By: Nigel Williamson

Nigel Williamson — Mon, 22 Nov 2021 04:44:11 +0000

In the “good old days” the idea of Lent
went hand in hand with daily mortification- Lenten
fasting. Mandatory fasting also from liquids and solids
before mass from midnight the night before was
a habitual practice.
That seems to have changed- fasting arrived
though, recently as an ask through the events
of Medjugorje, TWICE WEEKLY, not just at certain
times of the liturgical year.
Fr Garrigou Lagrange O.P. in his “Three ages of
the interior life” uses the notion in the
“purgative way” which precedes (necessarily it
must be assumed), the “illuminative” way, which
then precedes the “unitive” way”, as part of the
individuals journey towards a mystical life and
for prayer of a certain intensity.
The “purgative” way is fasting.
or to put it in simple layman’s terms,
“no pain no gain”.
The cross meant something then. The idea
of the Christocentric dominated over the
Anthropocentric.
What has changed? Is it all the “fault” of
Vatican II?
Or is it a mere “relaxation” that arrived concurrent
with Television and other motion picture?
Between Instagram, Twitter, mobile phones, and
other distractions the Catholic culture is having a
hard time surviving in a sea of temptations to act
out life in the direction of innumerable “creature
comforts”. The very notion of the Sacred is being
seriously questioned as is the reality of the
supernatural.
Perhaps among the 40,000,000 plus pilgrims to
Medjugorje there will be an evolving cultus that
embraces fasting, and then with it proper habits
of listening prayer, and being one with the will of God.
Suffering physically for ones faith always brings joy.
It is also witness to the timelessness of Christ.
Suffering spiritually is another kind of suffering,
and this is part of the life of the ardent Christian
today.
The gradual return to established norms of spiritual
growth represents a healthy life in Christ, and also
the beginnings of a recovery in a church beset by
scandals. The cross is central. To remove it from the
central place it occupies is to ascribe another
proposition to the meaning inherent in scripture,
and as such to lead the individual to apostasy [Fr. Hans
Urs von Balthasar].
Christians MUST witness.
Selling is not promoting or facilitating truth.
And propaganda is not witness.
Catholicism is not the same without its martyrs
(witness) and its saints.

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By: Nigel Williamson