Category Archives: Fasting

The Gateway Vice

Anthropology, Eucharist, Fasting, Virtue, , , , , ,

As Eve twisted the apple from its stem, little did she grasp that she was also twisting the desires of her progeny for all time.  By mingling good and evil, their desires would no longer be the North Star that God intended them to be.  For He had willed that man, in pursuing those things that were truly good for him, would be rewarded with pleasure.  Reason commanded the will towards the good and pleasure was its reward.  Adam seized the reward instead by choosing that which was “pleasing to the eye and good for food,” Adam truly upset the apple cart.  In choosing pleasure over reason, reason no longer ruled but instead wrestled with pleasure.  In seemingly becoming “like unto the gods” he became like unto a beast. 

God did not leave mankind unaware of its fundamental brokenness but instead left an orientation towards those things that are truly good for them intact.  It became difficult, but not impossible.  Generation after generation knew this and sought to root out vice and find fulfillment in virtue.  But few of those generations have embraced this brokenness with such gusto as our own.  Virtue is something to be signaled, not actually owned, and vice is to be rationalized away as, at worst, a “bad habit” akin to cracking your knuckles or clicking your tongue before you speak.  If virtue is to be more than signaled, then we must restore a proper understanding of vice. 

Following in the footsteps of the desert monks, St. Gregory the Great and St. Thomas Aquinas, Tradition has left us with Seven Deadly Vices.  St. Thomas called them Capital Vices because these seven vices are usually the source or head of all of the sins we commit (see ST II-II, q.153, art.4).  The reason why this is important is that these vices remain hidden to us as subconscious motivations for the sins we do commit.  They cause us to steal pleasure where none should be found.  Only once they are recognized can we restore pleasure to its rightful place as a side effect. 

A Useless Vice?

One of these vices, gluttony, at least on the surface does not seem to be a big deal.  How could a little overeating or carrying a little too much have anything to do with our spiritual life?  But, as St. Gregory the Great said, “unless we first tame the enemy dwelling within us, namely our gluttonous appetite, we have not even stood up to engage in the spiritual combat.”  His point is that gluttony is a gateway vice that, left unconquered, will most certainly lead to hell.  It trains us in the practice of self-indulgence and causes us to more and more of it.  Likewise, when we abandon reason when it comes to eating, we are almost certainly going to abandon it in other areas too.

Now I mentioned the connection between being fat and gluttony, but we would err greatly if we thought gluttony is all about whether we are fat or not.  The skinny woman who drinks a six-pack of Coke Zero a day is likely to be far more gluttonous than the man whose six pack is buried beneath 25 pounds of fat.  The latter might recognize that the purpose of eating is to provide nutrition while the former has no such awareness.  She merely wants the pleasure of Coke without the caloric consequences.  She is limited only by the amount of pleasure she craves, not by any bodily need or capacity.  And herein lies the vice of gluttony: “the sin of gluttony is when the desire for such pleasures goes beyond the rule of reason.  And so there is the saying that ‘gluttony is the intemperate desire to eat.’” (St. Thomas Aquinas, On Evil).  

The problem is not the pleasure attached to eating—God has attached that pleasure to eating because eating fulfills our nature.  Nor is it necessarily that we choose a food we like better than another to eat.  Gluttony is deeper than that, it resides interiorly in that it is the pleasure, rather than the reason for eating, that drives us.  Right reason says that food is necessary for humans in two ways: first as nutrition and second as a means of sharing life with others.  Anytime we go beyond those reasons, we are operating under the vice of gluttony. 

As proof that gluttony is more than just about girth, there are five ways in which it tends to manifest itself.  These can be remembered by invoking the acronym FRESH—fastidiously, ravenously, exceedingly, sumptuously, and hastily.

In the Screwtape Letters, Wormwood complains to Screwtape about how useless gluttony is for capturing humans.  Screwtape quickly corrects him and says that fastidious gluttons are often very easy to ensnare.  The Fastidious Glutton is the one who suffers from the “‘All-I-want’ state of mind.”  Its hiddenness makes it quite useful in capturing her in a diabolic net because she is so particular about her food and how it is prepared that she is miserably attached to the pleasure of eating foot that is “made your way.”  The taste is all that matters for the fastidious glutton.  The pleasure dominates her eating rather than coming as a side effect.  It also makes all those who have the misfortune of eating with her or preparing her food positively miserable.

There is also the glutton who eats sumptuously.  He is preoccupied with the pleasure of being full.  He will only choose those foods which are substantial enough to leave him with the feeling of fullness.  Reason should dictate when we have eaten enough to sustain ourselves and not the feeling of fullness.  When we eat to be full, we are again chasing pleasure rather than being controlled by reason.  Again there is no concern for what they are being filled with, only that they experience the pleasure of being full.   This is, by the way, the reason the Church in her wisdom traditionally recommends fasting from sumptuous foods during Lent and restricting the menu to bread and vegetables instead.

The ravenous glutton is the one who must eat as much as they can, regardless of whether there is enough food for anyone else and how full they are.  Their eyes might be bigger than their stomachs, but their stomachs will soon be bigger than their belts. 

Similar to the ravenous glutton there is the glutton who eats hastily.  This glutton treats his utensils like a shovel and must always have his mouth full without chewing or eating slow enough for digestion to occur.  The glutton who eats excessively.  He will eat past the point of fullness in order to indulge the tastes even if it leads to bloating and upset stomach later.

The Only True Antidote

The antidote ought to be obvious and something we have spoke about numerous times in the past—cultivating the virtue of fasting.  There is one particular aspect of fasting however that bears mentioning and that is the Eucharistic Fast.  We spoke of the reason for food and for eating being nutrition and sharing of life.  But the reason from God’s perspective is more expansive than that.  God gave us food as a sign of the only true Food that is the Bread of Life.  Therefore, we should forego the sign for the reality. 

The Church has us fast before receiving the Eucharist so that in experiencing bodily hunger we might recognize what that hunger actually points to.  By receiving the Eucharist in a state of hunger, it is Real Food that nourishes us.  To show us the truth of this, God gave a grace to the Saint of the Eucharist, St. Catherine of Siena by which she ate only the Eucharist for 7 years prior to her death.  This miraculous sign enabled her to eat only the Bread of Life and to suffer no ill effects from what would otherwise be a severe fast.  In order to truly hunger for the Eucharist then it becomes necessary to fast for more than just the obligatory hour before receiving.  We may choose to do something similar to what the Church had previously held that you could not eat anything during a day until you had received the Eucharist that day.

In his book Victory Over Vice, Venerable Fulton Sheen says that Christ’s cry of “I thirst” was His definitive destruction of the power of gluttony to rule the lives of Christians.  What better place then than the Mystical Foot of the Cross of the Eucharistic Sacrifice to receive those hard won graces to finally overcome the Gateway Vice of Gluttony.

Make Lent Hard Again

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In an age afflicted by ecclesial bar lowering, there is always a great danger that the inherent rhythm in the liturgical year will lose its meaning.  This is perhaps most true when it comes to the season of Lent.  Lent “officially” begins on Sunday, but Pope St. Gregory the Great added the four days between Ash Wednesday and the First Sunday in order to add four extra days so that the Faithful would fast for a total of forty days between Ash Wednesday and Holy Thursday (Sundays and the two Solemnities of St. Joseph and the Annunciation being days to relax the fasting).  In other words, unlike in our own times where we are required to fast two days during Lent, the great Pope wanted to raise the bar and make it harder!  It is in this spirit that we should all resolve to make this our hardest Lent ever.

A Harder Lent?

Now admittedly, Gregory the Great was not simply trying to make it harder, even if that was one of the side effects.  Instead, he was adjusting it so that Lent would retain its meaning.  He wanted us, day by day, to join Our Lord in the desert during His great fast.  Our Lord, true God and true Man, merited specific graces for each one of us individually each day that He fasted and fought in the desert.  Lent is meant to be the time when we receive those graces, but our Lord asks us to meet Him in order for Him to give them to us. 

It was no accident that Our Lord chose 40 days.  Whether it is the forty days and nights of rain during the Flood, the Forty Years spent wandering in the desert, or the 40 days by which Ezekiel had to lay on his side, forty is the number of punishment and affliction.  It is also the number of reparation with both Moses and Elijah joining Our Lord in reparatory fasting for 40 days.  It turns out, although not surprisingly, that forty is also the magic number for developing a new habit.  It is as if forty days of affliction and reparation is written into our fallen nature. 

Because Christ first instituted Lent in the desert, it has all the qualities of a Christian mystery.  And like all Christian mysteries it was instituted in order to bestow grace upon us.  It is like a sacrament, or better yet, a sacramental.  A sacred sign that is given to us that disposes us to receive grace.  Living out a true Lenten spirit disposes us to receive those graces Our Lord wants to give us.  Prayer, fasting and almsgiving take on a sacramental meaning, but especially fasting.  The emphasis of Lent is on fasting for good reason—Our Lord sanctified and weaponized it in the desert.  Lent is meant to be 40 days of hard fasting in reparation for our sins and growth in virtue. 

Lent Began Well, Ends Well

Another key component of Lent is the reception of ashes on Ash Wednesday.  This is not, as many think, because it is only a symbol of our sinfulness and need for Penance, but because it is a Sacramental that, when received in faith, disposes us to the necessary graces to live a hard Lent.  This disposal happens through the prayer of the Blessing of the Ashes.  One of the prayers of blessing in the Novus Ordo Mass says:

O God, who desire not the death of sinners, but their conversion, mercifully hear our prayers and in your kindness be pleased to bless + these ashes which we intend to receive upon our heads, that we, who acknowledge we are but ashes and shall return to dust, may, through a steadfast observance of Lent, gain pardon for sins and newness of life after the likeness of your Risen Son. Who lives and reigns for ever and ever.

