving heart. For charity is the form or the soul of all virtues; it is the inspiration, motivation and elevation of all that we do, ensuring that we do for God, and God alone!

Then we can apply the axiom about prayer to our penances also: "One Hail Mary said well, is better than hundreds said badly!" Then, one act of penance done with a loving, broken, repentant heart, will be worth hundreds of penances done on 'auto-pilot' or mechanically.

THOUGHTS ON THE SEPTUAGESIMA SEASON
Monday after Quinquagesima Sunday

Article 17
Our Lord's Pre-Lenten Math Class

God the Super-Mathematician
When thinking or talking about the perfections of God, we don’t usually think of God being the Super or Perfect Mathematician. Yet numbers play a very important role with God. He is very precise in His math and measurements. The Old Testament is overwhelmingly filled with such examples.

God not just telling Noe to build an ark, but also giving Noe the specifications for the ark, saying: “The length of the ark shall be three hundred cubits: the breadth of it fifty cubits, and the height of it thirty cubits” (Genesis 6:15).

The first Temple built by Solomon was constructed from plans given by God to David. When God refused David permission to build the Temple (2 Kings 7 and 1 Paralipomenon 17), David took the plans and gave them to his son and designated heir, Solomon (1 Paralipomenon 28:1-19). Solomon constructed the Temple according to those dimensions and plans of God.

Read the Book of Numbers, and you will be overwhelmed with the precision of numbers appointed by God for a whole host of things. For most folk, all that talk about numbers by God is boring and so the Book of Numbers is seldom read or studied.

Our Lord’s Math Class
We don’t normally associate Our Lord with Mathematics, but, while He was on Earth, Math had a certain importance that He tried to communicate to us. Math is about numbers and Our Lord certainly taught and dealt with numbers—both in a precise way and in a general way. He engages in multiplication. He speaks of adding and cubits. He speaks of dividing. He speaks of subtraction. He gives specific numbers.

We see the multiplication of loaves and fishes: “Jesus said to them: ‘Give you them to eat!’ They answered Him: ‘We have not here, but five loaves, and two fishes!’ He said to them: ‘Bring them hither to Me!’ And when he had commanded the multitudes to sit down upon the grass, he took the five loaves and the two fishes, and looking up to heaven, he blessed, and brake, and gave the loaves to his disciples, and the disciples to the multitudes. And they did all eat, and were filled. And they took up what remained, twelve full baskets of fragments” (Matthew 14:16-20). “They understood not concerning the [multiplication of] loaves; for their heart was blinded” (Mark 6:52).

We see St. Peter ask Our Lord how many times a person should be forgiven: “Then came Peter unto Him and said: ‘Lord! How often shall my brother offend against me and I forgive him? Till seven times?’ Jesus said to him: ‘I say not to thee till seven times; but till seventy times seven times!’’” (Matthew 18:21-22).

In addition, He speaks of addition: “And which of you by taking thought, can add to his stature by one cubit?” (Matthew 6:27).

He speaks of subtraction: “And if a man will contend with thee in judgment, and take away thy coat, let go thy cloak also unto him!” (Matthew 5:40). “Every branch in me, that beareth not fruit, he will take away!” (John 15:2). “Take ye away therefore the talent from him, and give it to him that hath ten talents!” (Matthew 25:28).

He speaks of dividing: “Every kingdom divided against itself shall be made desolate! And every city or house divided against itself shall not stand! And if Satan cast out Satan, he is divided against himself―how then shall his kingdom stand?” (Matthew 12:25-26). “Think ye, that I am come to give peace on Earth? I tell you, no; but separation. For there shall be from henceforth five in one house divided: three against two, and two against three. The father shall be divided against the son, and the son against his father, the mother against the daughter, and the daughter against the mother, the mother-in-law against her daughter-in-law, and the daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law!” (Luke 12:51-53).

He speaks of the “Many” who are called, but the “Few” are chosen “M > C” (the number of the “Called” = M, the “Chosen” = C) ―“So shall the last be first, and the first last. For many are called, but few chosen!” (Matthew 20:16).

Hinting at salvation, he speaks of “majorities” and “minorities”, suggesting that only a minority are saved: “And a certain man said to him: ‘Lord! Are they few that are saved?’ But He said to them: ‘Strive to enter by the narrow gate! For many, I say to you, shall seek to enter, and shall not be able!” (Luke 13:23-24).

