Lenten Sacrifice as Opportunity for Holiness

As Lent approaches, many Catholics around the world will prepare for the most penitential and sacrificial season of the liturgical year. Among the many traditional practices during the season of Lent, some of the most important include obligatory fasts on Ash Wednesday and Good Friday. 

There is also the obligatory abstinence from meat on Fridays, and a particular Lenten sacrifice, in which an individual will give up a particular attachment of his or hers as a demonstration of penitential spirit (that is, a spirit of repentance for one’s sins).

The Church also calls for self-reflection, as the faithful around the world examine their lives and seek to make themselves more worthy of the immensity of Christ’s sacrifice, as well as more frequent prayer and Mass attendance. There may be other forms of mortification (subduing of physical appetites), such as increased religious practice. 

All this is done in the build-up to Easter, the celebration of Christ’s resurrection and thus the salvation of mankind.

In medieval times, Lenten mortifications were even more arduous. Fasts were not only restricted to Good Friday and Ash Wednesday. Instead, those days would be “Black Fasts”—fasts that continued for the entire day, with the only meal consumed being one of bread, water, and herbs, eaten after sundown.

No consumption of food took place on all of the other days of Lent prior to 3:00 p.m., the traditional hour of Christ’s death. Furthermore, when food was consumed on the ordinary Lenten day, animal meats, fats, dairy products, and even eggs were restricted (fish was allowed, but was extremely uncommon). The Good Friday fast was also more strict, beginning around sundown on Holy Thursday and continuing until noon on Holy Saturday.

In the current modern, post-Christendom epoch, it is easy to lose sight of the purpose of such intense mortification. Many well-intentioned Catholics abandon it altogether or, due to a lack of proper Catholic upbringing, aren’t even aware that days of fasting and abstinence are required! Other well-intentioned Catholics do what is expected of them and perhaps even more than that, yet fail to attain the intended benefits of such practice.

To assign a name to those benefits, the following word will suffice: holiness, which, as described in St. Paul’s Letter to the Hebrews, is a quality “without which no man shall see the Lord.” But of what is holiness constituted? 

St. John Henry Newman excellently explains it as follows: “To be holy is, in our Church’s words, to have ‘the true circumcision of the spirit’; that is, to be separate from sin, to hate the works of the world, the flesh, and the devil; to take pleasure in keeping God’s commandments; to do things as He would have us do them; to live habitually as in the sight of the world to come, as if we had broken the ties of this life, and were dead already.” 

Thus, to Newman, holiness is a particular “character of mind, a certain state of the heart and affections,” which is “necessary for entering heaven.”

Where does Newman allow this notion to lead him? He concludes that our actions contribute to our salvation by “strengthening and showing forth that holy principle which God implants in the heart, and without which (as the text tells us) we cannot see Him. The more numerous our acts of charity, self-denial, and forbearance, the more will our minds be schooled into a charitable, self-denying, and forbearing temper. The more frequent our prayers, the more humble, patient, and religious are our daily deeds, this communion with God, these holy works, will be the means of making our hearts holy, and of preparing us for the future presence of God.”

Thus, Newman concludes that religious actions (those of religious ritual and practice, those of personal prayer, penance, and mortification, and those which are moral deeds done to or for the sake of others) transform their doers into holy people, preparing them for life after death.

“That is all very well and good,” the reader might reply, “but why is mortification specifically good? After all, there are plenty of other ways in which we can develop holy natures that do not involve fasting and abstinence.” 

To this challenge, St. Alphonsus Liguori replies in a sermon on resistance to temptation as a means of salvation. In explaining how people can reach Heaven, he states that it is often necessary even to do violence to oneself in resisting temptations. 

To him, this is the meaning of that enigmatic Bible verse, “The kingdom of Heaven suffereth violence, and the violent bear it away.” (Matthew 11:12) As St. Alphonsus says, “…he who wishes to obtain [Heaven] without inconvenience, or by leading a soft and irregular life, shall not acquire it – he shall be excluded from it.”

It seems evident that the mortifications, increases in prayer and Mass attendance, intense self-reflection, and (hopefully) newfound resolutions to live a faithful Catholic life that come with Lent all prepare us for Heaven. 

One might still wonder why these are associated with the season of Lent. Of course, the hope is that acts like resisting temptation and praying more often will become habitual. But Lent, of all seasons, is the perfect time to begin developing these habits, as it provides us with a period of waiting for the resurrection of Christ and a time to make ourselves worthy of that infinite gift.