As I have spoken of previously, the power of Sacramentals come through their actual blessing and so we must, in order to properly take advantage of them, pay attention to what they have been empowered to do.  The ashes in particular then are true Sacramentals that, through the power of the Church, dispose us to receive all the graces necessary to have a “steadfast observance of Lent” and “gain the pardon of sins.”  By receiving the ashes, we are each individually guaranteed to receive the prayers of the Mystical Body that we can live a hard Lent.

As an aside, Ashes are a prime example of why the blessings from the Tridentine Rite are far superior to those of the Novus Ordo.  As a side-by-side comparison, take a look at the prayers.  The former clearly gives a more abundant blessing upon the ashes, rendering them far more powerful to aid us during Lent.   This is not a shot across the post-Vatican II bow, but a comment that, objectively speaking, the Church was far more generous in bestowing blessings upon the Faithful in the pre-Vatican II era.

Either way, armed by Our Lord in the desert and further disposed by the Ashes, we have everything we need to live a hard Lent.  What if each one of us, rather than measuring out “what we will give up”, went “old school” and fasted for these 40 days.  I have found that Dr. Jay Richard’s method detailed in his book is particularly effective for growing in the virtue of fasting and implementing as a daily practice in Lent.  Recalling that one of the reasons why the Church had so many fast days previously was so that we could develop the virtue of fasting, we may have to start at a level that is proportional to our current level of virtue.  But by the end of Lent we should all have developed the virtue and that only comes about through making it hard.

The “Great Bar Lowering” then must be met by a voluntary raising of our own bars.  Genuine contrition of soul can never be achieved without mortification of the body.  We are both body and soul and any attempt to separate the two in practice leads to great harm to our persons.  A hard Lent, fasting especially, will create in us a disposition of sorrow for our sins and a generosity of spirit in making reparation to Our Lord.  It is as if the diminishing of our physical energy brings about a supernatural energy.  Make Lent Hard Again!

Praying to the Lord of the Harvest

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On the first Saturday of Advent, the Church chooses as the gospel Matthew’s account of the commissioning of the Apostles.  After taking to heart the lost souls around Him, He demands that His disciples beg God to send more laborers into the fields.  He then empowers the Apostles and commands them to go out into the world to continue His mission of redemption (c.f. Mt 8:35-10:3).  The implications are obvious.  There are many lost souls that can only be saved through the continuing authoritative mission of the Apostles.  But this mission only continues through the prayers of all Christ’s disciples for more Bishops and Priests.

This interpretation is by no means novel.  The Church has always understood what Our Lord was telling us to do.  Nevertheless, in times of vocational crisis, there is a tendency, rather than trusting in God’s way of doing things, to look for human solutions.  Thus, we find ourselves discussing doing away with celibacy or adding women to the ranks of the ordained as human solutions to the problem.  But ultimately the “vocations crisis” is a crisis of faith in that we do not trust in God’s promise to send faithful Bishops and Priests.  We do not have them because we do not ask.

One might immediately object to what I just said.  There are plenty of people who pray for vocations.  While it is true that I have no idea how many people pray for vocations regularly, I do know that the Church has official periods of supplication for Priests that practically go unnoticed.  I am, of course, speaking of Ember Days. Ember Days are the ways in which the Church fulfills Our Lord’s command to pray for more harvesters.

The Ember Days

The Quatuor Tempora or Ember Days, are four periods of prayer and fasting (if you want to know how to fast, read this previous entry) that the Church has set aside for each of the four Ecclesiastical seasons.  Ember Days begin are marked by three days (Wednesday, Friday, and Saturday) of penance by which the Church, especially through fasting, consecrates to God each of the Seasons of the Year.  The practice sprung out of the habit of Israel to fast in the fourth, fifth, seventh and tenth month (c.f. Zech 8:18-19).  The practice, at least according to Pope St. Leo the Great, has been a part of the Church’s year since the times of the Apostles.

The Advent Ember Days, like each of the other three, have as their object gratitude and supplication for the harvest.  According to Leo the Great, the Advent Ember Days, falling in the time of the year where all the fruits of the earth had been collected, would mark a time of “joyful fasting” (Zech 9:19) in thanksgiving for the harvest. 

The connection to the earthly harvest also has a further meaning connected to Our Lord’s mention of the great harvest of souls.  The Church through an act of penance would pray the Lord of the harvest to send worthy Ministers who are holy and true Shepherds during the Ember Days.  The faithful would join the Church in her intention by offering their own acts fasting.  In short then the Ember Days are special days in which the Church as a whole fasts and prays together for vocations. 

The fall into disuse of the Ember Days and the current vocation crisis are hardly coincidental.  The prayer of the Church is always far more pleasing and efficacious than individual prayer.  As the Ember Days of Advent come upon us tomorrow, let us join the Church in this act of gratitude for the faithful Shepherds among us and beg the Lord to send us more.  As Dom Prosper Gueranger exhorts us, the Ember Days are a great way to “keep within ourselves the zeal of our forefathers for this holy season of Advent.  We must never forget, that although the interior preparation is what is absolutely essential for our profiting by the Coming of Our Lord Jesus Christ, yet this preparation could scarcely be real, unless it manifested itself by exterior practices of religion and penance.”  Individually chastened by our fasts, let us then join the Church in these Ember Days and implore the Lord of the Harvest to send out more laborers.     

Jumpstarting Reform

Devils, Eucharist, Fasting, Spiritual Life, Spiritual Warfare, , , , , , ,

In the opening chapter of his short book, Letter to a Suffering Church, Bishop Robert Barron calls the scandal within the Church “a diabolical masterpiece”.  The Bishop’s point is that everything that has happened within the Church over the last half century has been clearly and methodically planned out such that the sulfuric stench cannot be overlooked.  Bishop Barron only mentions this insight in passing as he attempts to instill hope in those who have suffered greatly as a result of the latest scandal. It is befitting, however, if we are to fully come up with a plan of reform, that we linger just a while longer on this fact.

First, we must admit that as ghastly as the abuse crisis has been, from within the satanic strategy, it is but a means to the devil’s overall plan to destroy the Church.  What this means is that if we focus only on the abuse crisis then we will be putting a band-aid on a bullet wound.  This is not to say that we do nothing about it or that we do not address it directly—band aids are necessary treating wounds, but only after the source of the wound is treated.  And the source of this wound in the Church is exacerbated by the fact that we deny that someone is actively working to destroy the Church.  It is the steady refusal over the last half century to admit of the Church’s militancy.  The Church is not a field hospital, but an army.  It may have field hospitals, but it is not the Red Cross.  It is an army because it is at war and its battleground is dominion of human souls.

Breeding Soft Soldiers

This repeated refusal to admit of the Church’s militancy has not changed the fact that she is Militia Christi, but it has made the soldiers soft.  The Church may be feminine, but she is not effeminate.  There is no more visible sign of effeminacy than sexual vice, especially of the kind that many clerics are accused.  But this softness affects not just the clergy but the laity as well.  We are the “soft generation” that is doomed to be the “lost generation” if we do not tighten up formation.

Notice that I did not say the softest generation, for there are far too many generations in the Church who have fallen prey to softness.  Church historian Roberto De Mattei describes the story of the Sack of Rome in 1527 as a “merciful chastisement” because reform in the Church had stalled and it served to jumpstart it. “The pleasure-seeking Rome of the Renaissance turned into the austere and penitent Rome of the Counter-Reformation.”  His point, although only implicitly made, is that chastening, either divinely or self-inflicted, is always a necessary pre-cursor to reform.  Softness must be rooted out one way or the other.

Like any army, once the enemy is clearly identified, a battle plan must be drawn up.  Since this is first and foremost a spiritual battle, we must use spiritual weapons.  Every renewal in the Church has come on the heels of a small remnant that committed to using these weapons and specifically aiming them at the enemies of the Church.  When the Church becomes soft, it is these three weapons, prayer, penance and mortification that are eschewed.  So, if we are to re-enter the fray, we must grasp the hilt of these three swords and wield them against our enemies.

Prayer

The mention of prayer is not meant to insinuate that people are not praying.  It is to direct our prayers towards a very specific intention—to strengthen and protect the Church from her enemies.  This intention is best fulfilled by praying with the Church in her two “official” prayers—the Mass and the Liturgy of the Hours.

I have written many other times about the necessity of regularly, that is daily and not just weekly, participating in Mass so I won’t belabor the point yet again but lead with a simple question: what sacrifice in your life do you need to make so that you can become a part of Christ’s saving mission begun at Calvary and continuing at the altar of your local parish?  The Eucharist is an infinite source of grace that Christ is just waiting to pour out upon those who offer it with Him.

The second form of prayer is one that I have not discussed much in the past and that is the Divine Office.  Commonly called the Liturgy of the Hours, it is the prayer of the Church that is offered seven times a day.  Seven is no arbitrary number, but the Church’s answer to the fact that “though the just man falls seven times a day, he will get up” (Proverbs 24:16).  This getting up and returning whole-heartedly to God by singing to Him His songs of praise in the Psalms and Canticles and recalling His saving acts throughout history.  The Liturgy of the Hours are by their very nature penitential and thus perfectly suited to our times.

Those in the clerical state are required to pray the Liturgy of the Hours under the pain of sin.  Many unfaithful priests do not.  The laity can pick up the standard voluntarily and run with it, keeping those unfaithful priests, many of whom are directly responsible for the sad state of the Church, in their intentions.  And because it is a free gift and not required it is most pleasing to God, even if due to our state in life it requires a great sacrifice to pray seven times.  Desperate times call for heroic sacrifice.  If it seems daunting find someone who can pray it with you or teach you, or read one of the recent books written to draw the laity into the Divine Office.

Penance and Mortification

These two terms, penance and mortification, are often used interchangeably.  Grasping the distinction is important only insofar as it relates to our intention.  Penance is reparation for sins committed, mortification is like pre-pentence in that it is aimed at rooting out the weaknesses that cause us to sin and have to do penance.  In practice they should go hand in hand.

