“True spirituality is one that is incarnate in acts.”

Even if I must be reckoned a materialist, I shall add that I scarcely believe in a spirituality that is content with interior states. Just as it is unhealthy to be content with observances without caring about what goes on inside, so we are deceived by cultivating sentiments not translated into any practice. Pharisaic exteriority has a no less deadly counterpart: pure interiority, combining beautiful states of soul with middle-class comfort. True spirituality is one that is incarnate in acts. The realism of the ancients understood this well. To despise these concrete practices that make the man is to separate the soul from the body, to enter into a sort of death, to fall into angelism and illusion.

– Adalbert de Vogüé, To Love Fasting: The Monastic Experience (1986).

Good luck finding this book – I had to borrow it through my seminary’s inter-library loan – but it’s worth it if you can. Vogüé, a Benedictine monk, has for many years practiced the regular fast in which only supper is eaten each day. He uses his experience as a way to explore fasting and why it has slowly fallen from favor within much of Christianity. His happy approach to fasting is a surprising and helpful entry into a subject we usually think about with some discomfort, if not dread.

Weeping on Friday. Rejoicing on Sunday.

Over the next few days of this Holy Week I plan to reflect on two simple questions: What might keep me from weeping on Good Friday? What might keep me from rejoicing on Resurrection Sunday? Weeping and rejoicing aren’t the only appropriate responses on these days, but the testimony of the Church has been that they are certainly primary responses as we consider the death and resurrection of Jesus in the most personal terms. So, contemplating the crucifixion this Friday without experiencing the grief of my complicity might indicate a heart that has been distracted from its own selfishness and sin. Likewise, if I don’t experience joy on Sunday – not, mind you, a manipulated happiness – then it’s likely that my heart has found its hope and meaning somewhere other than the empty tomb.

There is, thanks be to God, always time to repent. But maybe this last week of Lent, with the anticipation of tears and joy, provides a useful urgency to our prayer: Search me, O God, and know my heart: try me, and know my thoughts: And see if there be any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting. (Psalm 139:23-24)

“…carry the cross willingly…”

If you carry the cross willingly, it will carry and lead you to the desired goal where indeed there shall be no more suffering, but here there shall be. If you carry it unwillingly, you create a burden for yourself and increase the load, though still you have to bear it. If you cast away one cross, you will find another and perhaps a heavier one. Do you expect to escape what no mortal man can ever avoid? Which of the saints was without a cross or trial on this earth? Not even Jesus Christ, our Lord, Whose every hour on earth knew the pain of His passion. “It behooveth Christ to suffer,and to rise again from the dead, . . . and so enter into his glory. How is it that you look for another way than this, the royal way of the holy cross?

The whole life of Christ was a cross and a martyrdom, and do you seek rest and enjoyment for yourself? You deceive yourself, you are mistaken if you seek anything but to suffer, for this mortal life is full of miseries and marked with crosses on all sides. Indeed, the more spiritual progress a person makes, so much heavier will he frequently find the cross, because as his love increases, the pain of his exile also increases.

Yet such a man, though afflicted in many ways, is not without hope of consolation, because he knows that great reward is coming to him for bearing his cross. And when he carries it willingly, every pang of tribulation is changed into hope of solace from God. Besides, the more the flesh is distressed by affliction, so much the more is the spirit strengthened by inward grace. Not infrequently a man is so strengthened by his love of trials and hardship in his desire to conform to the cross of Christ, that he does not wish to be without sorrow or pain, since he believes he will be the more acceptable to God if he is able to endure more and more grievous things for His sake.

It is the grace of Christ, and not the virtue of man, which can and does bring it about that through fervor of spirit frail flesh learns to love and to gain what it naturally hates and shuns.

-Thomas à Kempis, Imitation of Christ, chapter 12.