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1st Sunday of Lent – Lent is a transforming mystery, a “sacrament”

 Posted on 26 February 2012 by Fr. John Zuhlsdorf  

Engaving of several events, see Response

• There is an intimate bond between the Lent and Easter cycle with the Person of Christ.  The cycle makes present for us, and draws us into, Our Saviour’s “Paschal Mystery” (pascha from Hebrew pesach, Passover) in a sacramental way.
  
• Remember!  Sacramental reality is no less real than the sensible reality to which we normally pay attention and by which we are so often distracted from what is above.
  
• Each year, our Holy Church conforms herself to her dying and rising Lord.
  Traditionally during Lent the Church strips our liturgy of all its ornaments: music and all decorations such as flowers.  She liturgically fasts, nay rather, dies throughout Lent.  Increasing deprivation should characterize Lent’s liturgical worship so that our Easter celebration is that much sweeter, the flowers more florid, the music more tuneful, the candles even brighter.  Ancient liturgical customs, usually persevered where the Extraordinary Form of the Roman Rite is enjoyed, can help us recover a deeper observance of Lent.  The “Alleluia” is suppressed from Septuagesima onward. On Passion Sunday (the Sunday before Palm Sunday) statues and images are draped, taken from sight.   During the Triduum, which for St Leo the Great (d 461) is totum paschale sacramentum - the “whole paschal sacramental mystery” (tr. 72.1), bells fall silent on Holy Thursday, there is no Mass on Good Friday, though there is at least Communion.  On Saturday she is still in liturgical death, without Communion.  At dusk and the Easter Vigil everything returns ten-fold with her resurrection.
  Let us see the Collect for this 1st Sunday:
  
• Concede nobis, omnipotens Deus,
  ut, per annua quadragesimalis exercitia sacramenti,
  et ad intellegendum Christi proficiamus arcanum,
  et effectus eius digna conversatione sectemur.
  
• Quadragesima, “fortieth” for the fortieth weekday before Easter, is the Latin term for the season of Lent.  Exercitium indicates military and other practices for preparedness, “exercises”.  Arcanum is something “closed” and thus “a sacred secret, a mystery”.  Conversatio means “conduct, manner of living”, not just “conversation.”
• Early Christian writers lacked specialized vocabulary for their new theology. They made up new words or adapted existing terms and gave them new meaning.   Sacramentum, perhaps first used in a Christian context by the ecclesial wild-child Tertullian (d c. 225), rendered Greek mysterion.  Its root is sacer, “dedicated or consecrated to a divinity, holy, sacred” (like sacerdos, “priest”).  In the Roman military, sacramentum was the oath taken by a soldier.  In the Christian context, sacramentum referred to the profession of faith made by catechumens when they were baptized, to the Eucharist, the marriage vow, the laying on of hands, etc.  In our Latin prayers, for sacramentum we can say almost interchangeably “sacrament”, “sacramental mystery” or “mystery”.
  
• LITERAL VERSION:
  Grant to us, Almighty God,
  that, through the annual exercises of the forty-day Lenten sacrament,
  we may both make progress in understanding the hidden dimension of Christ
  and by worthy conduct of life imitate the consequences.
  
• Get that? Lent is sacramentum: a material sign by which God bestows spiritual effects.
  
• NEW CORRECTED ICEL (2011):
  Grant, almighty God,
  through the yearly observances of holy Lent,
  that we may grow in understanding
  of the riches hidden in Christ
  and by worthy conduct pursue their effects.
  
• Christ Jesus took our human nature into a bond with His divinity in order to save us from our sins and also to reveal to us who we really are (cf. GS 22).
  Christ is a Person, not a topic of study.  Christ can only be known through an ongoing relationship with Him in which He increases and we decrease.
• During Lent the words of the Baptist must ring in our ears daily, even hourly: “He must increase, I must decrease” (John 3:30).   When He increases in us, we are more who we are supposed to be.  Thus, we have to make “room” for Him by our self-denial, the extirpation of bad habits and desires, and the cleansing of our soul.  Lent (the quadragesimale sacramentum) is the mystery during which we learn things about Christ, and therefore about ourselves, that we can learn in no other way.
• In our Collect, Father humbly asks God to make this annual series of disciplines and exercises effective in our lives so that we can have the joy our deprivations and our decreasing promise: the joy of the state of grace after falling – happiness in heaven with our God, our Blessed Mother and all the angels and loved-ones and saints – resurrection.
• Lent is a transforming mystery, a “sacrament”, during which our physical and spiritual practices have real effects: they bring us into the mystery of the dying and rising Jesus.  This transforming bond with Christ is brought about through denial of self, spiritual and corporal good works for others, examination of conscience, confession of sins, reconciliation with God and neighbor, and full, conscious and active participation in liturgical worship.

 

Response to WDTPRS 1st Sunday of Lent –Temptation of Christ
 the engraving includes several events ...

1. Patricia Cecilia says:

26 February 2012 at 3:51 pm

The engraving, like many older depictions, includes several events. In the foreground is the temptation of Christ, as Satan tempts Our Lord to make bread of ‘these stones’, whilst in the distant heavens are the angels ready to come and minister to Him. In the middle-ground on the right side is the Baptism of Our Lord, Who can be seen kneeling just to the left of the River Jordan with God the Father approving of Him, and a ray of light from God the Father to God the Son illustrating that approval. At the very far right, below Our Lord, one can see St. John the Baptist on the edge of the Jordan, his hand cupped to hold the water of baptism. In the right background is Jerusalem, brooded over by a very jagged mountain (which may be suggestive of Calvary or just an artistic descendent of the mountains in Eastern icons). Note the demons who almost look like they are rejoicing in Our Lord’s temptation, as if they think that the powers of Hell could win. I have forgotten if the animals mean anything specific, or if, like in illuminated manuscripts, they are just part of the border. But the animal leaping at the upper left looks like a hart (“as the hart panteth after the fountains of water, so panteth my soul after Thee, O Lord”) which is also a medieval symbol for Christ; or perhaps it is the gazelle leaping on the heights from the Canticle.

I think these older illustrations are a reflection of the Mass itself, unfolding the mysteries of Our Lord progressively as one looks more intently with an open heart (actuosa participatio, anyone?).