We enter today into the chief penitential season of the Latin Church’s liturgical year. After the loosening up of the 1960s, it isn’t very penitential anymore, although one might well think that Ash Wednesday and Good Friday are worse than ever because no one has built up a habit of fasting, and so we hit those days like a car without shock absorbers running into mountainous speedbumps. Be that as it may, we are always free in Christ to embrace more mortifications, such as abstaining from all meat, or skipping one of the meals of the day, or cutting back on caffeinated beverages—the possibilities are numerous in the affluent West.
Let us remember that, in the sobering words of Dom Eugene Boylan, “It would seem that there are special graces that will not be given to souls unless someone pays a special price for them in penance and suffering.”
This might be the advice that Our Lord would give us if He were sitting in the confessional and we happened to come in, with our assorted burdens. He would free us from those burdens, but then ask us to take on some other burdens voluntarily, for the sake of His Mystical Body. Not merely to fulfill a penance (which is often easy enough), but to pay that special price that has been put on the rescue of this or that soul, in order to give a lowly believer the dignity of being a little co-redeemer, beneath and with Christ, in union with His Mother at the foot of the Cross.
Bishop Athanasius Schneider, in a book from Emmaus Road that was too little noticed when it appeared—I am referring to Man of God: The Catholic Priest and the Cornerstones of His Life—writes: “Fleeing from or rejecting the cross and the Christian practice of interior and exterior mortification leads to a lukewarm and spiritually sterile life.” He then cites a remarkable passage from Fr. Garrigou-Lagrange’s book The Priest in Union with Christ, published more than seventy years ago:
For, as Msgr. Ronald Knox reminds us, in a literary memento mori well suited to the start of Lent:
Let us remember that, in the sobering words of Dom Eugene Boylan, “It would seem that there are special graces that will not be given to souls unless someone pays a special price for them in penance and suffering.”
This might be the advice that Our Lord would give us if He were sitting in the confessional and we happened to come in, with our assorted burdens. He would free us from those burdens, but then ask us to take on some other burdens voluntarily, for the sake of His Mystical Body. Not merely to fulfill a penance (which is often easy enough), but to pay that special price that has been put on the rescue of this or that soul, in order to give a lowly believer the dignity of being a little co-redeemer, beneath and with Christ, in union with His Mother at the foot of the Cross.
Bishop Athanasius Schneider, in a book from Emmaus Road that was too little noticed when it appeared—I am referring to Man of God: The Catholic Priest and the Cornerstones of His Life—writes: “Fleeing from or rejecting the cross and the Christian practice of interior and exterior mortification leads to a lukewarm and spiritually sterile life.” He then cites a remarkable passage from Fr. Garrigou-Lagrange’s book The Priest in Union with Christ, published more than seventy years ago:
There are at present in the world many people who wish to suppress all forms of mortification, penance, and reparation; they are anxious to destroy the cross and the spirit of sacrifice as being opposed to the modern spirit of so-called liberty or license and uncontrolled pleasure. Consequently their lives have become completely barren, because no one has ever been known to scale great heights without a spirit of sacrifice. […]Bishop Schneider also quotes a most remarkable passage from the little-known spiritual writer Fr. Claude Arvisenet, who imagines what Christ would say to his priest in the confessional. Now that we are entering into a season in which many Catholics will be seeking out the sacrament of penance, this advice may be timely:
In view of this widespread sterility in human endeavor many would-be reformers are asserting that what is needed is a new approach to the priestly and religious life, in order to adapt them to the needs of the modern era. So far as the religious life is concerned, they are of the opinion that its austerity ought to be mitigated since it is now out of date: time devoted to prayer should be cut down to leave more time for external activities. They would also adapt the priestly life to the spirit of the times: to them it seems no longer suitable for priests to wear a special dress or the tonsure or any outward sign of their priesthood, or even to recite the breviary—perhaps even celibacy has become outmoded—and so on.
Such has been the attitude adopted by many Protestants, and it is of interest to remember that Luther in cutting himself off from the Church immediately renounced the three religious vows…. And why has their enthusiasm for the glory of God and the salvation of souls waned? For want of the spirit of sacrifice. The priest has failed to recognize that he must be a victim in union with Christ, and that he cannot save souls except through the same means as Christ himself used. It is only this spirit of sacrifice which can rectify disorder in the soul of a priest or religious, and thus make way for genuine charity bringing in its train peace and joy, which spread themselves to other souls. Take away mortification and you immediately take away joy, because once the affections of man are allowed to settle on things of sense they can no longer be raised to God and the supernatural.
There is certainly no need to remodel the priestly and religious lives and thus imitate the modernist renovation of dogma. (pp. 67-68)
My son, if thou upbraidest them harshly in the beginning, or even unnecessarily in the course of their confession, what will happen? The last sheep that is at the very door of the fold will flee away in terror, thinking that he has found a wolf, not a pastor…. Thus will perish through they fault they brother for whom I have died, to whom I have sent thee, whom I have trustfully committed to thy care. Remember, my son, that they penitent brother is a man and not an angel, and that thou art not a minister of vindictive justice, but of justice tempered by mercy….This is the something which the whole Church needs to be reminded of, a better counsel than the obsessively one-sided “mercy for all and for everything”, or advice to priests that they should “always” absolve everyone who comes to the confessional, and that in some cases those who are in an adulterous relationship should be allowed to confess without an intention of avoiding future sin by living as brother and sister. One only wonders what Arvisenet, who died in 1831, would have said about such brash assertions of the modern era against the divine law. One wonders what the Lord would say—or, rather, has already said.
Nevertheless, my son, compel them to observe all things that I have commanded thee, to cease acting perversely, and to learn to walk in the way of my commandments. Nor deem it mercy to cast pearls before swine, nor to give the bread of angels to those who delight in husks…. O false peace, which leaves war in the heart; O deceptive mercy, which produces sleep and not a cure, death and not life! O unjust judge, who, for the satisfaction of an evil-desiring man, prostitutes my authority!
Truly, my son, one who knowingly, or even through culpable lack of knowledge, absolves a sinner who is not contrite nor converted from his evil ways, dares to bestow my peace upon my enemy while he still hates me, hands me over to him to be crucified at his hands. See, my son, how sometimes my house becomes a den of thieves; see how these careless priests fail in their duty. O modern Pilates, who thus through cowardice and culpable weakness hand me over to whosoever would again crucify me! O my son, far be such iniquity from thee, such cruel and sinful kindness. Remember that the power and precept was given to thee not only to loose but also to bind.
Therefore exercise the greatest care, that in thy ministry mercy and truth may meet each other and justice and peace may kiss. Thus shalt thou be a faithful and prudent dispenser of my mysteries.
For, as Msgr. Ronald Knox reminds us, in a literary memento mori well suited to the start of Lent:
“Hodie eris mecum in Paradiso, this day thou shalt be with me in Paradise”—let us remember that today may be the last of its series. When you go to bed, you will wind up your watch just as usual, your letters will be speeding this way and that, assuring your friends that you are well. And then, in the night, just a click in the mechanism of your body, a moment of horror in your dreams; and tomorrow morning the bell will be tolling for you, and your soul will have met God in judgment.