Sins of the flesh and the demons who specialize in them are specifically targeted by fleshly penance and mortification.  “These can come out only with prayer and fasting”.  Fasting is the “fleshly” penance par excellence because it trains the Christian soldier to control all of his fleshly appetites.  It is the antidote to the softness that has hamstrung the Church.  It is no wonder that we no longer hear about it from the pulpit or that the Church does not require it more often than twice a year.  We need to be giving more and offer it in reparation for the Church’s soft sins.  The upcoming battle will require tremendous sacrifice and only those who have trained themselves to forego what is necessary in favor of the “one thing that is necessary” that will persevere.

There are many ways to fast and all are good.  The point is to start by making sacrifices at each meal and add from there.  You will find a method that fits with your state in life.  The method that St. Thomas recommends amounts to skipping one meal a day and that principle seems to work well although the combinations are endless.  One that works very well for the laity because it is the least disruptive to family life is from dinner to dinner.  You eat dinner on day 1 and then eat only two tiny meals during the day and then have a full meal at dinner the next evening.  The point is not to kill yourself but to offer something to Jesus.  When this intention is kept in mind, you will find that your desire to be generous with Jesus quells any hunger pains.   

There are other bodily mortifications and penances that are helpful, especially when we think about those practices that make us soft—cold showers, sitting upright in a chair with both feet on the floor, setting AC/heat at a level where you are slightly uncomfortable, rocks in shoes.  The point is to directly attack our need for comfort in a spirit of penance.

St. Paul was perhaps the greatest cultural reformer and a pillar of the Church.  One could argue that his success was attributed to the fact that he had a clear understanding of who he was fighting against and armed himself spiritually for the battle.  “Our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against…the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms” (Eph 6:12).  If we want to jumpstart the reform of the Church, then we should likewise enter into the spiritual battle.

 

Self-Esteem and the Spirit of Penance

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In his message for Lent, Pope Francis exhorted the faith not to let “this season of grace pass in vain!”  The Holy Father is echoing a sentiment that we have nearly all experienced.  We have all had the experience of letting Lent pass us by and many of us, despite the best of intentions, will suffer the same fate this Lent unless we do something different.  We need not just encouragement but a paradigm shift to see Lent and its purpose differently than ever before.

This paradigm shift begins with an understanding of the history of Lent.  This does not mean that we need to look at how the Church has classically celebrated Lent, but to understand where it comes from.  Like all the events within the Liturgical Calendar, the season of Lent is given to make the specific mysteries of Christ’s life present to us.  The particular mystery attached to Lent is Christ’s forty days in the desert.  Christ was driven by the Spirit into the desert for 40 days of prayer and fasting with one of the purposes being to obtain all the graces for all the Lents of all Christians for all time.  He did this not in any generic way, but in a very specific way because each member of the Faithful individually was there with Him.  As Pope Pius XII reminds us, “In the crib, on the Cross, in the unending glory of the Father, Christ has all the members of the Church present before Him and united to Him in a much clearer and more loving manner than that of a mother who clasps her child to her breast, or than that with which a man knows and loves himself” (Mystici Corporis Christi,75).  Lent then is the time where we go to Christ in the desert to lay claim to those graces He had merited for us.  We go not just in spirit but in truth because we are already there.

How We Should “Do” Lent

This understanding not only changes how we view Lent, but also how we do Lent.  Our typical approach is to see it as something primarily done by us.  We come up with a plan to “give up X” or “do this thing X” for Lent and then try to white-knuckle our way through it.  But if what we said above is true, then the proper way to look at it is that Christ is doing Penance through us.  The oft misquoted and equally misunderstood Scholastic maxim that grace perfects nature is apropos here.  Grace does not “build on nature” as if we do a little (or as much as we can) and God will do the rest.  It is all done by Christ—“I live no longer I, but Christ lives in me” (Gal 2:20).  Lent is no different.

This might sound passive or even quietistic, but it is the very opposite.  All grace requires our free response, but it first requires that we remove those impediments that keep us from adopting the true spirit of Penance that Christ won for us.  We often forget this as our primary role.  And this is why many of us struggle through Lent.  We try to do Penance without having the grace of Penance. 

Therefore our first acts should be to obliterate the obstacles.  These obstacles are not only interior but come from those unquestioned beliefs we have adopted from the spirit of the world.  These obstacles, two in particular, are the focus of this article and the next.  We will not fully receive the graces of Lent until we remove the spirits of self-esteem and luxury.

The Problem of Self-Esteem

Who could possibly have a problem with self-esteem?  To ask the question is to reveal that we have been infected with the spirit of the world.  For the spirit of the world always sends us mixed messages, locking us firmly in no-man’s land.  It takes some truth and twists it just enough that it blinds us to the implications of that truth.  It usually starts by baptizing it with a new name.  Then the new term, piggybacking on the old term, is given value by fiat.  “Self-esteem” is a prime example of this.

Self-esteem or “confidence in one’s own worth” is a psychological replacement for a theological term, dignity.  That a human being has worth is unquestionable.  But what has to be questioned is why a person has worth, that is, why a person should have any confidence in their worth.  The world would have us believe that the currency of “self-esteem” is valuable simply by fiat.  But it is not.  It is valuable currency because it rests upon the God-standard.  Human persons only have value because they are made in the image of God and because God has made Himself into the image of a man in Jesus Christ.  Our confidence lies in both of these things—our inherent God-imagedness and our offer of God-likedness in Christ.  The first can never be taken away, while the second must be achieved.   

The problem with self-esteem is that it overemphasizes the first and totally ignores the second.  The odd thing is that many in the Church have tried to “re-theologize” self-esteem through the language of “Temple of the Holy Spirit”.  This term is thrown around as an attempt to convince someone of their own worth.  But that is not how either Scripture or Tradition has understood it.  When St. Paul uses the term it is meant as a corrective to live up to the supreme gift of redemption (which includes the Divine Indwelling).  Tradition has taught that only those in a state of grace, that is those who have kept themselves unstained by serious sin, that are Temples of the Holy Spirit.  The language also betrays itself because a Temple, while it is the earthly home of Divinity, is also, and one might say primarily, the place of sacrifice.  In other words, you cannot say someone is a Temple of the Holy Spirit while not also calling them to make the necessary sacrifices within that same Temple. 

This leads us now to why the spirit of self-esteem is an obstacle to the spirit of Lent.  It always causes us to overvalue ourselves and destroys our spirit of sacrifice and penance.  If you don’t believe me, then let me propose a hypothetical.  Suppose, to use a seemingly trivial example, you are waiting for a parking space in a crowded shopping center and someone steals the space from you.  Now suppose you told me about it and I said “you deserved it.”  What would be your response?

I would bet that you would be angry with me and maybe even accuse me of being unjust.  But in truth, I would infallibly be right no matter what the situation was.  How do I know this?  Because God in His Providence thought you did.  Otherwise He wouldn’t have allowed it to happen.  This seems crazy until we follow out the line of reasoning.

Returning to our hypothetical, did God know the person was going to steal the space and did He allow it to happen?  Without question, but the important question is why.  And the answer ought to be “so that I could willingly accept it as penance for something I did wrong.”  In other words, you may not have deserved it this time, but you never got what you deserved last time.  The only thing that stops us from seeing this is our self-esteem.  “The space was mine and he had no right to take it.”  True, but that is not the point.  The point is that he did you a favor.  He gave you an opportunity to undo the harm you did to yourself when you sinned previously.  You offended God and all you have to endure is finding another space?  Yes, because your measly sacrifice when united to Christ in the desert becomes powerful.  Or you could just get stuck in how poorly treated you were and “pay down to the last penny” later (c.f. Mt 5:26).  Purgatory now is always better than Purgatory later.

So free from the false myth of self-esteem were the saints that they could even practice this for the big things. Not that they became doormats per se, but because they “humbly regarded the other person has more important than yourself” (Phil 2:3) that the only reason they put a stop to it is because of the harm the other person was doing to himself. In other words they would speak up not because of self-esteem but because of charity. In the spiritual life why we do what we do matters just as much as what we do.

The extreme cases obviously are far harder said than done, so we ought to just start developing the wisdom for the less extreme cases; not just because they are easier but because they are far more common.  This Lent let go of your self-esteem and see if there isn’t real growth in the spirit of Penance.  After all, these are the best kinds of Penance because they are not self-chosen, but come from the Provident hand of God.  When you meet with some slight during Lent, even if it seems like a big deal, say “I deserve this” and thank God for forming a spirit of Penance in you.

Next time, we will examine the second worldly obstacle: luxury.

God’s Choice?

Church, Church Authority, Divine Mercy, End of Life, Fasting, God's Will, History, Magisterium, Pope Francis, Prayer, Sin, Spiritual Warfare, , ,

As criticism continues to mount against Pope Francis amidst this time of ecclesiastical turmoil, a growing number of peacemakers have emerged, who, in an attempt to diffuse the situation, are quick to offer the reminder that “he was chosen by the Holy Spirit.”  One can certainly appreciate the attempt to maintain unity.  Especially because the Pope is the most visible sign of Catholic unity.  But this path to peace is a theological dead end.  The Pope is not “chosen by the Holy Spirit”, at least in the sense that the peacemaker means it.  Cardinal Ratzinger, the future Pope Benedict XVI was once asked whether the Holy Spirit is responsible for the election of a pope to which he replied:

I would not say so, in the sense that the Holy Spirit picks out the Pope. . . . I would say that the Spirit does not exactly take control of the affair, but rather like a good educator, as it were, leaves us much space, much freedom, without entirely abandoning us. Thus the Spirit’s role should be understood in a much more elastic sense, not that he dictates the candidate for whom one must vote. Probably the only assurance he offers is that the thing cannot be totally ruined…There are too many contrary instances of popes the Holy Spirit obviously would not have picked!

In his usual pedagogical succinctness, the Pope Emeritus gives us several important reminders, not only on the election of the Pope, but also on the nature of the Church, especially in times of crises such as we are currently facing.

