IN truly Christian countries, Lent is publicly observed, not just a private practice. In the past, European nations engaged in the following practices during Lent:
— The suspension of all warfare during the penitential season
— The closure of law courts because proceedings were believed to interfere with interior recollection and penance
— The closure of theaters and public festivals
— The suspension of wedding celebrations
— The public observance of ecclesiastical fast laws, limiting food to one meal a day and at times prohibiting meat, animal fat, dairy products, and eggs.
Pope Benedict XIV in a letter to the bishops of the world dated May 30, 1741, lamented the general falling away from this penitential spirit:
“The observance of Lent is the very badge of the Christian warfare. By it, we prove ourselves not to be enemies of the Cross of Christ. By it, we avert the scourges of divine justice. By it, we gain strength against the princes of darkness, for it shields us with heavenly help. Should mankind grow remiss in their observance of Lent, it would be a detriment to God’s glory, a disgrace to the Catholic religion, and a danger to Christian souls. Neither can it be doubted, but that such negligence would become the source of misery to the world, of public calamity, and of private woe.” [Constitution: Non ambigimus.] Source
Dom Prosper Guéranger observed that the decay in social observance of Lent would lead to calamity for Western nations, a prediction that some would say has entirely proven true:
More than a hundred years have elapsed since this solemn warning of the Vicar of Christ was given to the world; and during that time, the relaxation, he inveighed against, has gone on gradually increasing. How few Christians do we meet, who are strict observers of Lent, even in its present mild form! The long list of general Dispensations granted, each year, by the Bishops to their flocks, would lead us to suppose that the immense majority of the Faithful would be scrupulously exact in the fulfilment of the Fasting and Abstinence still remaining; but is such the case? And must there not result from this ever-growing spirit of immortification, a general effeminacy of character, which will lead, at last, to frightful social disorders? The sad predictions of Pope Benedict the Fourteenth are but too truly verified. Those nations, among whose people the spirit and practice of penance are extinct, are heaping against themselves the wrath of God, and provoking his justice to destroy them by one or other of these scourges, – civil discord, or conquest. In our own country, there is an inconsistency, which must strike every thinking mind:- the observance of the Lord’s Day, on the one side; the national inobservance of days of penance and fasting, on the other. – The first is admirable, and, (if we except puritanical extravagances,) be speaks a deep-rooted sense of religion: but the second is one of the worst presages for the future. No: the word of God is too plain: unless we do penance, we shall perish [St. Luke, xiii. 3]. But, if our ease-loving and sensual generation were to return, like the Ninivites, to the long-neglected way of penance and expiation, – who knows, but that the arm of God which is already raised to strike us, may give us blessing, and not chastisement?
