FORTY REASONS TO KEEP THE FAST

A SERMON FOR QUADRAGESIMA

The First Sunday in Lent is called Quadragesima Sunday.  Quadragesima means “Forty”, which of course is a reference to the forty days and forty nights of Lent.  If you add up all the days from Ash Wednesday until Easter, then subtract the Sundays, when, of course, we don’t observe the fast, you’ll find that Lent is indeed forty days long.  It sometimes seems a lot longer, but just as time flies when you’re having fun, it tends to drag a bit when you’re not having fun.  And Lent is not the time for having fun.  Hopefully, we got all that out of our system at the Carnival time that ended last Tuesday night.

The Church makes sure we do some penance during this time of Lent by giving us strict laws of fast and abstinence, which keep us from overindulging in food for a while.  Most of you will also be practicing some form of private penance too, no doubt, such as giving up chocolate or cigarettes or alcohol, maybe saying an extra Rosary or giving a little more time to prayer and meditation.  This is all very well and commendable, but let’s remember two things: first, that we do not seek commendation—our Lord tell us that when we fast we shouldn’t go around with long faces like the hypocritical Pharisees, so that people may see and wonder at our imagined holiness.  “Let not your left hand know what the right hand is doing,” he goes so far as to say.  So let’s forget about bragging as to who gave up this or that, or who is fasting the hardest, or whatever.  We do it for God, in reparation for our sins.  Our reward will come from God if he deems us worthy of one.  But for those who receive praise from men, alas, “they have already received their reward.”

The second thing to remember is that no matter how severe our self-inflicted penance may be, it’s never really enough to make up for what we’ve done. Don’t forget that even a “small” venial sin is an infinite offence against an infinite God.  Just as it’s worse to steal a dollar from a poor man than from a millionaire, it’s not the size of the offence that matters so much as the person who is offended.  And to offend an all-loving God, we must acknowledge that our offence is indeed a dreadful thing.  We can do all the penance we want, we can even give our bodies to be burned, as St. Paul says, but without love, it profiteth me nothing.  St. Mary Magdalene was forgiven, our Lord tells us, “because she loved much.”  The more our penances are motivated by love, the more likely they are to be acceptable to God.

And why is Lent forty days long?  The period of forty days and forty nights occurs time and again in Sacred Scripture.  We know that when God punished the world with the Great Flood, it rained for forty days and forty nights.  When Moses climbed Mount Sinai to receive the Ten Commandments, he dwelt in God’s presence there for the same period of forty days and forty nights as preparation for the bestowal of the Law.  Elijah made the forty-day journey to Mount Horeb fasting the whole way.  And of course, most significantly for us, our Blessed Lord took himself into the wilderness in preparation for his ministry, and stayed there fasting for forty days and forty nights.

This number forty seems to have a special significance in Biblical history. It gives the idea of completeness—forty days and forty nights of pouring rain were ‘enough’ for God to purge the earth of its sin, ‘enough’ to purify Moses so he could worthily receive the Law of God. A fast of forty days in the case of Moses, Elijah and our Lord himself was deemed a sufficient preparation for what they were about to do or experience.  Even the Romans recognized the completeness of the number forty: it was Roman law that a prisoner could be scourged with no more than 39 lashes, as forty would be enough to kill them.

And so, in the year 320, when a bunch of Roman soldiers of the Legio Fulminata (the “Armed with Lightning Brigade”) were pulled out of the ranks and accused of being Christians, they immediately recognized the significance of their number. There were exactly forty of them, and as they were dragged out, naked, onto a frozen lake in the middle of winter, they rejoiced that they were forty, taking it as a sign from God that he would be with them as they slowly froze to death.  Meanwhile, their pagan guards had stoked up the fires on the banks of the lake, and prepared hot baths for anyone who would deny Christ and renounce his faith. Out on the ice, the forty soldiers thanked God that there were forty of them, and prayed that no one would commit apostasy and walk back to the hot tubs on the shore.  

But there’s always one, isn’t there!  So it was that one of the soldiers decided he just couldn’t take it anymore, and so he shivered his way back to the waiting Romans by the lakeside.  As promised, they allowed him to take a nice hot bath and get warm and cozy, as the other thirty-nine began to succumb to frostbite and exposure, now bitterly weeping that they had not succeeded in holding together their complete roster of forty.  But lo and behold, one of the Roman guards on shore was observing all this taking place, and, inspired by God, suddenly declared himself a Christian, stripped off his clothes and went to join the other thirty-nine on the ice. They were forty again, and thus they died, rejoicing.

When Easter comes, will we rejoice with them that we kept all forty days of Lent? That we observed every day the Church laws of fasting and our own voluntary penances, without faltering, cheating, or complaining?  Or will we find ourselves weeping and ashamed that we fell short of forty, and let ourselves take a break here and there?  On Good Friday, as we stand beneath the cross of Jesus, will we be able to look up into his eyes, confident and secure that we have done as he asked, by taking up our own cross and following him?  Or will we feel the need to avert our gaze, conscious of our miserable failings, our pathetic excuses, that it’s “too hard,” that “I’m too hungry,” “I don’t have time,” “it’s my birthday”?  Whatever our pretext of choice, the net result is that we will have failed to persevere during each of the forty days of Lent.

It might not be easy, but let’s face it, it’s not that hard either. Certainly not as difficult as freezing to death on a cold windswept ice-covered lake.   In this 21^stcentury, we live rather pampered lives, and we have become weak.  Our response must not be to measure the difficulty of our task by our own weakness, but rather by comparing it with the actions of the saints, any one of which puts us to shame.  Today it’s the turn of the Forty Holy Martyrs to be commemorated, so let’s recognize that we too are warriors of Christ, that we too are “armed with lightning” and ready to fight off the coldness of our weak bodies with the flames of a heart burning with love for God.