CCXCVII – A Lenten Examen

I created this Examen for myself, and figure if anyone else out there is trying to get more out of Lent, this might be helpful. Review this Examen every day and reflect on what you have done and what you resolve to do differently. Make sure to account for every hour of the day. If you would like a word document form of this Examen, please contact me via the Contact page.

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An Accounting of my Day

1. How many hours did I sleep?
2. How many hours did I work?
   • Did I do my best?
   • What did I achieve?
   • What can I do better?
   • What will I do differently tomorrow?
3. How many hours did I spend otherwise fruitfully?
4. What Good did I do today?
   • Did I practice Faith?
   • Did I practice Hope?
   • Did I practice Charity?
     • What will I do differently tomorrow?
   • Did I practice Prudence?
   • Did I practice Temperance?
   • Did I practice Justice?
   • Did I practice Fortitude?
     • What will I do differently tomorrow?
5. Did I take care of my Mind?
   • What did I achieve?
     • Did I control my thoughts?
     • Did I control my words?
     • Did I control my deeds?
   • What can I do better?
   • What will I do differently tomorrow?
6. Did I take care of my Body?
   • What did I achieve?
     • Did I count my calories?
     • Did I work out?
       • These are my personal goals–substitute your own
   • What can I do better?
   • What will I do differently tomorrow?
7. Did I take care of my Spirit?
   • What did I achieve?
     • Did I pray the Rosary?
     • Did I pray in silence?
   • What can I do better?
   • What will I do differently tomorrow?
8. Did I take care of those in my care?
   • What did I achieve?
   • What can I do better?
   • What will I do differently tomorrow?
9. Did I take care of my responsibilities?
   • What were my responsibilities? (List them)
     • Household Chores
     • Extracurricular Commitments
       • For example
   • Did I do my best?
   • What can I do better?
   • What will I do differently tomorrow?
10. How many hours did I spend Idle?
    • The sum of time spent asleep, time at work, time spent fruitfully, and time idle should be 24 hours.
11. What sins have I committed this day?
12. OVERALL REVIEW
    • Did I do my best?
    • What can I do better?
    • What will I do differently tomorrow?

The Act of Contrition

O my God, I am heartily sorry for having offended thee, and I detest all my sins because I dread the loss of Heaven and the pains of hell, but most of all because they offend Thee my God, who art all-good and deserving of all my love. I firmly resolve with the help of Thy grace to confess my sins, to do penance, and to amend my life. AMEN

CCXCVI – Somewhere Between Dust and Dust

A blessed Ash Wednesday to you all!

Here begins 40 days of Prayer, Fasting, and Almsgiving. With all that is going on in the world, this is a perfectly timed reminder of the last things: Death, Judgement, Heaven, and hell.

A certain amount of memento mori is healthy and encouraged by our faith, but it is worth reflecting on the first things too. Specifically–we were formed out of clay. God made us out of nothing. I don’t know why that is striking me as profound today. It makes me think of the whole idea that “the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree”–we started as dust and can’t do much more than become dust bunnies in between our beginning and end. You can learn a lot about someone by learning where they come from or what their background is, and the common background to all of us is dust.

I hope this Lenten season is fruitful for you. As we look towards another Easter, and remember the hope in the resurrection–where miraculously our end-dust is perfected–may we first remember where we came from before we contemplate where we are going.

God bless you all.

AMDG

CCIV – Enchiridion Excursus

I. Some things are in our control and others not. Things in our control are opinion, pursuit, desire, aversion, and, in a word, whatever are our own actions. Things not in our control are body, property, reputation, command, and, in one word, whatever are not our own actions.

The things in our control are by nature free, unrestrained, unhindered; but those not in our control are weak, slavish, restrained, belonging to others. Remember, then, that if you suppose that things which are slavish by nature are also free, and that what belongs to others is your own, then you will be hindered. You will lament, you will be disturbed, and you will find fault both with gods and men. But if you suppose that only to be your own which is your own, and what belongs to others such as it really is, then no one will ever compel you or restrain you. Further, you will find fault with no one or accuse no one. You will do nothing against your will. No one will hurt you, you will have no enemies, and you not be harmed.

Aiming therefore at such great things, remember that you must not allow yourself to be carried, even with a slight tendency, towards the attainment of lesser things. Instead, you must entirely quit some things and for the present postpone the rest. But if you would both have these great things, along with power and riches, then you will not gain even the latter, because you aim at the former too: but you will absolutely fail of the former, by which alone happiness and freedom are achieved.

