The days will come when the bridegroom is taken away from them; then on that day they will fast. (Mark 2:20)
The days when the bridegroom is taken from us have now come. He has not been entirely taken taken from us; he is really, truly, and substantially present, but in a hidden way. We wait for Him to come again, and celebrate the definitive wedding feast. St. Benedict tells us that our whole lives should be a Lenten fast, awaiting the Easter of eternal life, but since in our weakness we are unable to fast always, we should at least use the holy forty days to separate ourselves from attachment to earthly things, and long with holy joy for the coming of the bridegroom:
Although the life of a monk ought at all times have the aspect of Lenten observance, yet, since few have strength enough for this, we exhort all during these days of Lent to lead lives of the greatest purity, and to atone during this holy season for all the negligences of other times. This we shall do in a worthy manner if we refrain ourselves from all sin and give ourselves to prayer with tears, to reading, to compunction of heart, and to abstinence. Therefore during these days let us add something to our ordinary burden of service, such as private prayers or abstinence from food and drink, so that each one may offer up to God in the joy of the Holy Ghost something over and above the measure appointed to him: that is, let him deny his body in food, in drink, in sleep, in superfluous talking, in mirth, and withal long for the holy feast of Easter with the joy of spiritual desire.
How does one fight sloth, despair, apathy, and malice? I thought that prayer might do the trick, but what if, due to these vices, one cannot even pray?
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St Basil the Great recommends correcting vices with the ascetical disciplines most opposed to them: «The cure of those afflicted by evil passions should be effected according to the method used by physicians… For example, vainglory should be corrected by imposing practices of humility, idle talking by silence, excessive sleep by watching in prayer, sloth by physical labor, intemperance at table by fasting, murmuring by segregation…» (https://archive.org/stream/fathersofthechur027835mbp#page/n343/mode/2up)
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Thank you
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What if I worded my problem like this:
All my life, I cannot remember a time where I resisted my passions as a whole. I’ve always resisted this or that passion, mind you, but never the passion as such. Instead, I’ve resisted as passion by means of another, stronger passion.
I find now that I conceive Grace to be a sort of passion. I find myself seeing Grace as a passion that will perpel me to doing good and overshadow the disordered passions.
I’m not sure how to, practically speaking, “force” myself against the passions that drag me into mortal sin, and the passion that keep me away from prayer.
Does this make sense?
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That’s an interesting way of putting it. The passions are like horses: useful when under the control of reason, but dangerous when out of control. Virtue consists in bringing the passions under the control of reason, by means of habituation. Of course there is a certain paradox here that Aristotle points out:
That is, it is by resisting disordered passion that one becomes virtuous, but one needs virtue to resist them in the first place.
Healing grace helps us in a number of ways: it gives us more elevated principles of action such as faith and charity, which enable reason and the will to do things they would otherwise not be able to do, but it also helps us bring the passions under the control of reason-elevated-by-faith. I strongly reccomend Garrigou-Lagrange’s books on the Three Ages on this point. Here is one passage:
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Thank you
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