every year; and every year too I owe you a solemn exhortation, so that the word
SERMON 205
ON THE BEGINNING OF LENT
Date: uncertain1
If you don't want your footsteps to sink in the earthly quagmire, don't come down from this cross
1. Today2 we enter upon the keeping of Lent, coming round again as it does every year; and every year too I owe you a solemn exhortation, so that the word of God, set before you by my service, may feed your minds as you set about fasting in the body; and in this way the inner self, nourished by its proper food, may undertake the chastisement of the outer, and sustain it all the more stoutly. It goes well with our devotion, after all, that as we are very soon going to celebrate the passion of the crucified Lord, we should also make a cross for ourselves out of the curbing of the pleasures of the flesh, as the apostle says: But those who are Jesus
Christ's have crucified their flesh with its passions and lusts (Gal 5:24).
On this cross, indeed, the Christian ought to hang continually throughout the whole of this life, which is spent in the midst of trials and temptations. The time, you see, doesn't come in this life for pulling out the nails, of which it says in the psalm, Let my flesh be transfixed with nails by the fear of you (Ps 119:120). Flesh means the lusts of the flesh; the nails are the commandments of justice; with these the fear of the Lord transfixes those, and crucifies us as a sacrifice acceptable to him. That's why, again, the apostle says, And so I beseech you, brothers, by the compassion of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy, pleasing to God (Rom 12:1).
So this cross, on which the servant of God3 is not only not put to confusion, but in fact glories in it, saying, But far be it from me to glory except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by which the world has been crucified to me, and l to the world (Gal 6:14); this cross, I repeat, is not just meant for forty days, but for the whole of this life, which is signified by the mystical number of these forty days. This may be because, as several authorities assert,4 the human being destined to live this life takes shape in the womb in forty days; or else because the four gospels agree with the tenfold law, and four times ten marks up this number, and indicates that in this life we need both parts of scripture; or for any other more probable reason which a better and brighter intelligence can find.