Work, therefore to be able to say to every harsh appearance, “You are but an appearance, and not absolutely the thing you appear to be.” And then examine it by those rules which you have, and first, and chiefly, by this: whether it concerns the things which are in our own control, or those which are not; and, if it concerns anything not in our control, be prepared to say that it is nothing to you.

-Epictetus, The Enchiridion

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I wanted to include the entire text of this first entry in the Enchiridion by Epictetus, because there is nothing I can exclude without reducing it’s meaning, rather than enhancing it as I intended. The question at hand here is “How do I accept what I have control over and cease to be affected by that over which I have no control?”

Epictetus says (in a word) we only have control over our own actions and we do not have control over anything that is not our own actions. He doesn’t even include our bodies as something under our control because, I presume, we cannot help but breathe. Our bodies are a means of action but are given to us, we don’t choose them nor do we control their aptitudes nor afflictions. I digress!

What Epictetus gives us is a very narrow area of control and a very wide area of non-control. There are a great many things which we want to control and cannot–a major source of disappointment in our lives, if not the only source, could be said to be this desire to control things which we cannot.

This is a hard lesson to learn, even harder to practice. Individuals have a unique ability to disturb my conscience. How can I make peace with the actions of the world? I think asserting control over that which we have control is probably prior to making peace with the things we cannot control. If I let other people disturb my conscience, that is because I haven’t protected my conscience. I must work to fortify my soul such that it is at peace regardless of circumstance. By enforcing, with iron rule, my own self mastery, I cannot help but be undisturbed by whatever winds blow about the world.

This is the beginning. There is a reason Epictetus has this as his first entry in The Enchiridion. It is fundamental to everything else.

AMDG

LXXXIX – Lukemas

Happy Lukemas! Today is the feast day of St. Luke, my patron. I took St. Luke as my patron for a few reasons:

• He is the patron of historians
• I enjoy his Gospel, as well as Acts of the Apostles, the most.
• My Anglican parish where I was confirmed was St. Luke’s, so it’s a little hat-tip to my patrimony.

Side note of interesting trivia: St. Luke and St. Paul are frequently used for Anglican parishes. I couldn’t figure out why, so on looking it seems that there’s a common belief that Sts Luke and Paul spent time in Britannia, but I can’t tell if that’s apocryphal. Apparently when Augustine of Canterbury arrived, they already knew the name of God though had not been (fully?) converted.

Nevertheless, St. Luke is venerated today. He does not have many official devotions, so here are a few of my invention.

Since St. Luke’s iconographic symbol is a bull, I like to have a big steak. Since today is Friday, I will forego that luxury but perhaps move that feast to this weekend.

The 18th of October is also just over 40 days from the beginning of Advent. The more important devotion I’ve been doing for a few years now is Lukeslent. It functions similarly to lent, prescribing some penance for yourself. I choose to use this time to cultivate a daily rosary habit. The Hail Mary, as you may know, comes from St. Luke’s Gospel. Because it leads into Advent so nicely, I consider it a good time of preparation before the new liturgical year. Close the year out strong!

Please join me, if not in 40 days of prayerful penance, in celebrating my personal patron and one of the great Evangelists, St. Luke.

St. Luke, Pray for us!

XLVII – Thoughts on a Homily: Palm Sunday

I haven’t written thoughts on a homily in a while. Tonight was Palm Sunday, and I was out of my element for a couple reasons. First, I went late in the day. Normally I am an early riser, I like to get Mass first thing. Second, I went to a different parish than usual. So because the time and location were different, I was in a receptive mindset: This was not routine, so I was especially alert.

The Homily directly addressed my Questions and Answers. Only the Holy Spirit could be so specific. What follows is my recollection of the relevant parts of the Homily.

It All Leads To This

Lent. The Penitential season is designed for us to focus our lives, shed the distractions of this world and bring our minds, bodies, and souls closer to God. But regardless of how Lent has gone, this week is Holy Week, the most important week of the Liturgical Year, because it is the week we follow Christ through his ultimate miracle and his final covenant. It is the week of Christ’s passion.

And this reminds us of WHY we are here. WHY we are Christians. Our Meaning. Our Telos.

God stepped out of eternity to become fully Man and fully God. To offer a perfect sacrifice to pay an infinite debt. To do this, God himself had to be killed at our hands.

And we, too, will die. The Palms we receive today are the ashes which will adorn our heads next year. From Dust we came, to Dust we shall return. We will die.

