Blessed Schuster’s Daily Thoughts on the Rule: Thursday after Ash Wednesday
In the following text, inspired by yesterday’s Mass, Blessed Cardinal Schuster reflects further on the Lent as a time given us both to prepare for the judgment and to be more closely united to Our Lord in His Passover.
Thursday after Ash Wednesday
Station at St George
A Stay of Judgment
1. Today in the Holy Mass we hear of King Ezechias, who obtains by his prayers a stay of fifteen years on his death. (Is 38:1-5) Saint Benedict makes this idea his own and wants us too to consider the time of the present life as a delay of the final judgment. Ad emendationem malorum, huius vitae dies ad inducias relaxantur. (Rule, Prologue: ‘We are granted, as a truce, the days of this life, so that we may be reformed from our vices.’) ‘In these days, then, let us add something to the accustomed tribute of our service, like special prayers, stinting in food and drink. Let each one, of his spontaneous will and with the joy of the Divine Spirit, beyond the measure already established, do for love of God something more: let him take from his body a little of his food, drink, sleep, talkativeness, mirth, and with fervour of spirit let him live in expectation of the holy Pasch.’ (Rule, Ch. 49)
2. Cum spiritalis desiderii gaudio sanctum Pascha expectet. Here the Pasch does not simply signify a chronological date in the Calendar, but it means to express the interior life of a soul transfigured first in the Passion, then in the Resurrection of Christ.
Therefore the Apostle said: Si consurrexistis cum Christo, quae sursum sunt quaerite, quae sursum sunt sapite, non quae super terram. (Col 3:1-2: ‘If you have risen with Christ, seek the things of above, have a taste for the heavenly things, and not for the earthly ones.’
Two particular marks should distinguish, according to Saint Benedict, the Lent of his disciples:
Sanctum Pascha expectet. It is a time of cheerful hope.
Cum…gaudio. It is a time of joyous expectation, but in the joy of the Holy Spirit. Saint Benedict twice repeats this word: gaudio. What are we expecting? The parousia of Christ, Who every day is born again and rises again glorious in the soul of the saints.
In this sense, every day is the Pasch.
3. While the monastic life already brings with it a sort of continual Lenten abstinence, still the fervour of the good monk always knows how to find ingeniously some other little sacrifices to offer spontaneously to God.
The sacred liturgy has put some phrases of Saint Benedict into verse in the Lenten Hymn:
Utamur ergo parcius / Verbis, cibis, et potibus,
Somno, iocis et arctius / Perstemus in custodia.
(Hymn at Matins, Season of Lent: ‘Let us be more sparing in words, in food, in drink, in sleep, in recreation, and with greater diligence let us keep watch over ourselves.’)
These private fioretti [‘little flowers’] have three qualities:
a. They represent something over and above the common observance;
b. They are offered to God of one’s own initiative;
c. They presuppose, however, the consent, the blessing, and the prayer of the Abbot.
Why his prayer as well? Et cum eius fiat oratione et voluntate. (Rule, Ch. 49: ‘So that it is done in obedience to him and with the help of his prayer.’) Because the holocaust of the sons ought to be accompanied by the prayer of the father, as Job did for his sons.