9781644135945

The Easter Cycle
A PECCATO MEO MUNDA ME
Lent
Holy Mother the Church is about to “go up to Jerusalem” with the Lord. With Him she will
suffer and die and rise again from the dead. She longs to obtain the light of the Resurrection,
and she can attain it only if she shares the passion and death of Jesus. The more she shares His
passion and death, the more perfectly will she share His life. With this end in view, the Church
and we her children with her enter into the holy season of Lent, which originally began on the
first Sunday of Lent.
“Behold, now is the acceptable time, behold, now is the day of salvation” (Epistle of the first
Sunday of Lent). “Now is the acceptable time.” The Church here refers to the jubilee year of
the Israelites, for whom every fiftieth year was a year of grace. During this year all debts which
had been contracted and were as yet unpaid, were canceled. All Jewish slaves received their
freedom, and all possessions that had been purchased from other Jews were returned to their
original owner. Even the land enjoyed a rest, for there was no work in the fields, and men lived
on what had been produced in the preceding years. This was the jubilee year, the year of grace,
when God was again acknowledged as the real Lord and Master of all things on earth, and His
people acknowledged His right to dispose of their goods as He saw fit. By this practice the people
were reminded that they were to be always in readiness to serve God and to expend themselves
in His praise and honor. The Jews were thus reminded that their first duty was to live for God,
and that all concern for earthly possessions was secondary.
The jubilee year is a figure of the “restitution of all things” (Acts 3:21) and of man’s final
redemption. It is also a figure of the coming of the Savior and of the New Dispensation in which
we live. In this New Dispensation the sins of men were to be forgiven by virtue of the sacrifice
of the Son of God. We have thus been redeemed from the bondage of Satan. We are now the
children of God, members of His family, and we are nourished by the bread of life, the Holy
Eucharist. Our first and most essential duty, then, is to show our gratitude to God by praising
and honoring Him. For this purpose the Church has provided us with the psalms and hymns of
the Divine Office. But she does even more: She places in our hands the bread and wine which
are to become the body and blood of Christ, so that we may offer to the Father a “pure, holy, and
unspotted sacrifice.” “Behold, now is the acceptable time, behold, now is the day of salvation,”
the year of grace, the jubilee year.
“But we have this treasure in earthen vessels, that the excellency may be of the power of
God and not of us. In all things we suffer tribulation, but are not distressed; we are straitened,
but are not destitute; we suffer persecution, but are not forsaken; we are cast down, but perish
not; always bearing about in our body the mortification of Jesus, that the life also of Jesus may
be made manifest in our bodies” (2 Cor 4:7–10). “In all things let us exhibit ourselves as the
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