But God will give us new life. Everything of this world will pass away, and our new life will be everlasting in the Glory of God. Our purpose is to prepare ourselves–rather, to let God work on us, to prepare us to enter into Glory in the perpetual light of his face. This is His promise of his new and eternal covenant. Why shouldn’t we be joyful? Why should we selfishly keep this for ourselves? God calls all peoples to him because he created all of us.

Our Telos is partly of this world, partly the next. Prepare ourselves, and bring others with us.

The one thing that sticks prominently in my mind is this: We will all die. Our purpose is not of this world. We must not let this world consume us.

St. Athanasius, Pray for us.

AMDG

XLV – Word Study: Sacrifice

During this lenten season, it seems appropriate to consider the meaning of Sacrifice. Let us begin with the basics:

Sacrifice has two dictionary entries.

1- Sacrifice (n.) an act of slaughtering an animal or person or surrendering a possession as an offering to God or to a divine supernatural figure.

2- Sacrifice (v.) to offer or kill as a religious sacrifice; to give up something for the sake of other considerations.

I will add a third based on colloquial usage:

3- Sacrifice (v.) to forego some personal convenience; or endure some hardship

You will see how these ideas are interrelated. Offering an animal as a sacrifice can be restated as sacrificing an animal. These ideas have filtered through the generations to take on a more personal and mundane definition of, essentially, inconvenience or endurance.

Let us dive into the Etymology.

The contemporary definition dates to the 14th century. It derives from 12th century Old French ‘Sacrifise’, with essentially the same meaning. This in turn is derived from Latin sacrificum or sacrificus, ‘performing priestly functions or sacrifices.’ This is a derivation of sacra, “Sacred Rites”; itself a conjugation of sacer which was combined with facere “to make, to do”. The Latin finds itself derived from Proto-Indo-European, ‘*dhe-‘, “To set, put” and ‘*sak-‘ “to sanctify”.

Reading through this might seem confusing. Essentially it looks like we are tracing the roots of a word all the way back to the Proto-Indo-European roots where it meant the same thing. However, context must be considered.

In the ancient civilizations, ritual sacrifice was a method of convening with the gods. Look no further than Homer’s epics, the Illiad and Odyssey. There was a ritual component which was noted every occasion a sacrifice was offered, which was frequently. After reading them, the repeated phrase stands out: “A double fold, sliced clean, and topped with strips of flesh.” The gods were invoked only through sacrificing an animal. This was the tradition of the Hebrews, and can be seen in the Abrahamic covenant in Genesis 22:7-13. It goes without saying, but emphasis mine:

⁷ Isaac said to his father: My father. And he answered: What wilt thou, son? Behold, saith he, fire and wood: where is the victim for the holocaust?

⁸ And Abraham said: God will provide himself a victim for an holocaust, my son. So they went on together.

⁹ And they came to the place which God had shewn him, where he built an altar, and laid the wood in order upon it: and when he had bound Isaac his son, he laid him on the altar upon the pile of wood.

¹⁰ And he put forth his hand and took the sword, to sacrifice his son.

¹¹ And behold an angel of the Lord from heaven called to him, saying: Abraham, Abraham. And he answered: Here I am.

¹² And he said to him: Lay not thy hand upon the boy, neither do thou any thing to him: now I know that thou fearest God, and hast not spared thy only begotten son for my sake.

¹³ Abraham lifted up his eyes, and saw behind his back a ram amongst the briers sticking fast by the horns, which he took and offered for a holocaust instead of his son.

The early Jews spoke the language of Sacrifice, and that is how God formed his covenant with them. Then God offered his perfect sacrifice in the form of Christ, a lasting and eternal covenant with us. We no longer need to sacrifice animals because God offered his only begotten son; God offered himself as sacrifice.

So consider not just the language but the practical reality. God, who holds all things in existence, received a ram as an offering from Abraham. Both Abraham and the ram are held in existence by God. God to whom they owe all things. What was Abraham giving up by killing a ram he found in the brambles and offering it to God? Abraham suffered only the hardship of making the journey (to say nothing of the radical trust in God to almost sacrifice his own son). No: Abraham was returning to God that which was already Gods. God made all creatures for us. A sacrifice in it’s original context was taking God had given us, and giving it back. That is why it is Holy in the first place.

This idea is the root of all the definitions of Sacrifice. We aren’t just giving something up for a while, and then taking it back. We are giving back to God something that was his gift to us.

Remember this during the final days of Lent. Our lenten sacrifices, penances, repentances, are not just about us and shedding our material chains. The most important part is that we are rendering unto God that which is Gods.

AMDG