On the Struggle against the Devil

Having emerged from Ash Wednesday, the fragility of our mortal nature is still fresh in our minds. “Remember man that you are dust, and to dust you shall return” – the old formula for the imposition of ashes confronts us with the reality of our mortality. Although mere clay of the earth, man received the breath of life and was placed in the middle of the garden of Eden. The dignity which he received from the Lord was more than what he could ever ask for, considering the fact of his humble origins. The devil envied this and so he enticed man to seek what was beyond him: “you will be like gods.” The devil lied his way into man’s heart: he promised to give the divinity which he neither had nor could deliver. Deceived by the wiles of the devil, he lost everything: “Through one man, sin entered the world and through sin, death.” From living in a garden which yielded in abundance, man now tills the soil that yielded nothing but thorns and thistles. It was a great shift from the garden to the desert. How far we have fallen from grace!

God made man and placed him in the garden. God became man and went into the desert. It was in the garden that man lost what he had to the devil. Now, in the desert, Jesus will take back from the devil what he stole from man. The devil dragged us from the garden to the desert. Jesus went to the desert to bring us back to the garden. In the garden, man had so much to eat. In the desert, Jesus chose to fast. In both cases, the devil came. He came to confront the well-fed man. He came to confront the hungry Jesus. The irony is that the spirit slackens when the flesh is satisfied and the spirit is strong when the flesh is weak. The well-fed man turned out frail. The hungry Jesus came out victorious.

The word of God teaches us today that our Christian life is a warfare against an enemy who is real. The devil is not a symbol of collective negativity. The devil is a real person, a fallen angel who desires nothing but the destruction of man who was created in the image and likeness of God. He knows that he cannot destroy God and so he vents his hatred towards man who bears God’s image. He destroys the Divine likeness in man by enticing us to spoil the flesh (You are hungry? Turn stone into bread!). He entices us with vainglory (Jump from the pinnacle of the temple to make a spectacle of yourself.) He entices us with possessions (All these kingdom I will give to you.) In tempting us, he hides under the guise of concern for us. He pretends that he wants us to be gods. But in the end, he shows his true face. He reveals his true intentions – he wants us to bow to him and worship him. He wants to be treated like God.

Knowing that our spiritual enemy is powerful, our Lord Jesus comes to our aid. He goes into the desert and leads us in our combat against the devil. He submits to the devil’s triple temptation and in doing so he arms us with very reliable weapons: fasting and prayer. Fasting empties us of our self-assurance which always proves futile as it is always prone to the manipulations of the devil. Having been emptied of ourselves, we are opened by prayer to the Holy Spirit who helps us struggle and win over the devil. It is when we are weak, it is then that God manifests the strength of his power in us.

In his Lenten message for this year, our Holy Father wrote: “The First Sunday of the Lenten journey reveals our condition as human beings here on earth. The victorious battle against temptation, the starting point of Jesus' mission, is an invitation to become aware of our own fragility in order to accept the Grace that frees from sin and infuses new strength in Christ – the way, the truth and the life (cf. Ordo Initiationis Christianae Adultorum, n. 25). It is a powerful reminder that Christian faith implies, following the example of Jesus and in union with him, a battle "against the ruling forces who are masters of the darkness in this world" (Eph 6: 12), in which the devil is at work and never tires – even today – of tempting whoever wishes to draw close to the Lord: Christ emerges victorious to open also our hearts to hope and guide us in overcoming the seductions of evil.”

On the weakening of Lent's Influence

The holy season of Lent, the “Great Fast” as it is called in the past, is once again upon us. Today, so many of us flock to Church to receive ashes on the forehead as a sign of penitence. Unfortunately, to many, this would be as far will Lent go. After all, not only has the discipline of Lent been relaxed to the point that it is almost non existent. Holy Week, which should be the height of the Lenten season is now more an opportunity to relax and go to the beach for a week-long vacation. What have we done to Lent? Where has it gone?

Unlike the Muslim Ramadan, Lent is really disappearing because while the Muslims have kept to this day the rigors of the Ramadan fast, we have cut too many corners in our Lenten disciple. So much have we relaxed, so much have we thrown away that Lent has lost its spiritual power and impact in the life of both the society and the individual. Why do we say that the relaxation of the Lenten fast has deprived this holy season of its power? Well, it is because “Lent is a time consecrated to penance, and this penance is practiced by fasting. Fasting is an abstinence, which man voluntarily imposes upon himself, as an expiation for sin…” (P. Gueranger, OP, The Liturgical Year, 3.) Essentially, fasting is abstinence from meat, from wine, and from a portion of our ordinary food, inasmuch as it allows the taking of only one meal in a day. We inherited from the Jews the custom of taking that one meal, which was allowed on days of fasting, only after sun-set. And this is done for 40 successive days (except on Sundays when no fasting was allowed.) Now, I hope that we realize how far have we fallen from the original practice of Lent. We say that the penitential character of Lent was relaxed so that it could be more readily acceptable to modern man. Ramadan is basically the same discipline of the original Lent: neither food nor drink from sunrise till sunset during the entire duration of the festival. The strange thing is that between Lent and Ramadan, modern man reveres Ramadan more than it does to Lent. The ironic thing is that as we have attempted to adjust Lent to the perceived standards of modernity, the more it has lost its relevance to modern society.

