Let’s drift around one of our favorite places – the past – and see what Lent-related nuggets we can dredge up.
Well, here’s something – from The Furrow, which was an Irish Catholic publication, a rather charming report on “Lent in Rome” from 1950 – which was a Jubilee Year. The author’s focus is on the Stational Churches.
I’ve got jpegs of the last three pages here (click for a larger view), and a bit of transcription below.
What you might notice is a counter-argument against the claim that no one before the Second Vatican Council actually knew anything about participation. Not a thing.
Neighbouring colleges or religious houses provide the essential core of chant and ceremonial ; the people do the rest. A point to be emphasized is that it is a definitely liturgical ceremony, and therefore not the same kind of thing as Rosary and Benediction in Ireland.
An outsider attending these Stations is struck by two things : the numbers regularly present and the active manner in which they attend. A cross-section of the crowd in any Station church is representative of all classes and types : well-dressed professional people stand side-by-side with the poorer workers in mufflers and shawls and overalls. There is always a number of clerics, priests and students, from various foreign colleges, taking advantage of the occasion to visit these historic churches, some of which, like St. Anastasia or St. Pudentiana, are only opened to the public on such days. Cardinals have been known to attend the Stations incognito, dressed quietly in black, like any private worshipper. Nuns, sometimes with groups of school-children, are faithful followers of the Stations. Not only do the people attend the Station in their own district but many follow them throughout Lent from church to church.
To be present at one of these Stations is to see another aspect of the Roman religious character and one that may not always be appreciated as it ought. The people here can take part in a liturgical function, and they do ; in fact, they seem to have a natural aptitude for liturgical worship that one would like to see amongst their Irish counterparts. One is constantly surprised in Rome at the number and the type of quite ordinary people who are familiar with the Latin of the liturgy, and to hear old men and women who look as if they might just have been sweeping streets or selling fruit, joining in Latin hymns with obvious ease and devotion. Most of them bring their books or leaflets to the Station and repeat the invocations of the Litanies after the choir, making nothing of rather difficult phrases such as, Ut regibus et principibus christianis pacem et veram concordiam donare digneris. If there is a procession, all attach themselves to it, and even if the result is somewhat straggling, it sorts itself out as it goes along.
…It is customary during Station time for each church so privileged to display all its relics and other treasures, an opportunity which the public, clerical and lay, never misses. The end of the ceremony is the signal for a general movement round the church into the side-chapels and sacristy and down into the crypt. Nobody has any awe about entering the sanctuary or passing across the altar to examine the reliquaries or admire the mosaic of the apse. Comment is free and the ordinary Romans adopt an obviously proprietary attitude about their churches and their artistic treasures. Typical were three, old, poorly-dressed women with shopping-bags dangling from their arms, who were holding a lively discussion on the martyrdom of St. Catherine of Alexandria, as pictured in a celebrated fresco in the basilica of St. Clement. They were probably ignorant of composition and colour and such technical points, but they knew what the picture was about and responded to its meaning.
Meanwhile, Lent and the accompanying spring weather, has also brought an increase in the flow of pilgrims to Rome The brightly-coloured touring buses which whisk them from basilica to basilica are now a familiar feature of the streets and the piazzas in front of the churches. From a casual observation it would seem that the Germans have been the most consistent pilgrims so far and that the English-speaking countries lag far behind (at least at the time of writing, in early March).There is scarcely a day that one does not see these Germans–mostly plain, neatly-dressed, quiet-mannered people such as one might see going to Mass in an Irish village—intent on the main business of their visit, praying with devotion and singing their hymns in splendid unison. From various parts of Italy the local Catholic bodies and confraternities are sending groups of pilgrims regularly. The general feeling, however, is that the real invasion is yet to come, and, in fact, that Easter may well see the peak-period.
Amongst those who are particularly interested in the movement of pilgrims is the flock of opportunists who infest the Jubilee centres, gathered like vultures over the battlefield—enterprising men and youths, who are ready to change your money or to sell you souvenirs or novelties or spurious Parker pens or to take your photograph against the background of St. Peter’s. They have a smattering of every language and are never at a loss—some have even tried a few words of Hebrew on particularly unresponsive clerics, who are poor game, anyway, and know too much, especially about fountain-pens.
Let’s keep going – to the 18th century.
This, from the American Catholic Historical Society (in 1888), reprints a Lenten exhortation from 1771:
This Exhortation was issued by Rt. Rev. Richard Challoner, Vicar- Apostolic for the London District. As the British- American Provinces were under his spiritual jurisdiction and directed by him, this Exhortation and the annexed Regulations for Lent were addressed to the Catholics of the Colonies. In 1771 these could only have been publicly read in Catholic chapels in the Province of Pennsylvania at Philadelphia, Lancaster, Reading and Goshenhoppen. In Maryland they could only have been read to the Catholics assembled to hear Mass in private houses.
You can read the entire exhortation here, but I’ll just take a bit of space to point out, as I do in the Herald article, that lamenting contemporary Lenten laxity is nothing new:
But, Oh ! how much has the modern Church, yielding to the weakness of her children in these degenerate ages, departed from this rigor of her ancient discipline ; contenting herself now, with regard to the exterior observance of the fast, with only insisting upon three things, viz. : First, the abstaining from flesh meat, during the forty days of Lent ; secondly, the eating but one meal in the day ; and, thirdly, the not taking that meal till noon. But if she has thus qualified the rigor of her exterior discipline, she has never ceased to inculcate to all her children the strict necessity and indispensable obligation, of their recommending the exterior observance to the divine acceptance by the interior penitent.
You can read the regulations here.
In reading them you might note – as in the exhortation – again, that no, past Catholic practice was not focused on “rigidity” at the expense of authentic interior spiritual experience. There was a conviction that any regulations served to deepen one’s communion with God as well as with others, since fasting frees us from our own needs – for others.
Here also it is to be observed, that as this allowance of eating flesh on certain days this Lent is made purely in consideration of the necessity of the faithful, it ought not to be abused for the indulging of sensuality, by making feasts on those days ; or by serving up promiscuously flesh and fish, etc. But that the spirit of mortification and penance should still regulate the Christians at meals this penitential season : and that what is wanting to the strictness of the fast, should be made up as much as possible by other exercises of self-denial, or by more prayers, or by larger alms ; which at this time we most earnestly recommend to all the faithful in proportion to each one’s ability by reason of the pressing necessities of the poor.
…
Hence the Catholick Christian, who desires effectually to secure self, through Jesus Christ, all that mercy and grace, which is here and prepared for us all, in this sacred institution of this Lent, must not only be strictly diligent in observing the prescribed by the Church, with relation to the exterior fast, must moreover be extremely careful to animate his fast with that truly penitential spirit ; that spirit of compunction and devotion, which is the very soul of a Christian fast, and without which the exterior performance is but a dead carcass without a soul.