Collect of the Week - 36

Dominica prima Quadragesimae (First Sunday in Lent)

Deus, qui ecclesiam tuam annua Quadragesimali observatione purificas:
praesta familiae tuae, ut quod a te obtinere abstinendo nititur,
hoc bonis operibus exequatur.  Per.

God, who purifiest thy church by the annual Lenten observance:
attend to thy family, that what it may strive to obtain from thee by abstinence,
it may accomplish with good works.  Through.

I give my own translation (however clumsy) because the ICEL version is a
mere paraphrase, indeed hardly that, while the reformers, perhaps objecting
to the thought of obtaining anything from God, either by abstinence or by
good works, wrote an entirely new collect.

And the sense, however I may have obscured it in my translation, seems to be
that God's 'familia' (the Church) commends its requests to God by fasting,
and then presses its claims by its good works.

Note that the whole Church is said to be purified by the observance of Lent.
Lent began as a time of preparation for those intending to be baptised at
Easter.  The catechumens would observe a fast, while receiving instruction.
In time (evidently by the time of the collects) the whole Church joined in
the fast, and the whole Church (not only the newly baptised) was felt to
receive cleansing by the Easter ceremonies.

Evidence of the observance of Lent can be found in Jerome's Letter 41, to
Marcella.  He is contrasting the customs of the Catholic Church with those
of the Montanists:

"We, according to the apostolic tradition (in which the whole world is at
one with us), fast through one Lent yearly;  whereas they keep three in the
year as though three saviours had suffered.  I do not mean, of course, that
it is unlawful to fast at other times through the year - always excepting
Pentecost - only that while in Lent it is a duty of obligation, at other
seasons it is a matter of choice."

Actually Jerome was mistaken if he thought that a forty-day fast went back
to apostolic times;  it is a later institution.  By 'Pentecost' here he
means the Easter season, the period of fifty days extending from Easter Day
to Whitsun or Pentecost, which means 'fiftieth'.

My remark about the whole Church receiving cleansing at Easter derives from
Leo the Great's sermon no. 6 on Lent:

"Now, as we come closer to the season which is specially marked by the
mysteries of our redemption, the days leading up to the Easter festival, the
need for our religious preparation is proclaimed ever more insistently.  The
special feature of Easter is that it is the occasion when the whole Church
rejoices over the forgiveness of sin.  This forgiveness takes place, not
only in the case of those who are freshly reborn through baptism, but also
in the case of us others who for some time have been counted among God's
adopted children."

Interestingly Leo also, in the same sermon, asserts the apostolic origin of
Lent:

"These forty days, instituted by the apostles, should be given over to
fasting which means, not simply a reduction in our food, but the elimination
of our evil habits."

The BCP collect, as I said, is a new composition, but may still be of interest:

O Lord, who for our sake didst fast forty days and forty nights;  give us
grace to use such abstinence, that, our flesh being subdued to the Spirit,
we may ever obey thy godly motions in righteousness, and true holiness, to
thy honour and glory, who livest and reignest with the Father and the Holy
Ghost, world without end.

This collect begins by making the link between the Lent fast and Jesus's own
fast of forty days in the wilderness.  Now, this is not actually the origin
of the lenten fast.  It would appear that the fast was originally for a
couple of days.  According to Irenaeus, as quoted by Eusebius,
(Ecclesiastical History, Book 5, chapter 24, para. 12),

"For the controversy is not only concerning the day, but also concerning the
very manner of the fast.  For some think that they should fast one day,
others two, others more;  some, moreover, count their day as consisting of
forty hours day and night."

The significance of the forty hours fast is that this (someone calculated)
was the length of time between Christ's death on Good Friday and his
resurrection on Easter morning.  But we have here no suggestion of a fast of
forty days.  This is first mentioned in Canon 5 of the Council of Nicaea:

"And let these synods be held, the one before Lent (that the pure Gift may
be offered to God after all bitterness has been put away), and let the
second be held about autumn."

The fast, originally then of varying length, but not more than a couple of
days, gradually grew in length.  Only when it had been standardised at forty
days did people begin to draw comparisons between biblical fasts of that
length.  For example, the fast of Moses of forty days on Mount Sinai, (cf.
Exodus 34:28) or of Elijah (cf. 1 Kings 19:8) or that of Jesus himself (cf.
Matthew 4:2).  Sometimes reference is also made to the fast of Daniel, which
lasted three weeks (cf. Daniel 10:3) and that of John the Baptist (cf.
Matthew 9:14).  All five fasts are mentioned in the lenten hymn "Clarus
decus jejunii", ascribed to Gregory the Great (I do not know with what
degree of probability).  I don't have the Latin text to hand, but an English
version reads:

The glory of these forty days
We celebrate with songs of praise;
For Christ, by whom all things were made,
Himself has fasted and has prayed.

Alone and fasting Moses saw
The loving God who gave the Law;
And to Elijah, fasting, came
The steeds and chariots of flame.

So Daniel trained his mystic sight,
Delivered from the lions' might;
And John, the Bridegroom's friend, became
The herald of Messiah's name.


Oriens.



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