In 1741, Pope Benedict XIV warned the Church of the meaning of the relaxation of the Lenten discipline: “The observance of Lent is the very badge of the Christian warfare. By it, we prove ourselves not to be enemies of the Cross of Christ. By it, we avert the scourges of divine justice. By it, we gain strength against the prince of darkness, for it shields us with heavenly help. Should mankind grow remiss in their observance of Lent, it would be a detriment to God’s glory, a disgrace to the Christian religion, and a danger to Christian souls. Neither can it be doubted, but that such negligence would become the source of misery to the world, of public calamity, and of private woe.” Come to think of it, though these were written by a pope in the 18th century, they present to us a very real and alarming picture of our society which is "no longer driven by the spirit of mortification and is now suffering the effeminacy of character which leads to so much social disorder." We have lost the militancy of the Christian faith for we no longer stand up to the evil principalities and powers of the air and water. We keep on saying that fasting from food and drink is not as important as fasting from sin. But the reality is, now that we no longer exercise abstinence from food and drink, do we really care to abstain from sin? How can you discipline the soul if you could not discipline the body? If you cannot tame your appetite, you cannot conquer the evil one. “This, you can only drive away through prayer and fasting,” our Lord once told his disciples. The word of God is very clear: unless we do penance, we shall perish (Luke 13:3).

In this day and age when we are heaping upon ourselves the wrath of God, in this time when the world around us is beset by civil discord and by the scourges of natural calamities, it is time to return to God by way of fasting: Thus says the Lord, “Return to me with your whole heart, with fasting, and weeping, and mourning. Rend your hearts, not your garments, and return to the Lord your God. For gracious and merciful is he, slow to anger, rich in kindness, and relenting in punishment. Perhaps he will again relent and leave behind him a blessing. Offerings and libations for the Lord your God.”

On the Lenten Fast

"The observance of Lent is the very badge of the Christian warfare. By it, we prove ourselves not to be enemies of the Cross of Christ. By it, we avert the scourges of divine justice. By it, we gain strength against the prince of darkness, for it shields us with heavenly help. Should mankind grow remiss in their observance of Lent, it would be a detriment to God's glory, a disgrace to the Catholic religion, and a danger to Christian souls. Neither can it be doubted, but that such negligence would become the source of misery to the world, of public calamity, and of private woe."

Pope Benedict XIV, Constitution Non Ambigimus (May 30, 1741)

Orientation in Jewish Prayer

An interesting article on the topic of Orientation of Prayer. In one of his talks, a famous Filipino liturgist claimed that the eastward direction of liturgical prayer is of pagan origin. This article says that we inherited from the Jews the custom of having a common liturgical direction. The Jews turned towards Jerusalem. We turn towards the east.

When I studied in the Graduate School of Liturgy in San Beda College, we went to a synagogue in Makati for a Sabbath service. The liturgical direction was so evident. Everybody faced Jerusalem. It was then that I started to question why we gave up the orientation of liturgical prayer. If it is true that we inherited our liturgical practices from the Jews, why do we not pray facing a common liturgical direction today? This is definitely a discontinuity not only from the tradition of the Apostles but also from the Jewish tradition which they keep to this very day.

Follow the link: Orientation in Jewish Prayer

Msgr. Bux on the Reform of the reform

Over at Rorate Caeli is an article about an interview granted by Monsignor Nicolas Bux on the Reform of the reform. I find the article significant:

"... the reform that took place after the Council had to be resumed, and in some ways corrected there where, always using his words, the restoration of the painting had been too much, that is, by trying to clean, it had taken the risk of removing too many layers of color. He started this restoration through his own style. The Pope celebrates the liturgy in a subdued, not loud, way. He also wants the prayers, songs, and anything else not to be in exhibitionist tones. And two special actions in his liturgies that are obvious should be noticed: he places the Cross between himself and the assembly, indicating that the liturgical rite is not addressed to the priestly minister, but to Christ; and kneeling in the reception of Communion, indicating that this is not a supper, in the worldly sense of the word, but a communion with the body of Jesus Christ, that is worshiped first, in the words of St. Augustine, and only then eaten."

He also spoke about reading the signs of the times:

"It is clear that the pastors of the Church, first the bishops and then the parish priests, although often saying that we must be able to grasp the signs of the times, an expression very much in use after Vatican II, often fail to understand that the signs of the times are not defined by them, but they happen and are regulated mainly by young people. I think this is the most interesting symptom, because, if [only] the elderly, the adults, went to the Traditional Mass, one might harbor a suspicion that it is nostalgia. The fact that it is mostly young people who seek and participate in the Latin Mass is completely unexpected and therefore deserves to be read, understood, and particularly accompanied by the bishops. "

I agree with him because those who invoke the necessity of reading the signs of the times are stuck with reading the signs of the times of the 70's. They refuse to recognize the fact that 40 plus years into the liturgical reform, the pendulum is going back to the center. The excesses of the experimentation are at last being rejected in favor of Tradition. Young people are able to recognize what old "reformers" refuse to acknowledge. The Sunday Mass in the Extraordinary Form in my own parish has a steady increase of young people in attendance. We are not bring time backwards. The reclaiming of Tradition is really going forward. In fact, those who object even to the new English translation of the Roman Missal refuse to feel and move with the entire Church!

New English Edition of Roman Missal by Midwest Theological Forum

The new English Edition of the Roman Missal will be used in the Philippines starting the first Sunday of Advent 2012. It is now made available by the Midwest Theological Forum. The Roman Missal editio typica tertia is also made available by the same publication.

Follow the link: New English Edition of Roman Missal by Midwest Theological Forum

Ad Orientem in the Ordinary Form

The New Liturgical Movement reported on the Mass in the Ordinary Form of the Roman Rite offered ad orientem at the Pope John XXIII High School in Texas.

Follow the link: Ad Orientem, Ordinary Form, Pope John XXIII High School, Texas