The Catholic bulletin. [volume] (St. Paul, Minn.) 1911-1995, 1911-03-11
THE LENTEN SEASON.

SAOn anu UCdLu OIL our I<OTu anu OdVAOI.
To the wilds and the solitude of the
desert she leads us in spirit and asks
us there to behold our beloved Lord
fasting forty days and nights in prep
aration for His passion and death.
Holy Church would have us enter
into our Divine Lords thoughts and
there see revealed His love for every
one of us by the atonement He makes
in our behalf and the infinite graces He
lays up to save us. She bids us realize
that as long as we call upon Him to
save us by the application in the molly
sacraments of the infinite merits of His
passion, He will hear our call.
Our Lords life on earth was indeed
hidden life. For thirty years He
lived in the obscurity of Nazareth, and
even in His three years public life,
we read of Him more in the hamlet
than the city; on the mountain, in the
desert, and by the sea. And so He eli
NAKED this spirit of seclusion and re-
tirement by His forty days preparation
for His suffering and death.
Did He not do all this to teach us
no solitude to bind Him to His Father,
for He never was separated from Him.
He did all this for example, that we
who know and meet the evils and see
the dangers of unrestraint might the
more readily practice modification of
spirit and betake ourselves at least
from time to time to seclusion and soli-
tude.
Lent is the time that most favors
this. 1t is time set apart by the
Church for prayer and fasting-for re-
straint, recollection and piety. The
good Catholic conforms, everyone who
desires to save his soul responds and
so marked and general is the observ-
ance of this season that the outside
world cannot but notice it and be in
fluenced by it. 1t is time of grace
and blessing. So the Church proclaims
it, and applying the words of st. Paul
that it is ''the acceptable time, the day
of salvation" bids all the faithful to
pass the season in a truly holy and
self-denying manner.
Let us, then, respond to the call and
should be full with modification of
every kind; appetites, senses must all
be restrained, lest they lead us to
ruin. And while we take our eyes off
the things around us, we can look into
things unseen; live more in faith and
things of the soul than in the idle spec
ulations of the mind and the gross in
diligence of the body; live more in the
future than in the present; live more
in death than in life. And while we
thus will be notifying the bodily man,
the spiritual in us will rise to purer
life and to closer union with God, in
preparation for the joys of eternity.
Let Lent be well passed, and it will
be a great means of passing we'll our
whole year afterwards.
And while we are denying the body,
cannot we refresh and satiate our soul,
if we will, at the banquet of the Holy
Table? Let us do so often, that we be
nourished and made strong with this
bread of life, to ever conquer our
temptations and be always united with
God and be ever ready to meet Him.
During Lent Holy Mother Church
bids her children pause and consider
in serious way how they stand with
God. That they may do this the bet
ter she sets apart the Lenten season
as a time of special devotion She
opens it in the most solemn way by re-
calling the lowly origin of mans body
that he may regulate the unruly pas
sions of his lower nature and bring
them into subsection to the soul. ere
member" she says to him, 20 man.
that thou art dust and into dust shalt
thou return" The body upon which
you bestow so much thought and care
is of little Importance in comparison
with the immortal soul of which you
are needless. Yet your eternity of hap
piness or unhappiness depends upon
the state of the soul. Do not neglect
the body, but do pay some attention
to the soul; let it share your solicitude
if it does not engross it.
How necessary this warning of the
Church is will appear plain to anyone
who weighs in a balance the minutes
devoted to the welfare of the soul and
of the body. So light is the amount
in the souls scale that it is scarcely
appreciate, some ten or fifteen min
utes would represent the average
while in the body's scale minutes count
up to hours Yet we claim to be rea
sonable beings. Judge us by our &C
tions, and do we prove ourselves wor
thy of the claim? Again, let us test
ourselves by our aspirations, and how
do we stand? Does the desire Of
Heaven find place in our minds AND
hearts at all? Earth and its vanities
are so engrossing that they fill botf
mind and heart, and even when deatf
approaches and the glamour of the
world should have lessened, man still
clings to earth and what it has to of