The Holy Spirit and the Conclave

As Benedict is quick to point out, one need only study history to see that this hypothesis is highly questionable.  History is rife with scoundrels who came to occupy the Chair of Peter.  It is always a good idea to study Church history and remind ourselves of this, especially because most of us have lived under the reign of popes who became saints.  It is only with great intellectual dexterity that we could admit that the Holy Spirit “picked” both these saints and someone like, say, Pope Alexander VI.

One might object that, even if it is a highly informed one, Cardinal Ratzinger was just offering an opinion (“I would say so…”).  The tradition of the Church would suggest otherwise.  Lex orandi, lex credenda—as we worship, so we believe.  The Church, among her various liturgies, has a Mass for the Election of the Pope.   The Church Universal prays that the Conclave will be docile to the promptings of the Holy Spirit.  This implies that they can also operate under the promptings of mixture of other spirits as well.

Free will of the Cardinal electorate then is operative and “anyone” can be chosen.   Yet we are also treading on the horizon of free will and Divine Providence.   The man chosen to be Pope will be God’s choice, but only in the sense that the papal election, like all things, falls under God’s Providence.  We may be certain that the Holy Spirit directly wills the election of a given man as Supreme Pontiff, but through the mystery of Providence will allow another to take his place.

Our Lord told St. Peter that the gates of hell would not prevail against the Church.  What He meant by this was that no matter what, the Church would not fail.  The Barque of Peter may take on water, but it will never sink.  The Holy Spirit will allow the Church to take on water, but will always keep her afloat.  That is the extent of His protection.

This however is not the end of the story because of God’s Providence.  Regardless of whether it is a good Pope or bad, the Church will always get the Pope it needs.  Providence dictates that God will always provide the People of God with what they need.

Reading the Times

There may be a mutiny on the Barque of Peter and the Holy Spirit will pick a strong captain to lead a counter-mutiny, stopping the flow of the water.  Or, He may allow another man who joins the mutiny and ignores the water that continues to flow onto the boat.  Eventually all the compartments are flooded, washing the mutineers overboard.  The end result is the same, the corruption has been washed away and the Church was given exactly what she needed.

In a very real sense then the Pope is always God’s choice but only as an instrument.  As a type of the Church, Israel shows us this.  History continually moved in the direction towards the coming of the Messiah, the only question was whether the king and the people would cooperate.  Israel would flourish, grow fat, play the harlot, be chastised, and continue through the remnant.  This pattern is revealed so that we will come to recognize and expect it in the Church.  Either way history will continue to move towards the Second Coming.

In turbulent times this ought to serve as a great comfort.  The infestation of corruption in the Church is finally coming to a head and God is going to root it out.  He will use Pope Francis as his instrument.  The only question seems to be which type of captain Pope Francis will be.  Either way these scandals should not push us towards despair, but should instill hope into us.  God will not be mocked for sure, but neither will He ever abandon His people. He is always on the lookout for co-redeemers—those people who will pick up the Cross with Jesus and lay down their lives for the Church.  Only acts of reparation will repair the Church and each of us has an obligation to do this.  Every man must come on deck, stem the mutiny and start bailing water or risk being carried overboard.  “Penance, penance, penance!” the Angel of Portugal told us through the children of Fatima.  The time is at hand.  Our Lady of Fatima, pray for us!

St. Catherine of Siena and the Latest Church Scandal

Church, Dialogue, Divine Mercy, Fasting, Mercy, Saints, Sin, Spiritual Warfare, Suffering, , , ,

For anyone who thought that the clergy sexual abuse scandal was something that was left in the past, the recent revelations regarding former Cardinal Theodore McCarrick have shown that the cancer has metastasized.  Round two promises to be uglier than round one, especially since the former Cardinal’s actions were widely known throughout the American Church and beyond.  The laity could be excused for harboring a feeling of déjà vu, especially given the overall weariness with feeling like sheep without a shepherd.  They might even be excused for looking for looking for ways to take matters into their own hands; might that is until they read the writings of one of the Doctors of the Church.

St. Catherine and the Dialogue on the Clergy

Best known for her ecstatic dictation of a dialogue with God the Father, St. Catherine of Siena lived in an era marked by clerical corruption.  In fact, she was instrumental in reforming the Church by executing some of the very things the Father dictated to her.  There are large sections in her Dialogue in which God tells Catherine what must be done about sinful clergy.  These words, rooted deeply in the Gospel message are particularly relevant for lay people today and merit special attention given the state of the Church today.

The Father begins His dialogue with Catherine reminding her of the great dignity of priests and prelates regardless of their personal sin.  He tells her that “it is impossible to have a greater dignity than theirs” because He has made them “My Christs” (Dialogue, 113).  This dignity attaches to the office and thus cannot be wiped away no matter how often the clergy attempts to deface it through personal sin.  He is well aware that with this dignity comes a great responsibility and that “by sinning they are abusing the souls of their neighbors” and will one day have to answer for it; “Their dignity in being My ministers will no save them from My punishment…they will be punished more severly than all the other because they have received more from My kindness.  Having sinned so miserably they are deserving of greater punishment” (121).  But from the perspective of the laity there is always a certain dignity such that “To Me redounds every assault they make on My ministers.”  He goes on to say that “a person can do no worse violence than to assume the right to punish My ministers” (116).  What the Father is reminding us is that it is the Church’s role to punish the sinful clergy and not the laity (unless appointed by the Church to do so).  This applies even when the Church seems to ignore it or turns a blind eye.  This, as we shall see in a moment, does not mean the laity need to act like sheep led to the slaughter but that they have an active role in bringing about justice.

This role is revealed to Catherine by the Father when He begins “to show her the wretchedness of their [the sinful clergy] lives” (121).  First He describes how the sin is made manifest in their unwillingness to correct others.  The ministers “let My members grow rotten for want of correction…because of fear of losing their rank and position or because they themselves are living in the same or greater sins.”  It is as if they are blind leaders of the blind (117).

The Sins of the Clergy

And what, besides human respect, are these “same or greater sins”?  The Father “reveals these miserable sins of theirs,” the “stench which displeases not only Me…but the devils as well.”  These sins are the sins which are so hateful to Me that for this sin alone five cities (Sodom, Gomorrah, Admah, Zeboiim and Zoar) were struck down by My divine judgment.  For My divine justice could no longer tolerate it, so despicable to Me is this abominable sin…So you see, dearest daughter, how abominable this sin is to Me in any person. Now imagine how much more hateful it is in those I have called to live celibately” (124).

These words may have been spoken in the 14th Century, but they are as relevant today as they were then.  The parallels to our situation today are uncanny so that through St. Catherine God the Father has left us a blueprint for how the laity ought to respond .  Catherine grasps that these sins are revealed by Providential design.  The Father says, “Sometimes I reveal these miserable sins of theirs to My servants (just as I did to you) so that they may be even more concerned for their salvation and hold them out to Me with greater compassion, praying for them with sorrow for their sins and the insult they are to Me ”(124).  God the Father wants the laity to bring these sinful clerics before Him in merciful prayer so that He might be further glorified in His mercy.  Of this response, many of our contemporaries have already spoken.  But Catherine knows the Father is asking for more from us when she pleads, “O eternal Father, be merciful to Me and to these creatures of yours!  Otherwise take the soul from my body, for I do not think I can stand it anymore. Or give me some respite by showing me where I and  Your other servants can find refuge so that this leprosy will not be able to harm us or deprive us of our bodily and spiritual purity” (124).  She begs the Father how it is that she might escape this leprosy that is infecting the Body.  The Father tells her, “charity will make you put up with your neighbors with true patience by enduring pain, torment, and weariness no matter what their source. In this way you will flee and escape the leprosy” (124). In short, the Father is asking St. Catherine and each one of us not only for prayer, but for penance.  He is calling upon the laity in a very specific way “to fill up in their flesh what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions for the sake of His body, which is the Church” (Col 1:24).

From within the context of the renewed universal call to holiness, God has providentially arranged for the outward show of sanctity of the Church to depend in a very particular way on the laity.  In an age infected with clericalism this is a most important message.  If the laity are truly to be God’s other “Christs” as well, then they must continue His mission of reparation.  This trial by fire is a clarion call in an ecclesial environment that has shunned penance for generations.  Now the future of the Church depends upon it.  The Holy Spirit may have promised it would not fail, but a renewed laity can make it thrive.  That renewal begins with lives dedicated to penance and reparation.  St. Catherine of Siena, pray for us!

Losing the Weight of Vice without Dieting

Fasting, Virtue, , ,

“Lose weight without dieting!”  In a culture that is obsessed with diet and weight loss, headlines like this immediately catch our eye.  Most of these are fads, just like the diets they pledge to avoid, except for the latest trend—fasting.  Fitness articles and health gurus are now proclaiming the power of fasting to help lose weight.    That fasting has incredible health benefits should not surprise us as Catholics.  These cutting-edge scientists are really just regurgitating what the humblest of monks in the 6th and 7th Centuries already knew—that the spiritual benefits of fasting spill over to the body.  What they don’t recognize however is why this is so.  And in truth, neither do most of us.

This maxim that spiritual benefits of certain acts like fasting can spill over into the body is important for us to grasp.  Not only does it witness to our hylomorphism, but more to the point it sheds light on the fact that acts of virtue are good for the whole person.  We tend to see virtue as “a spiritual thing” that really only leads to frustration of our bodily powers.  But properly understood virtues perfect our powers and restore the soul as rightful governor of the body, enabling us to more fully enjoy our freedom.

Fasting, Virtue and Freedom

An example might help us see the truth in something we may unconsciously already know.  All things being equal, a man who is patient is also a man whose blood pressure is lower than a man’s who isn’t patient.  The reason we don’t grasp it at first is because conquering a vice like anger is very difficult at the beginning and, rather than calming the body, can have the opposite effect.  The man not schooled in patience is going to be further frustrated by the fact that he is holding back his frustration.  It can be downright painful in proportion to our viciousness.  So painful in fact that modern psychology tells us it is unhealthy repression.  In truth, pain is vice leaving the body.  But once the virtue matures in us, its fruits are felt in the body.  And like the fruit from a mature tree, it brings us pleasure, a pleasure that will be reinforced in the body.

