First Homily on the Lenten Season
Contained within the collection of homilies of St. Augustine of Hippo on the liturgical seasons is a series of seven “appropriately solemn” homilies offered at the beginning of the Lenten season in various years. In this series St. Augustine touches upon the classic Lenten themes of fasting, prayers, and almsgiving which enable us as Christians to enter upon the battle against the passions and for the virtues, such as humility and patience, which represent for us the taking up of our own crosses, and which we learn supremely from the Crucified Lord Himself. We offer here one of these sermons each day for the first week of Great Lent:
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With the completion of the year’s cycle, the season of Lent has come, at which time I am constrained to exhort you because you owe the Lord works in harmony with the spirit of the season, works which, nevertheless, are useful not to the Lord, but to you. True, other seasons of the year ought to glow for the Christian by reason of his prayers, fasts, and almsdeeds, but this season ought to arouse even those who are sluggish at other times. In fact, those who are quick to attend to these works at other times should now perform them with even greater diligence. Life in this world is certainly the time of our humiliation as these days signify when the sufferings of the Lord Christ, who once suffered by dying for us, are renewed each year with the recurrence of this holy season. For what was done once and for all time so that our life might be renewed, is solemnized each year so that its memory may be kept fresh. If, therefore, we ought to be humble of heart with sentiments of most sincere piety throughout the entire period of our earthly sojourn when we live in the midst of temptations, how much more necessary is humility during these days when we not only pass the time of our humiliation by living but signalize it by special devotion? The humility of Christ has taught us to be humble because He yielded to the wicked by His death; the exaltation of Christ lifts us up because by rising again He blazed the way for His devoted followers. For, if we have died with him, we shall also live with him; if we endure, we shall also reign with him.[1] One of these conditions we now celebrate with due observance in view of His approaching Passion; the other we shall celebrate after Easter when His Resurrection is, as it were, accomplished again. Then, after the days of this humiliation will be the time of our exaltation. Although this is not yet the time to experience this [happiness], it gives us pleasure to anticipate it in our considerations. Now, therefore, let us voice our lamentations more insistently in prayers; then we shall exult more exuberantly in praise.
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Let not your fasting be of the kind condemned by the Prophet when he said: Not this fast have I chosen, saith the Lord.[4] For He denounces the fasts of quarrellers; He seeks those of the devout. He denounces those who oppress and seeks those who release. He denounces those who stir up hostilities and seeks those who set free. For, during these days, you restrain your desires from lawful pursuits that you may not do what is unlawful. At no time will he be addicted to wine or adultery who is now continent in marriage. Thus, by humility and charity, by fasting and almsgiving, by temperance and forgiveness, by sharing blessings and by not retaliating for evils, by declining from wickedness and by doing good, our prayer seeks and attains peace.[5] For prayer, supported as it were, on the wings of virtues, speeds upwards and is easily borne into heaven whither Christ, our peace, has preceded.
From The Fathers of the Church vol. 38: St. Augustine: Sermons on the Liturgical Seasons, (New York: Fathers of the Church, Inc.), 1959, pp. 86-89
