From previous years, but still worth a read!
How did I happen up on this? In the usual, wandering way. I went to archive.org and typed in “ash wednesday” in the search box, and after wading through a bunch of sermons and pamphlets (including one I had written!), I happened upon this, and careened into a huge rabbit hole.
In that rabbit hole I was introduced to one Baron Ferdinand de Geramb, (probably) born in Lyons, but of Hungarian descent. An adventurer, a soldier, a prisoner of Napoleon, and eventually…a Trappist. From the old Catholic Encyclopedia:
In 1808 he fell into the hands of Napoleon, who imprisoned him in the fortress of Vincennes until 1814, the time when the allied powers entered Paris. After bidding farewell to the Tsar and Emperor of Austria, he resolved to leave the world. It was at this time that he providentially met the Rev. Father Eugene, Abbot of Notre Dame du Port du Salut, near Laval (France), of whom he begged to be admitted as a novice in the community. He pronounced his vows in 1817.
After having rendered great services to that monastery, he was sent, in 1827, to the monastery of Mt. Olivet (Alsace). During the Revolution of 1830 de Géramb displayed great courage in the face of a troop of insurgents that had come to pillage the monastery; though the religious had been dispersed, the abbey was at least, by his heroic action, spared the horrors of pillage. It was at this time that Brother Mary Joseph made his pilgrimage to Jerusalem. On his return in 1833, he went to Rome, where he held the office of procurator-general of La Trappe. He soon
gained the esteem and affection of Gregory XVI, who, though he was not a priest, named him titular abbot with the insignia of the ring and pectoral cross, a privilege without any precedent.
Abbot de Géramb is the author of many works, the principal of which are: “Letters to Eugene on the Eucharist”; “Eternity is approaching”; “Pilgrimage to Jerusalem”; “A Journey from La Trappe to Rome”, besides many others of less importance and of an exclusively ascetical character. They were often reprinted and translated. His style is easy and without affectation. The customs, manners, and incidents of the journey which he describes, all are vividly and attractively given, and the topographical descriptions are of an irreproachable accuracy. Even under the monk’s cowl the great nobleman could occasionally be seen distributing in alms considerable sums of money which he had received from his family to defray his expenses.
I spent a good deal of time skimming through the book to which the search took me: A Pilgrimage to Palestine, Egypt and Syria. It is quite evocative, as this excerpt about Ash Wednesday shows:
On the 20th 1 was awake long before dawn.
I went out of my tent, and seated myself at the entrance. My Bedouins, at a little distance, were sleeping around some half-extinct embers. At the slight noise which I made their camels raised their heads, but laid them down again immediately on the sand.
Silence reigned around me. It was Ash Wednesday, a day specially set apart by the Church, to remind its members of the curse pronounced against the first man after his fall, and in which his whole posterity is involved.
I picked up a handful of the dust of the desert, marked my brow with it, and, giving myself the salutary warning which it was not possible for me to receive at the foot of the altars of Christ, from the lips of one of his ministers, I pronounced these words : — ” Recollect, O man, that dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return.”
Then, joining in spirit and in heart the Christian people, who, on this day more especially, beseech the Lord ” to have pity upon them according to his great mercy’ I waited for sunrise, meditating upon that awful sentence of death pronounced upon the human race, the execution of which none can escape, and which it will by and by be my turn to undergo.
It has often been the case, my dear Charles, that I have felt deeply moved and violently torn from the things of this world, while listening to the powerful words demonstrating their nothingness, issuing from the pulpit amidst the doleful solemnities with which the holy season of penance commences ; but I declare to you that this desert, where the plant itself cannot live ; this soil, which is but dust, and from which the blast sweeps away in the twinkling of an eye all traces of the footsteps of man, telling him that thus shall he be swept away by the blast of death; this universal silence, not even interrupted like that of the grave by the voice of grief or the song of mourning; those ruins, and those empty sepulchres ; those carcasses of kingdoms and of cities, which had just passed before my eyes ; and that holy Bible, which related to me the crimes of generations upon the spot where they were committed, explained to me the transitory nature, the paltriness, and the term of human life, and showed to me, as still dwelling in the heavens, Him who will have man know that he is the Lord, and that He infallibly overtakes by his justice the presumptuous mortal who disdains his mercy — all this spake to my soul in much stronger language, in a language the energy of which no words can express.
Now…for the 12-year old….
…1935 style.
More from a 1935 7th-grade text, part of the The Christ Life Series in Religion.
Note, again, how the child is treated as a full-fledged member of the Body of Christ, with responsibilities and the capacity to know his or herself and receive grace fruitfully and grow in union with Christ. No pandering, no dumbing-down. Nor is it about rule-following or a shallow embrace of external actions, as our caricatures of pre-Vatican II life tell us it must have been. It is, as the textbook says, about becoming “more intimately united with Christ.”
Read and contrast to the prevalent contemporary understanding of Lent, which is that it’s about focusing my efforts so God can help me get my life together and feel better about it all.
There is a difference between the two emphases. Subtle, but real between “strengthening the soul’s life” and “having a great Lent.” It’s all about the focus. Is it about me or about Jesus, the Gospel and our mission, as parts of his Body, in a broken world?
As living members of Christ’s Mystical Body we must participate in all His life. Today this means waging war on those passions which have been gaining ground in our soul and usurping the reign which belongs to Christ alone. Only a coward flees from a call to arms in a just cause. We, who in Confirmation have been sealed with the Spirit as soldiers of Christ, must fight courageously under His leadership. Is there any special self-indulgence weakening our spiritual life? Let us have entire confidence that with God’s grace we can overcome our faults.
Lent is a time of action and spiritual growth—not a time of gloom and repression, but a time of strong positive effort. Through our vigorous efforts of this season, we grow stronger spiritually, for we become more intimately united with Christ. It is in the Mass, above all, that we receive the grace we need in order to be victorious in the struggle upon which we are entering. Is it possible for you to assist at daily Mass during Lent, offering yourself with the divine Victim to atone for sin and to gain renewed vigor? Exactly what spiritual gains will you aim to make during this Lent? Join in the prayer of the Church today “that our fasts may be acceptable to thee and a means of healing to us. Through our Lord”
Charlotte was Both 