At this point the reader may feel they have become victim to a little “bait and switch.”  We started out talking about fasting but somehow moved to virtue, using the example of patience.  The analogy was made because most of us don’t fast and most of us don’t realize that fasting is a virtue.  Fasting as a virtue means, that when habitually cultivated, it actually perfects our nature.  Put another way, we will never be perfect unless we fast.  Thus St. Thomas Aquinas says that fasting is a precept of the natural law.

Fasting is a virtue because it perfects our will power especially with respect to our concupiscible appetites.  Recall that the concupiscible appetite or emotions are those that draw us to bodily goods like eating and sex.  Because these pleasures are so closely related, fasting not only governs our use of food but also, St. Thomas Aquinas says, is the guardian of chastity.  When we can habitually control our desire for food which is an absolute necessity, we can control the other desires of the flesh which are not.  Once our powers of eating are controlled by the will, we actually enjoy it more—we are able to feast without splurging and experience true joy.  In other words, eating becomes not just a bodily act but an act of the whole person.  We come to eat the right things, in the right way at the right time and thus increase our pleasure.  So too with the other powers of the flesh when the virtue of fasting comes full bloom.

Those experienced in fasting will develop a power of will that enables it to choose independent of the desires of the flesh.  Until that experience comes we should expect it to be hard and expect to fail.  The untrained body will rail hard against the spirit that attempts to bridle it.  But like a man trying to train a horse and not necessarily break it, it is always better to start at a level that is parallel to our starting point.  A bread and water fast for someone who does not fast will only lead to failure.  Instead begin by fasting at each meal, making one small sacrifice (leaving a bite on the plate, no salt, eating what is before you, etc.) each time you come to the table.

Additional Benefits of Fasting

Our intellectual powers also are perfected through fasting.  St. Thomas says that fasting enables the mind to “arise more freely to the contemplation of heavenly things.”  What he means by this is that through fasting our minds are freed from the day to day clutter that inhibits us most of the time.  Again anyone who has dabbled in fasting knows that all you can think about at first is how hungry you are.  But as time goes on you gain greater control over your thoughts and are no longer as concerned with the needs of the body.  Your body may be saying “I’m starving” but the will is telling it “stop whining, you are not starving.”  Eventually the will wins out and the body relents; creating a calmer atmosphere for thought.  Those schooled in fasting all can attest to a certain clarity in thinking that is not there when they are not fasting, but the habit of raising their minds above the humdrum remains even after fasting is over.

St. Thomas adds a third reason why we should fast and that is to satisfy for sins.  Catholics are well aware of the penitential value of fasting, or at least they ought to be.  But there is a related point that is worth examining because it goes to the heart of sacrifice in general.  Which is more pleasing to God, a fast that is hard or a fast that is easy?  I don’t mean hard or easy in the sense of rigor but more in how freely (without interior resistance) we are able to accomplish it.  Most of us would say that a sacrifice that is hard is more pleasing.  But that is not true.  The greater the person’s virtue, the greater their freedom in making the offering.  The person who does not yet have the virtue of fasting goes back and forth but the person with the virtue sets their will on fasting and never deviates.  The latter offers a greater sacrifice even if the rigor of the former is greater.

Want to lose weight without dieting?  Not just body weight, but also the dead weight of the vices of the “old man” (c.f Romans 6:6).  There is no better way than to develop a virtuous life of moderation that includes the virtue of fasting.  Like all the virtues fasting is hard at first, but with maturity it produces sweet fruits that are more enjoyable than the palatable pleasures passed up.  Why not begin today?

The Waiting Game

Advent, Eucharist, Fasting, Sacraments, Spiritual Life

In his most celebrated and enduring work, A Christmas Carol, Charles Dickens tells the story of a miserable old miser named Ebenezer Scrooge.  The protagonist is visited by three ghosts, each set on infusing into his heart the “Christmas spirit.”  As frightful as the experience might be, many of us would wholeheartedly welcome the arrival of a specter if it meant being given the Christmas spirit. In hopes of being caught up in the spirit, we try shopping for the perfect gift.  We may turn to Christmas music, but we can only listen to Feliz Navidad so many times (once) before our hearts grow cold.  We might blame the “culture” for the secularization of Christmas, but no matter what we do, the Christmas spirit remains elusive. What if, the problem was something else?  What if we struggle to get into the Christmas spirit because we never “get into” the spirit of Advent?

As the Latin derivation of the name suggests (Adventus for Coming), Advent is a period of preparation for the celebration of the Feast of the Incarnation on Christmas. Although it has been observed to varying degrees and varying lengths of time throughout Church history, it has always been viewed as a “little” Lent because it is a period of spiritual preparation through the disciplines of prayer, fasting and almsgiving. It was “little” both because the duration of time is shorter (4 weeks vs 40 days) and because the Church does not command the same rigor as Lent. Its “littleness” has always been the reason why it is my favorite liturgical season and why it offers an excellent time for those of us who might grow weary and lose intensity during Lent or even suffer from a little spiritual ADD.

What Are You Waiting For?

Advent is a season of waiting.  Throughout history, God’s people have always waited for Him to fully reveal Himself. The Incarnation may have happened in a specific time and place, but it touches every time and place.  When God pitched His tent among us, time and eternity met—now each moment touches God’s eternal Now.  The season of Advent may end at Christmas—a day that marks the birth of Christ—but Christmas properly understood is meant to mark the three comings of Christ. First, there is His coming in the flesh in the cave in Bethlehem. Second, there is His coming in grace and the Eucharist to us in the here and now. Finally, it is preparation for His second coming when He will judge mankind. Christmas, like all the Christian mysteries, has a threefold meaning in the past, present and future. You cannot separate any of the three elements from the other two without doing harm to the meaning of Christmas. “Christ has died, Christ is risen, Christ will come again.”

This threefold meaning of Christmas is what ultimately helps us to “keep Christ in Christmas” by protecting it from simply being a day we remember some past event.  We see it not only as an event in the past that put the world on a different trajectory, but an event that touches each of us individually today and ultimately determines our individual future.  The Christmas spirit is a living spirit.  But we must prepare for it by following the steady path laid out in Sacred Scripture.  The Church borrows the words of the prophets in the Advent liturgies not so much to show they were right, but to make their fervent expressions of longing our own. God’s word is living and active and never returns to Him empty (c.f. Heb 4:12, Is 55:11). We must wrap our hearts around His words through the prophets and make them our own expressions. Advent should be a time in which Scripture comes alive for us, especially by dedicating more time to prayer and study.

Are You Awake?

It is not just the words of prophets that form our Advent, but even the cosmos bids us to “stay awake” as the night grows longer.  It is not until the “Light of the World” enters on December 25th that the days will begin to get longer again.  The Christmas spirit only comes when we have allowed the spirit of vigilance to animate our Advent.  Advent allows us to give expression to that deep yearning for God that we all experience. That desire is so deep within us and such a natural part of our daily existence that we often become drowsy.  Advent offers us both the opportunity, and specific graces, to become vigilant.  In fact we will likely find that we are more vigilant throughout the rest of the year because we have paid our dues in Advent.

Fasting while we await the arrival of the Bridegroom is also a key aspect of Advent. Assuming that His disciples would fast (Mt 6:16), He won many graces for them when He Himself fasted in the desert.  Fasting not only helps us to gain control over our passions, but when done properly actually makes our senses more alert.  This is why fasting from food is such a powerful spiritual practice.  Because food is necessary to life, the hunger we experience in going without, is felt at the core of our being. We give up what is necessary because we want the One Thing that is most necessary.

Advent and the Eucharist

Advent can also be a time in which we double-down on our devotion to the Eucharist.  The Eucharist ensures that Christmas Day is not merely symbolic. We truly receive what we have been preparing for, even if God shields our eyes under the appearance of bread and wine.  The entire purpose of all the season is to receive Christ in His fullness and permanently.  The Eucharist is the Sacrament that truly brings this about.  It is not only Christmas Day but the entire season of Advent that is protected from becoming a symbolic gesture by the Eucharist. Spending more time “keeping watch with Our Lord” for an hour of Adoration ought to be a key practice of Advent. Likewise, we should increase our frequency of Daily Mass attendance, asking for the grace to receive Our Lord more perfectly each time. The Eucharist has a gravitational force about it in that the more you receive Our Lord, the more you desire to receive Him again. There is no better way to make real the goal of Advent than by allowing Our Lord to bestow this gift upon us.

What’s for Dinner?

Culture, Culture of Life, Fasting, Leisure, Moralilty, Natural Law, Scripture, Suffering, Theology, , ,

In keeping with tradition, President Trump pardoned Drumstick, the thirty-six pound presidential turkey, yesterday and sent her to Gobblers Rest on the Virginia Tech campus.  Millions of other turkeys will not be so fortunate however adorning the tables of Americans tomorrow gathering for the Thanksgiving Day feast.  For a small, but increasing, number of those families, they will forgo the fowl because they are avowed vegans and vegetarians.  Included within this group are a number of Catholic intellectuals who have rejected their omnivorous ways by making a moral argument for vegetarianism, seeing it as an antidote to the culture of death.   Before the Lion of PETA lies down with Lamb of the National Right to Life, it is instructive to offer a Christian perspective on vegetarianism.

Animals and Their Use

In examining the order of nature, it is patently obvious that there is a hierarchy in which the perfect proceeds from the imperfect.  This hierarchy also resides in the use of things so that the imperfect exists for the use of the perfect.  The plants make use of the earth for their nourishment, animals make use of plants and man makes use of plants and animals.  Man is said then to have dominion over all of visible creation because, having reason and will, he is able to make use of all of it.