In a similar vein, He speaks of 5 wise virgins and 5 foolish virgins―you could just as well replace the word “virgins” with that of “families” and see which category your family falls under: “Then shall the kingdom of Heaven be like to ten virgins, who taking their lamps went out to meet the bridegroom and the bride. And five of them were foolish, and five wise. But the five foolish, having taken their lamps, did not take oil with them: but the wise took oil in their vessels with the lamps. And the bridegroom tarrying, they all slumbered and slept. And at midnight there was a cry made: ‘Behold! The bridegroom cometh! Go ye forth to meet him!’ Then all those virgins arose and trimmed their lamps. And the foolish said to the wise: ‘Give us of your oil, for our lamps are gone out!’ The wise answered, saying: ‘Lest perhaps there be not enough for us and for you, go ye rather to them that sell, and buy for yourselves!’ Now whilst they went to buy, the bridegroom came: and they that were ready, went in with him to the marriage, and the door was shut. But at last come also the other virgins, saying: ‘Lord! Lord! Open to us!’ But he answering said: ‘Amen I say to you, I know you not!’ Watch ye therefore, because you know not the day nor the hour!” (Matthew 25:1-13).

THOUGHTS ON THE SEPTUAGESIMA SEASON
Tuesday after Quinquagesima Sunday

Article 18
Looking Forward to Being Reduced to Ashes!

Big as Dust
There were some very important men in the Old Testament, key figures chosen by God to lead or teach His Chosen people: Adam, Abraham, Job, etc. These men were among the favorites of God. Yet of Adam, God says: “Dust thou art, and into dust thou shalt return” (Genesis 3:19); Abraham, in speaking to God says of himself:“I am dust and ashes” (Genesis 18:27); and Job echoes a similar sentiment saying of himself: “I am compared to dirt, and am likened to embers and ashes” (Job 30:19), adding, “Therefore I reprehend myself, and do penance in dust and ashes”(Job 42:6).

On this Ash Wednesday, we have all heard the words of God addressed to us:“Remember, man, that thou art dust, and to dust thou shalt return!” This is a reminder of death, with the same words that God pronounced Adam’s fate: “In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread till thou return to the earth, out of which thou wast taken: for dust thou art, and into dust thou shalt return” (Genesis 3:19).

What Goes Around Comes Around
Our fate is the same as that of our first parents, Adam and Eve, and we “shall be like small dust: and as ashes passing away” (Isaias 29:5). Since Original Sin, the fate of the human race is one of being reduced to ashes: “Wherefore as by one man sin entered into this world, and by sin death; and so death passed upon all men, in whom all have sinned” (Romans 5:12). As God says: “Everyone shall die for his own sin” (Deuteronomy 24:16).

Our Lady, directly and indirectly, explicitly and implicitly, reinforces this truth—that “the wages of sin is death” (Romans 6:23)—at her modern-day apparitions.

At Lourdes she says: “You will pray to God for sinners!” (February 21st, 1858);"Penance! Penance! Penance! Pray to God for sinners. Kiss the ground as an act of penance for sinners!" (February 24th).

Warnings of a Mother
At La Salette she warns that: “the priests…by their wicked lives, by their irreverence and their impiety in the celebration of the Holy Mysteries, by their love of money, their love of honors and pleasures, the priests have become cesspools of impurity [and] the priests are asking vengeance, and vengeance is hanging over their heads. Woe to the priests and to those dedicated to God who, by their unfaithfulness and their wicked lives, are crucifying my Son again! The sins of those dedicated to God cry out towards Heaven and call for vengeance, and now vengeance is at their door, for there is no one left to beg mercy and forgiveness for the people. There are no more generous souls, there is no one left worthy of offering a spotless sacrifice to the Eternal for the sake of the world. God will strike in an unprecedented way. Woe to the inhabitants of the earth! God will exhaust His wrath upon them, and no one will be able to escape so many afflictions together.”

Our Lady appeared to Jacinta several times between December 1919 and February 1920. Our Lady told her many things including: "The sins of the world are very great ... If men only knew what eternity is, they would do everything in their power to change their lives." … "Fly from riches and luxury; love poverty and silence; have charity, even for bad people" …

"More souls go to Hell because of sins of the flesh than for any other reason" … "The Mother of God wants more virgin souls bound by the vow of chastity" … "Confession is a sacrament of mercy and we must confess with joy and trust" … "Our Lady can no longer uphold the arm of Her Divine Son which will strike the world. If people amend their lives, Our Lord will even now save the world, but if they do not, punishment will come" … "People must renounce sin and not persist in it, as has been done until now. It is essential to repent greatly."

