Preview: "Surrender to God" on the Son Rise Morning Show

I suppose it has struck many persons as very remarkable, that in the latter times the strictness and severity in religion of former ages has been so much relaxed. There has been a gradual abandonment of painful duties which were formerly enforced upon all. Time was when all persons, to speak generally, abstained from flesh through the whole of Lent. There have been dispensations on this point again and again, [and this very year there is a fresh one]. What is the meaning of this? What are we to gather from it? This is a question worth considering. Various answers may be given, but I shall confine myself to one of them.

I answer that fasting is only one branch of a large and momentous duty, the subduing of ourselves to Christ. We must surrender to Him all we have, all we are. We must keep nothing back. We must present to Him as captive prisoners with whom He may do what He will, our soul and body, our reason, our judgement, our affections, our imagination, our tastes, our appetite. The great thing is to subdue ourselves; but as to the particular form in which the great precept of self-conquest and self-surrender is to be expressed, that depends on the person himself, and on the time or place. What is good for one age or person, is not good for another.

Reading these first paragraphs of this sermon, "Surrender to God", convinced me to select it for our Monday, March 7 discussion of Newman's Lenten sermons/meditations on the Son Rise Morning Show. We'll be on the air at my usual time, about 6:50 a.m. Central/7:50 a.m. Eastern time. Please listen live on EWTN Radio or on your local EWTN affiliate.

This was one of the first sermons the newly-ordained Father John Henry Newman, Oratorian preached upon his return in England on the First Sunday of Lent, March 12, 1848. 

It is true that the Roman (Western) Catholic Church had much stricter laws for fasting and abstinence in the pre-1983 versions of the Canon Law. It is also true that the traditional Lenten fast was already less strict in Newman's time, although I was not able to find out what dispensation had been issued for the Lent of 1848 (bracketed text above in the original, deleted from The Tears of Christ version). This website offers details of the traditional fast:

• Fasting applies for those age 18 or older (but not obligatory for those 60 years of age or older)
• Ash Wednesday and Good Friday: If possible, no solid food. Only black coffee, tea, or water.
• Mondays through Saturdays: Only one meal preferably after sunset or at least until not before 3 PM. A morning frustulum and evening collation (i.e. the two "snacks") are permitted but not required. No meat or animal products are allowed for anyone, regardless of age - that included even fish in the Early Church.
• Sundays: No meat or animal products allowed. Abstinence remained on Sundays even when fasting did not.
• Holy Week (except Good Friday which is covered above): Only Bread, Salt, and Herbs are permitted for the main meal. Frustulum and collation permitted (of bread, herbs, and salt) but omitted if possible.
• Holy Saturday: No food until Noon. Abstinence including from all animal products continues until Easter begins.

Frustulum is "The small portion of food, a few ounces, formerly permitted at breakfast on fast days. This was provided by canon law (Canon 1251), which permitted taking some food, morning and evening, in addition to the one full meal per day." I don't think that frustulum and evening collation combined were equal to the one meal allowed on fasting days in the current law.

It's also certain that Eastern Rite Catholics have a much stricter fast during Great Lent. No meat, no meat products, no dairy, less olive oil, and no wine.

Newman acknowledges the lessening of the rules for fasting, but then provides an explanation. Fasting and abstinence are not the goals of Lent: surrender to God is the goal of Lent, and indeed, for Newman throughout the Parochial and Plain Sermons he preached as an Anglican and the Catholic sermons thereafter, of the Christian life. We must follow Jesus as His disciples in reality, not as a concept. If we discern that our love of God is notional, we have to cooperate with the grace God gives us through the Church and the Sacraments to make it real. As one his Anglican sermons says, "Love [is] the One Thing Needful" in our spiritual lives.

So Newman reminded his congregation that Sunday at Saint Chad's in Birmingham:

It follows that you must not suppose that nothing is incumbent on us in the way of mortification, though you have not to fast so strictly as formerly. It is reasonable to think that some other duty of the same general kind, may take its place; and therefore the permission granted us in eating may be a suggestion to us to be more severe with ourselves on the other hand in certain other respects. . . .

Certainly we never want to offend God in a Mortal Sin, but Newman suggests that there are many other ways that we fail to love Our Lord:

But there are a great many things wrong which are not so obviously wrong. They are wrong as leading to what is wrong or the consequence of what is wrong, or they are wrong because they are the very same thing as what is forbidden, but dressed up and looking differently. The human mind is very deceitful; when a thing is forbidden, a man does not like directly to do it, but he goes to work if he can to get at the forbidden end in some way. It is like a man who has to make for some place. First he attempts to go straight to it, but finds the way blocked up; then he goes round about it. At first you would not think he is going in the right direction; he sets off perhaps at a right angle, but he just makes one little bend, then another, till at length he gets to his point. Or still more it is like a sailing vessel at sea with the wind contrary, but tacking first this way, and then that, the mariners contrive at length to get to their destination. This then is a subtle sin, when it at first seems not to be a sin, but comes round to the same point as an open direct sin.

Then he suggests that in the nineteenth century this kind of fooling ourselves into thinking that we are good people is even easier, that we're not really committing any sins: 

For this simple reason, because it is more fertile in excuses and evasions. It can defend error, and hence can blind the eyes of those who have not very careful consciences. It can make error plausible, it can make vice look like virtue. It dignifies sin by fine names; it calls avarice proper care of one's family, or industry, it calls pride independence, it calls ambition greatness of mind; resentment it calls proper spirit and sense of honour, and so on.

In another Anglican sermon, Newman called this the "Religion of the Day".

Just think how much easier it is in our age when many things that society previously acknowledged to be sinful are now considered part of our right to pursue our own versions of happiness.

Newman advises his congregation to adopt two particular methods of discipline to subdue our minds to love God more and surrender ourselves to Him: 1. curb our idle (idol?) curiosity and 2. consult the will of others before our own.

Speaking of curbing our curiosity (not our search for the knowledge of God and His Creation, which of course Newman treasured and sought as student and educator), he notes:

The desire of knowledge is in itself praiseworthy, but it may be excessive, it may take us from higher things, it may take up too much of our time—it is a vanity. "Of making many books there is no end, and much study is affliction of the flesh. The end of the matter; all has been heard. Fear God and keep His commandments, for this is the whole duty of man." (Eccles 12:12-13) Knowledge is very well in its place, but it is like flowers without fruit. We cannot feed on knowledge, we cannot thrive on knowledge. Just as the leaves of the grove are very beautiful but would make a bad meal, so we shall ever be hungry and never be satisfied if we think to take knowledge for our food. Knowledge is no food. Religion is our only food. Here then is another mortification. Mortify your desire of knowledge. Do not go into excess in seeking after truths which are not religious. . . .

Bring your proud intellect into subjection. Believe what you cannot see, what you cannot understand, what you cannot explain, what you cannot prove, when God says it.

I have the perfect example of failing to curb my idle/idol curiosity to share during this interview and it involves searching on the internet one day after Matt and Anna discussed the Chinese satellite hitting the far side of the moon.

Regarding our desire to follow our own way, Newman advises:

We all like our own will—let us consult the will of others. Numbers of persons are obliged to do this. Servants are obliged to do the will of their masters, workmen of their employers, children of their parents, husbands of their wives. Well, in these cases let your will go with that of those who have a right to command you. Don't rebel against it. Sanctify what is after all a necessary act. Make it in a certain sense your own, sanctify it, and get merit from it. And again when you are your own master, be on your guard against going too much by your own opinion. Take some wise counselor or director, and obey him.

Now, there's a Lenten challenge!

Saint John Henry Newman, pray for us!