Revelation supports human reason in this regard as Genesis tells of God’s granting of dominion to mankind because he is created in God’s image (c.f. Gn 1:26-27).  But this is really a two-edged sword.  Dominion means not just that we have the capacity for using things, but also that there is a right and wrong way to use them.  With free will comes the capacity for the misuse of creatures.   So that the question is not really whether man has dominion over the animals but whether this dominion includes the right to eat them.

Thus when we reflect on the proper use of animals, we usually use the term “humane.”  Although it is an oft-used term, it is not oft-understood.  When we speak of the “humane” treatment of animals it does not mean that we treat them as if they were human.  Instead it refers to the truly human (i.e. moral) way of treating animals as living, sentient beings over which we have been given not just dominion but stewardship.  Humane treatment refers to the truly human way of using the animals.  This would mean that all traces of cruelty or causing unnecessary pain carry moral weight.  Put another way, we should avoid any all forms of abuse, which, of course,  always assumes there is a proper use.

The question also needs to be properly framed.  It is not really whether or not this use includes the death of the animal.  Just as the use of plants by animals may lead to the death of the plants, so too do higher animals prey on the lower.  There is no inherent reason then why the use of the animal by man cannot results in death.  Some make the argument for the moral necessity of vegetarianism based on the fact that we should not kill a living thing.  A moment’s reflection however allows us to see that virtually all of our food, including many things like wheat and fruits and vegetables, results from the death of something that was living (see Augustine’s City of God, Book 1, Ch.20 for further discussion on this).  No one truly objects because the plant matter, lacking sentience, does not have the capacity for pain.  To advance further we must look more closely at animal pain.

Kindness

Every generation has its pet virtue and for our generation it is kindness.  Provided we “would never hurt a fly” we are deemed good people.  The great enemy of kindness is cruelty and its daughter pain.  Pain is the greatest evil.  But this is not entirely true.  Pain becomes an evil when it becomes an end in itself.  This is true in both humans and animals.  It can however serve as a means, provided it is minimized in carry out its purpose.  That purpose can be either corrective (like getting too close to a fire) or for growth.  Cruelty would not be to cause pain, but to cause it unnecessarily.  The power of sentience is not simply for feeling pleasure, but also allows for the feeling of pain.  This power is good and necessary for the creature to thrive.

The difference in humans and animals is the capacity, not to feel pain, but to suffer.  There must be an I to experience suffering or else it is merely a succession of pains without any real connection.  As CS Lewis says in The Problem of Pain it is most accurate to say “pain is taking place in this animal” rather than “this animal is suffering.”  We should avoid saying things like “how would you like to be in a slaughterhouse?”  The experience of animals in that environment is very different from the suffering that would have gone on in a place like Auschwitz.  They may be in pain in the slaughterhouse, but there is no suffering.  Any appeal to emotions based on an anthropomorphic comparison ultimately muddies the waters.

The causing of pain in other humans, always as a means, is licit provided the patient receives some benefit from it.  At first glance it would seem that animals would derive no benefit from the pain caused by humans.  When we view pain as means of moving a person towards perfection then we can see the parallel in animals.  The perfection of any creature consists in it achieving the end for which it was made.  Man was made for happiness (in the classical sense of becoming morally good) and animals were made for man.  If the pain that a man causes an animal is necessary for his own happiness and acts as a means to helping the animal reach the end for which it was made, namely the service of mankind, then there is nothing inherently wrong with it.

The Moral Case For Vegetarianism

All that has been said so far helps to clear up some of the ambiguities surrounding the issue, but has yet to address whether a moral argument could be made for vegetarianism.  In the state of original innocence man was a vegetarian (c.f. Gn 1:29).  Man had dominion over the animals but did not use them for clothes or food (ST I, q.103, art. 1).  The animals obeyed man, that is, all animals were domesticated.  For his own disobedience man was punished by the disobedience of those creatures which should have been subjected to him and they became difficult to domesticate and often posed threats to his life.  Shortly thereafter the animals were used for clothing (Gn 3:20) and food (Gn 9:3).  In short, because of the frailty introduced to the human body as a result of the Fall, it became necessary to make use of the animals for warmth and nutrition.

Any argument that man “was originally a vegetarian” ultimately falls flat because we cannot return to our Edenic state.  With the Fall came irreparable damage to both body and soul of which animal flesh provides a partial remedy.  Furthermore, within Church tradition, fasting from meat has long been practiced as a means of mortification.  We are called to abstain from good things so that eating meat is a good thing and thus worthy of being sacrificed.  In short, any attempt to make a moral argument that eating meat is wrong ultimately falls flat.

Likewise making a connection to the culture of death is problematic.  It is not clear how using animals for food is directly connected or acts like a gateway drug for the culture of death unless you equivocate on the word death.  The culture of death is one that causes spiritual death.  How the killing of animals, when done in a humane way and not out of greed, leads to a culture of spiritual death is not immediately obvious.

All that being said, there is a manner in which vegetarianism can represent a morally praiseworthy act, that is by way of counsel and not obligation.  Because meat is a concession made by God because of man’s fallen condition, abstaining from meat can act as a participation in the fruits of Christ’s redemptive act.  This is why the Church has long obligated abstaining from meat specifically (as opposed to some other kind of food) during certain liturgical periods.  Permanently abstaining from meat, when done with this intention, becomes a powerful spiritual practice.  It also becomes an act of witness to both the world and to those in the Church who often neglect this practice.

For the omnivores among us—enjoy your meat this Thanksgiving Day with a clear conscience.  But make an offering of thanksgiving Friday by holding the leftovers until Saturday.  Herbivores, allow your vegetarianism to be a constant sign of the redemption won at so great a cost.  Truly, something to be thankful for.

Running Through the Finish Line of Advent

Advent, Fasting, Prayer, ,

Within Church tradition, Advent has been viewed as a “little” Lent.  Lent, because it involved a prolonged period of preparation marked by the spiritual disciplines of prayer, fasting and almsgiving.  “Little,” because it was a shorter time period (4 weeks vs 40 days) and because it lacked some of the rigor normally associated with Lent.  For many of us, despite the best of initial intentions, Advent has had any rigor at all.  The commercial trappings of Christmas can ensnare all of us to some degree, something we do not necessarily have to combat at Easter.  We may easily be tempted to give up and try again next year.  But there is still a week left in the season and the Church has the perfect prescription within her traditions to recoup some of the spiritual fruit that may have fallen off your Advent tree. It may be that Advent has been very good so far and you are looking for a way to stretch to gather the fruit from the top.  Either way, we can finish Advent by turning to the Church’s tradition of “little Advent.”

In the spirit of always acting with the end in mind, a brief reminder about the purpose of Advent.  All too often Advent and even Christmas can feel like a game of make believe.  We know that God has already come in the Incarnation.  We know that He is here in the Eucharist.  Sure we are awaiting His Second Coming in glory, but that is something that we are always waiting for.  Why do we need a special season of waiting?

It is precisely that reason that the Church gives us Advent leading up to the theophany of Christmas.  We may always be, as the embolism of the Mass says, waiting “in joyful hope for the coming of Our Savior.”  But Advent offers us a special time to focus solely on this waiting so as to stir up love in us and to awaken our otherwise dormant hope.  God’s promises really do come to fruition, not just “spiritually” but as history.  Not just once upon a time, but “in the first enrollment (of the census ordered by Caesar Augustus) when Quirinius was governor of Syria.”  God made good on His promise to be Emmanuel, God with us and He will continue until He has ransomed all of captive Israel.

This waiting is especially acute in Advent and ought to be our primary focus.  We do the things that waiting people do—pray, fast and give alms.

Prayer

Beginning on December 17th, the Church has traditional marked seven days with a series of special antiphons known as the O Antiphons.  These antiphons frame the Magnificat in each evening’s Liturgy of the Hours.  Not only are these antiphons tied to the official prayer of the Church, but are also well known to most of us as they comprise the verses of O Come, O Come Emmanuel.

Within the Liturgy of the Hours, antiphons are short verses that are sung (or recited) prior to and after the Psalm or Canticle that provide an interpretive key to the mystical meaning of the passage or the feast day.  This is what makes the O Antiphons perfect material to recharge or redeem Advent for us—they are short reflections that capture the meaning of the season.  The O Antiphons allow us to make present the expectation of Israel and ignite within us any aspect of hope that has lain dormant in our hearts.  And because they are appended onto the Magnificat, Mary’s great prayer of expectation and thanksgiving, they unite us with her as well.

Each of the Great Antiphons as some have called them, invokes the name of the Messiah under his various Old Testament titles and closes with a proper petition.  The medieval church masters say there are seven as a reminder of the miseries of our fallen condition; each of which the Messiah came to rescue us from.  On the first day we recall how it is the Wisdom from on high that can free us from ignorance.  On the second day, we beg for the coming Redeemer who will save us from eternal punishment.  On the third day, longing for our heavenly homeland, we invoke the promised Root of Jesse to hurry to us.  Imprisoned in sin and death, on the fourth day, we plead for the Key of David to unlock our chains and guard us.  Trapped in darkness, we beg for the Dayspring to enlighten our way on the fifth day.  Because we are enslaved under the terrible reign of the devil, we invoke the King of Nations on the sixth day.  Finally, separated from God, we invoke Emmanuel, God with us.  In short, each of the seven days we should meditate upon our fallen condition and God’s remedy as outlined by that day’s antiphon.

Fasting

At this stage of Advent, our longings ought to be felt, not just spiritually, but also bodily.  This is why the last week is a time to fast.  In teaching His disciples, Our Lord associates fasting with waiting for the Bridegroom (Mt 6:16).  It is a spiritual discipline that has fallen into disuse, but this last week of Advent offers a great time to get back into the practice.  Fasting allows us to truly experience longing for something we simply cannot live without.  By going without that which is necessary, namely food, we express our desire for the One Thing that is most necessary.  One would be hard pressed to come up with a better way to express the true meaning of the banquet most of us will partake of on Christmas Day than to have first fasted.  Feasts are only meaningful when we have had the experience of fasting.