Effects Have Causes
What is the source or cause of these calamities, woes and punishments promised by Heaven? It is in large part a lack of prayer and penance. As Our Lady says at La Salette: “The chiefs, the leaders of the people of God, have neglected prayer and penance, and the devil has bedimmed their intelligence. They have become wandering stars which the old devil will drag along with his tail to make them perish. God will allow the old serpent to cause divisions among those who reign in every society and in every family. Physical and moral agonies will be suffered. God will abandon mankind to itself and will send punishments which will follow one after the other for more than thirty-five years. The society of men is on the eve of the most terrible scourges and of gravest events. Mankind must expect to be ruled with an iron rod and to drink from the chalice of the wrath of God.”

Must the Effects Necessarily Follow?
What had happened to Adam, is about to happen to the world. “The wages of sin is death” (Romans 6:23). But that death could have been avoided: “The soul that sinneth, the same shall die: the son shall not bear the iniquity of the father, and the father shall not bear the iniquity of the son: the justice of the just shall be upon him, and the wickedness of the wicked shall be upon him. But if the wicked do penance for all his sins which he hath committed, and keep all my commandments, and do judgment, and justice, living he shall live, and shall not die. I will not remember all his iniquities that he hath done: in his justice which he hath wrought, he shall live. Is it my will that a sinner should die, saith the Lord God, and not that he should be converted from his ways, and live?” (Ezechiel 18:20-23). But that penance has not been done by the world! “God hath given him place for penance, and he abuseth it unto pride” (Job 24:23).

Now is the Time!
As the Church will tell us on the First Sunday of Lent: “Now is the acceptable time, now is the day of salvation” (Epistle). Let us not abuse that time through our pride (thinking we have not sinned that much) or through our lukewarmness (we know we have sinned, but we can’t be bothered to pay for it). God will be looking at the world today to see if there are any just men doing penance in justice—just as He was looking at Sodom and Gomorrha looking for fifty just men. Will he find those men today? Or will another Abraham of the future look over the world after its punishment and again fulfilling those words of Scripture: “He looked towards Sodom and Gomorrha, and the whole land of that country: and he saw the ashes rise up from the earth as the smoke of a furnace” (Genesis 19:28).

The Price of Non-Repentance
These somber words were echoed by Our Lady for the world today: “The society of men is on the eve of the most terrible scourges and of gravest events. Mankind must expect to be ruled with an iron rod and to drink from the chalice of the wrath of God” (La Salette, 1846) ... “

Our Lady of Fatima warned that if her requests were not heeded, Russia would"spread her errors throughout the world, causing wars and persecutions of the Church. The good will be martyred, the Holy Father will have much to suffer, and various nations will be annihilated."

Modern Day Ashes
At Akita, Japan, Our Lady said: "If men do not repent . . . The Father will inflict a terrible punishment on all humanity. It will be a punishment greater than the deluge, such as one will never have seen before. Fire will fall from the sky and will wipe out a great part of humanity" (Akita, 1973).

In 1945, only a short time after the end of World War II, Pope Pius XII stated in his Christmas message to the Cardinals: "The world is on the verge of a frightful abyss . . . Men must prepare themselves for suffering such as mankind has never seen."

Sister Elena Aiello [died 1961], who is of great renown for her prophecies, was told by Our Lady: "My Heart is sad for so many sufferings in an impending world in ruin . . . The wrath of God is near. Soon the world will be afflicted with great calamities, bloody revolutions, frightful hurricanes and the overflowing of rivers and the seas . . . the world will be overturned in a new and more terrible war. Arms most deadly will destroy peoples and nations.”

An Avoidable Tragedy!
WHY? WHY? WHY? Oh, why must all this come about? Because “God hath given him place for penance, and he abuseth it unto pride” (Job 24:23). We think little of sin; we treat it as being of little or no consequence; and if we confess our sins, we place such a pitifully low prices on them that penance seems like Heaven overcharging us. What we do think about instead, is the world; its amusements and fun. Just Our Lady complained at La Salette: “People will think of nothing but amusement.”

Let use this Lent wisely and fruitfully! How many more Lents will we have to pay our enormous debts before God calls “time” on the world and unleashes what Our Lady has warned us about. God has given us a time and a place for penance, let us not abuse it! “God hath given him place for penance, and he abuseth it unto pride” (Job 24:23). “But if the wicked do penance for all his sins which he hath committed, and keep all my commandments, and do judgment, and justice, living he shall live, and shall not die” (Ezechiel 18:21).