Pope Benedict XVI often said we are living in the “already, but not yet.”  What he meant is that Christ has come and is with us really and truly, but we have not yet seen His glory.  It is in this spirit that fasting should always be accompanied by Daily Mass and reception of the Eucharist.  By having our actual hunger temporarily satisfied by the Bread of Life, we will again experience in our bodies the truth of what happens in our souls.

Almsgiving

In a season marked by a spirit of  giving, it seems that almsgiving plays a large part already.  But we often miss the real point of almsgiving which is to give until it hurts.  We do this not because we are nice, but because we love God and want to give in the way that He gives—until it hurts.  Almsgiving should always flow from a supernatural motive that is based on a love of God and a desire for Him to spread His love through us.

There is also the tendency to give only from our surplus, especially for those of us who have families to support.  It seems wrong to take from what the family needs in order to help another family.  This was my own thinking for many years until I came across a quote from Pope Francis in which he said “we would do well to ask ourselves what we can give up in order to enrich others by our poverty.”  What I took the Holy Father to be saying is that, and this is especially true for parents, we should look to see what we can sacrifice personally.  Then there is no conflict with our obligations to our children and spouses.  As a father I may not be willing to have one of my children forgo a thick winter coat, but as a man I might be willing to forgo one myself so that someone else can be warm.  By personally going without something of importance, I can enrich others.  These “others” include not just the direct beneficiary of your charity but your children as well who catch the spirit of sacrifice so inimical to our Christian spirit.

There is another aspect of our almsgiving that should be a focus during Advent which can be a time of great loneliness for many people.  The greatest poverty is often a lack of being loved.  Too often we are tempted to take a “I gave at the office” type mentality that removes us from actual contact with the poor.  Giving money is a good thing, but the problem with it is that, as Pope Benedict XVI said, we have a tendency to give too little of ourselves.  What the other person needs most is the knowledge that they are loved, a knowledge that is only acquired by our face to face contact with them.  Our almsgiving should not just be focused on meeting material needs, but should always leave the person spiritually enriched as well.  Christians are not social workers, but manifestations of Christ’s self-giving love in the world.

Entering the home stretch of our Advent journeys, there is still plenty of time to seize the graces God had planned from the beginning of time to give to us.  By returning to our Catholic roots—through Prayer, especially the great O Antiphons, fasting and almsgiving—we can with great joy welcome Christ the newborn babe.

Fasting in Lent

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In his 18th Century encyclical letter Non ambigimus, Pope Benedict XIV sought to encourage his brother bishops and the Church Universal to zealously keep the Lenten fast.  Not only did he view it as a distinguishing mark of Catholic Christianity, but he also lamented that “the most sacred observance of the fast of Lent has been almost completely eliminated.”  Certainly the last two and a half centuries have witnessed a continued decline.  But if what Pope Benedict XIV says is true, namely that:

“[T]he observance of the Lenten fast 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 princes 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 that such negligence would become the source of misery to the world, of public calamity, and of private woe.”

Perhaps as we plan out our Lenten practices, we ought to examine the practice of fasting once again.

Fasting has a long history within the Church.  We know that Our Lord Himself left us by way of example this practice when He went into the desert and fasted for 40 days.  But like all things that Christ did, He left us more than an example.  During His time in the desert, He won for us as individuals all the graces attached to fasting.  As the only Begotten Son of God, He saw each of your Lenten fasts individually and won for you the specific graces you would need during that Lent.  These graces become available to you to the degree that you participate in His fast.  Thanks to the work of the Redeemer, fasting becomes not only an act of penance but a positive means of growing in sanctity and arms us for spiritual warfare.

We also know that the followers of Christ were expected to fast.  When the disciples of John (Mk 2:18-22) the Baptist ask Jesus why His followers do not fast, He tells them that it isn’t fitting for them to fast while He is with them.  This is because John the Baptist and his followers fasted both in anticipation of the coming Messiah and as an act of penance.  By offering the new wine of redemption, Our Lord was changing the meaning of fasting.  That meaning could only be understood once the Bridegroom had departed from their company.  In other words, the new fruits of fasting were only available once Jesus’ redemptive mission was completed.  Thus fasting is not only something Christians should do, but there is also a uniquely Christian way to fast.

Lenten Cross

While I have visited the question of fasting previously and mentioned some of the specific fruits attached to it, I would like to examine some of the reasons why fasting in Lent is so essential.  Lent is a time consecrated in a special way to penance and the Church has viewed fasting as the primary means by which this penance is performed.  Why fasting?  Because as Ss. Basil and Gregory the Great point out, the first sin was one of eating.  By breaking the commandment of abstaining from eating a particular thing, our first parents allowed all sin to enter the world.  Therefore it is fitting that when we fast through the merits of Christ we are able to undo the effects of that sin in our lives.  In other words, just as eating universally led to sin in mankind, abstaining from eating can untie that knot.

But wouldn’t fasting from apples be enough?  Why does it include fasting from meat?  Again it is tied to man’s sinful nature.  By way of concession, God allows man to eat the flesh of animals in His covenant with Noah (Gn 9:1-4) because he needs the animal flesh in order to be strengthened in his fallen state.  So by abstaining specifically from meat, it once again is a participation in the fruits of Christ’s redemptive act.

Looking at it from Christ’s redemptive act and from the perspective of undoing some of the effects of the Fall, we can see why it is a powerful spiritual practice.  But it has fallen into disuse for many in the Church.  In response to this, the Church has done all she could to make it possible to fulfill the necessity of fasting while not imposing burdens beyond what the average Catholic in the 21st Century can handle.  But the problem is that the average Catholic in the 21st Century can handle a whole lot less than say the average Catholic in the 13th Century.  Given the overall increase in health, shouldn’t it be the exact opposite?  What has changed is the mindset.  While I am not necessarily advocating extreme fasts over Lent, the remedy to this mindset is to actually embrace the Lenten fast.

There is a tendency to think “I can fast from other things instead” and then we set out to be innovative in our Lenten practice.  The problem with this is that there is almost always a lack of humility in doing this because, as St. Francis de Sales says, “we will find that all that comes from ourselves, from our own judgment, choice and election, is esteemed and loved far better than that which come from another.”  But by acting in obedience to Our Lord’s example, we choose a penance which is imposed from without.  This offers us an opportunity to grow in humility by voluntarily choosing someone else’s conception of penance.

This is not to say that fasting from TV, social media or the like may not be a spiritually fruitful experience.  As an aside, we should always fast from that which is good—to avoid something like yelling at your wife, is not fasting.  What is being said is that these things should never be substitutes for fasting from food.  Do them in addition to fasting, not in place of.  Because food is necessary to life, the hunger we experience in going without, is felt at the core of our being.  We give up what is necessary because we want the One Thing that is most necessary.  Those other things, while good, do not share this same essential quality.

In the past, Christians were under obligation to eat only a single meal each day during the entire Lent.  Obviously this would be too difficult for us today.  Instead we might consider following the current norms for Ash Wednesday and Good Friday for all the days of Lent.  When fasting, a person is permitted to eat one full meal. Two smaller meals also can be eaten, although they should not be larger than the full meal combined.  We should also consider abstaining from meat in any of those meals.  Fasting and abstinence should not be done on Sunday—even during Lent, Sunday is a feast day rather than a fast day.  This connection between fasting and feasting, especially during Lent, will also help us to enjoy the Sabbath day all the more.  By fasting throughout Lent, we will realize the fruits of the Easter feast even more.  May our Lenten fasts lead to great spiritual renewal for us all!

 

Standing on Three Legs

Fasting, Spiritual Life, Virtue

Shortly after the Second Vatican Council, Pope Paul VI surveyed the pastoral landscape and found a number of “grave and urgent” problems that plagued the Church.  Among these problems was a laxity that had crept into the hearts and minds of the faithful with respect to the divine precept of fasting.  St. John Paul II echoed Paul VI’s concern and called for catechesis on fasting in his 1984 Apostolic Exhortation on Penance and Reconciliation.  Fasting is one of the three main pillars of the spiritual life along with prayer and almsgiving.  For many, this third leg of the spiritual life has atrophied greatly making balance difficult.  Therefore it is helpful to examine anew why the Church calls us to fast regularly.

Our Lord was once asked by the people why the Pharisees and the disciples of John fasted and His disciples did not.  He responded that “as long as they have the bridegroom with them, they cannot fast. The days will come when the bridegroom is taken away from them, and then they will fast” (Mk 2:18-22). Now that the Bridegroom has been taken away, Christians ought to be fasting and not just in Lent.  Rather than viewing themselves as a fasting people, most Christians instead identify fasting with the followers of Mohammed or Gandhi.

In the Summa Theologiae, St. Thomas lists three reasons why fasting ought to be practiced: it bridles the lusts of the flesh, serves as satisfaction for sins and frees the mind for the contemplation of heavenly things.  Because these three things lead to the fulfillment of our human nature, the Angelic Doctor says that the practice of fasting belongs among the precepts of the natural law.  Despite the obligation to fast, its practice has diminished primarily because each of the goods attached to fasting has been threatened.

The first obstacle is related to the same reason that people have not fasted throughout the ages—the capital sin of gluttony.  According to the CDC 36% of all American adults are obese.  To combat this epidemic we have developed zero calorie drinks and food, gastric bypass surgery, diet pills, and diet plans that allow you to “eat as much as you want and still lose weight.”  After all, if I can get zero calories by eating, why should I feel hungry while I am fasting?

But these are mere band aids.  We fail to acknowledge the oversized elephant in today’s “super-size me” culture that prides itself on “all you can eat”.  We are a bunch of gluttons.  Back when gluttony was a sin the medicine was fasting.  The remedy remains the same today.

Dante_Purgatory_Gluttons

Because of our fallen nature we often find that our gods are our stomachs.  Through its medicinal effect fasting helps to break the chains to our senses.  In this way it combats the other capital sins of the flesh; sloth (more on this in a moment) and lust.  It serves as the foundation of the virtue of temperance.  This much needed virtue not only moderates our eating and drinking but also the particularly dangerous vice of lust.  Our Lord suggests that some demons only come out through prayer and fasting and the demon of porneia is one of them.  With the rise in pornography addiction, fasting offers both a remedy and a shield against it.  By fasting we gain greater control of our passions and emotions and by this increased in self-possession we are more able to give ourselves to God and others.  This is why St. Thomas listed calls fasting the “guardian of chastity.”

The second obstacle that the practice of fasting encounters is the loss of a sense of sin.  For many people using fasting to atone for sin is akin to using an extra blanket to protect you from the boogeyman.  Sin, like the boogeyman, does not exist and the Church simply uses the idea of sin to keep us in line.  In a 1946 radio address to members of the US National Catechetical Congress in Boston, Pope Pius XII declared that “the sin of the century is the loss of the sense of sin.”  Recognizing this, John Paul II thought that restoring a proper sense of sin is the first way of facing the grave spiritual crisis looming over man today.  This loss of a sense of sin has become a major evangelical obstacle.  If we do not accept the “bad news” of our sinfulness then we have no need for the “good news” of the Gospel.  The Gospel is reduced to just “news” which we already have plenty of.  Fasting helps to restore the lost sense of sin.  It serves as a reminder that our desires have gone astray.

This is why most people see fasting merely as a disciplinary regulation that is “suggested” by the Church rather than something that belongs to the natural law.  With the widespread disdain for ecclesiastical authority many simply choose to ignore what the Church has to say about fasting.

Finally, the practice of fasting has been threatened because man has lost the desire to raise his mind to the contemplation of heavenly things.  Classically understood, this is the vice of sloth or acedia.  St. Thomas defines acedia as “sadness in the face of a spiritual good.”    Oftentimes sloth is confused with laziness and then summarily dismissed because we are “busy.”  But sloth is not laziness.  Many of the busiest people are also the most slothful because they suffer from a “roaming unrest of spirit” as St. Thomas says.

Sloth seems to be ever-present in our culture and it most clearly manifests itself through its first-born daughter, curiosity.  Curiosity is the desire to know simply for the pleasure that it brings and not in order to understand the nature of things.  Our information hungry society is driven by curiosity.  The voyeurism of reality TV shows, the popularity of social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter, and a growing addiction to smartphones all exist to feed our curiosity.  They simply serve as distractions from contemplating heavenly things.  Our minds are made to rise to heavenly things and when they do not the result is a pervasive boredom.

St. Thomas compares curiosity with the virtue of studiousness.  Studiousness serves as a check on our curiosity by studying first those things which are most important and relating what we discover to God.  It is a most necessary virtue in developing the habit of contemplation.  The studious person develops the habit of seeing all of creation through a sacramental paradigm.  Fasting helps to cultivate this virtue by reminding us  that man does not live on bread alone and excites his intellect to investigate those things that truly bring life to man.

Practically speaking, how do we fast and how often should we do it?  There are two kinds of fasts.  There is a total fast which means abstaining from all food and drink (this is linked to the Eucharist) and a partial fast which is penitential in nature.  While there is no one “right” way to observe a partial fast, the Church suggests that it consists in one normal sized meal and two small meals that are the equivalent of the first meal.  The idea is not to starve ourselves, but to stir just enough hunger so as to have to fight the temptation to break the fast.  One normally finds that they cannot stop thinking about eating when they first start this practice.  That is to be expected when we do not yet have the virtue of fasting and will diminish over time.  What also normally happens is that the bodily hunger awakens in us a certain amount of spiritual sensitivity so that we find great pleasure in both prayer and receiving the Eucharist.

As far as frequency, most spiritual masters would suggest once a week either on Friday (in union with Our Lord’s Passion) or on Saturday (with Our Lady on Holy Saturday).  One could easily however find ways to fast daily by not eating between meals, always leaving the table a little bit hungry or always eating what is placed in front of you.  Again it is not so much the how, but the spirit in which one fasts.  The intention ought to be as penance for sins and as an offering for favors from God.

While climbing Mount Purgatory, Dante encounters a group of emaciated penitents in the ring of gluttony.  Because the gluttonous abstain from the “gratification of the palate” as part of their penance, Dante sees that the “sockets of their eyes seemed rings without gems.  Whoso in the face of men reads OMO would surely there have recognized the M.”  For those who know Italian, they will recognize that OMO is a variant of the Italian word for “man”, uomo.  What the poet is suggesting is that the inner form of man is restored through fasting.  Following his lead, we too should include fasting as part of our regular spiritual diet and stand on all three spiritual legs.

Where’s the Beef?

Fasting

For many Catholics, especially in the US, the practice of abstaining from meat on all Fridays of the year has been relegated to pre-Vatican II Catholicism.  They assume that the obligation has been done away with and so is no longer binding upon them.  But an examination of the Code of Canon Law presents a different, although nuanced picture, of our obligations.  Because this is a source of confusion for many in the Church, it is instructive for us to examine exactly what the Church law says about abstinence.

To begin, it is important that we remind ourselves that the law of God commands that man does penance.  The first words out of Our Lord’s mouth when He began His public ministry were to “repent (literally “do penance”) and believe in the Gospel” (Mk 1:15).  This followed a long Scriptural tradition commanding acts of penance (c.f. Jer 18:11, 25:5; Ez  18:30, 33:11-15; Joel 2:12).  While, Scripture does not enunciate all the ways we might practice penance, it is commonly spoken of in terms of  prayer, fasting and almsgiving.  Jesus addresses the penitential spirit in which each of these acts is to be performed in a number of places (c.f. Mt 6:1-6, 16-18) and commands that His followers to fast once He departed (c.f. Luke 5:35).  So in practice, we are all obligated to perform acts of prayer, fasting and almsgiving.

There is another important, although somewhat obvious, point that needs to be made.  To fail to perform any of the Lord’s Commandments is objectively sinful.  This means that when we fail to practice penance, we increase our guilt.  Why this is important for the discussion at hand will become obvious in a moment.

The 1983 Code of Canon Law says the following:

Can.  1249 The divine law binds all the Christian faithful to do penance each in his or her own way. In order for all to be united among themselves by some common observance of penance, however, penitential days are prescribed…

Can.  1250 The penitential days and times in the universal Church are every Friday of the whole year and the season of Lent.

Can.  1251 Abstinence from meat, or from some other food as determined by the Episcopal Conference, is to be observed on all Fridays, unless a solemnity should fall on a Friday…

Can.  1253 The conference of bishops can determine more precisely the observance of fast and abstinence as well as substitute other forms of penance, especially works of charity and exercises of piety, in whole or in part, for abstinence and fast.

Notice how the language may have changed, previously the Church had spoken of the “law of abstinence” being binding “under the pain of sin” but that the principle remains the same—all Christians are bound to do penance.  Just because there is no mention of the “pain of sin”, does not mean that it is still not sinful to omit penitential practice.  That is assumed.  What has changed however is that the Church has sought to adapt this teaching to her universality.  Abstaining from meat does not have the same sacrificial weight upon all.  There are areas of the world where they do not have much meat at all and so to abstain from meat is no sacrifice.  Likewise in places where meat is found in abundance, abstaining on one day represents little more than an inconvenience.  This is why the Church has left it to the individual Bishop Conferences to decide how best to practice the penitential days given the economic and social conditions of their region.

Why not just leave it up to the individual?  Why should we have any law at all?  The Church, because she has binding and loosing authority, has sought to make it easier for the faithful to fulfill this obligation.  By setting aside a specific day of the week and a specific practice, it becomes an easy way to cultivate the virtue of Penance.  As St. Thomas says, all laws ought to have as their end to cultivate virtue so that these particular laws when followed will lead to virtue.

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So what exactly is the law in the United States?  In 1966, the National Conference of Bishops in the United States issued a document called the Pastoral Statement on Penance and Abstinence.  In this document they removed the obligation of abstinence saying:

Every Catholic Christian understands that the fast and abstinence regulations admit of change, unlike the commandments and precepts of that unchanging divine moral law which the Church must today and always defend as immutable. This said, we emphasize that our people are henceforth free from the obligation traditionally binding under pain of sin in what pertains to Friday abstinence,except as noted above for Lent. We stress this so that “no”scrupulosity will enter into examinations of conscience,confessions, or personal decisions on this point. (number 26, emphasis added)

The point is that they recognized that times had changed and “abstinence from meat no longer implies penance, while renunciation of other things would be more penitential” (No. 20).  Ever concerned for the spiritual health of the flock, they recognized that Penance that represented such a small sacrifice, becomes little more than following a law.  The penitential spirit that ought to accompany the sacrifice was endangered and so they raised the bar.

Unfortunately, many only saw the abrogation, but missed the most important point.  “[l]et it not be said that by this action, implementing the spirit of renewal coming out of the Council, we have abolished Friday, repudiated the holy traditions of our fathers, or diminished the insistence of the Church on the fact of sin and the need for penance” (No. 28).  In other words, the removal of the obligation for abstinence was meant to invite Catholics into a deeper spirit of penance.  It was not meant to remove the binding necessity for doing Penance on Fridays.  But in most cases, the reverse happened and now confusion reigns.  Instead of accepting the Bishops’ invitation to undertake abstinence freely, most have omitted Friday penitential acts completely thinking that there is no binding obligation on them.

Although the ecclesiastical laws throughout time have changed, the Church has sought to use her laws to make our obedience to the Divine laws of penance easier.  Still the requirement remains, namely: “unless you do penance, you shall likewise perish” (Lk 13:5).  Although no longer required, Friday abstinence is still a salutary and recommended practice.  Therefore, in this month dedicated to fostering our love to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, let us take to heart the need to do penance and heed the Church’s instructions on these most pleasing acts.  Strive to make this Friday and all Fridays days of Penance offered to Our Lord to ease His suffering and to share more fully in His love of the Father.