I assure my dear friends that you recognize the voice of friendship in the things that Father Phelan told you about Father Dallas, and you realize also that his judgment may be likely right. I must say that with great joy did I follow his invitation to contribute a little to the adult education program. Our Lord died for us that we may have life and have it abundant. Pentecost is made abundant.

[01:04]

There, at the end of the Easter season, the Spirit of our Lord Jesus Christ begins to pour out in a boat so that the apostle changed by the power of this gift. Throughout, and in confidence, announced the glad tidings of their law of death and resurrection, and in this way they began their tremendous development, which the church then took them to witness. the world really, at the moment, the world was deeply changed. And in the sacrament of confirmation, the bishop comes and invokes the fullness of the Holy Spirit, his seven gifts.

[02:19]

that they may stand into that dwelling of every single Christian soul as they fill the whole house. So you see, my dear friends, Christianity is really not a matter of from his teaching. It is not a matter of fulfilling the minimum requirement so that we still get into heaven, even maybe if likely seen. But this reality is a matter of abundance of divine life, feeling a reminder of what we then call the people of God. Now in the Acts of the Apostles and in the history of the first centuries of the Church, we see this fullness of the Spirit filling the whole house of the Church and of every single individual that was baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and incorporated into that body

[03:53]

that our Lord had founded. But then we enter into the Middle Ages, and there a different element comes to the fore. Those nations which were converted and incorporated into Christianity, and I say beginning with the 6th or 7th century, they were really, now one must say, not individually filled with that fullness of the Spirit, But in many cases, political considerations were the motive of their being baptized as those who followed the example of their kings and of their lord.

[05:14]

Christianity there in this what we call feudal age came in any way a matter of a political or, shall we say, civil must. And we can see then right away that in this century the living participation of the Christian in the life of the Church was falling off gradually. We hear the complaint that those masters who had become Christians, as I say very often under the pressure of political circumstances, they did not have that inner love and that inner interest in the activities of the Church.

[06:20]

For example, the classification of the people in the man. The wonderful operatory perception. Such a flourishing and impressing institution in the first centuries. Now we hear the counselors complaining that people don't come anymore and that they don't offer at the operatory that the participation in Holy Communion is falling off, so that finally the Latin Council has to declare that its people would not even receive the Sacraments of Penance and of Holy Communion once it hears that they have to be excommunicated. So in this way, the monotheistic feudal age somehow spoiled the idea of the church as the living people of God, with everyone belonging to it being filled with the fullness of the new divine life, participating in the life of Christ abundantly.

[07:45]

Instead of that, we have a growing majority among Christian people who were uninstructed, not interested, and so that the church became more and more, let us say, the official presence of a certain class, that more and more the church was identified with the clergy. So it seems to me that in these days and these hours, and looking forward into the future, that the Catholic people in these United States have a special historical mission These United States were founded in opposition to feudal principles.

[08:52]

They were founded as a nation of the people and not as a nation of the law. As a result of this, Education was not any more considered the privilege of leading classes, but from then to then, everyone, every citizen had equal access and equal opportunity. This seems to me is a tremendous opportunity for the church in this United States which is growing, which is flourishing, which is expanding in every direction, to foster and to build a Catholic life in which an articulate and educated and eager laity takes an active part.

[10:05]

And therefore, the adult education program seems to me is really of greatest importance in these our day for the church in the United States and for the church as a whole all over the world. Here in this country and with our people, we have a special and unique opportunity and therefore certainly also a unique obligation. I mean that Christian life may develop and flourish in the heart of every individual Catholic Christian so that he realizes that his religion is not only a matter of the Lord, is not only a matter of the obligation and fulfillment of the letter, but that his religion is a real life, that it fills him with that spiritual freedom for which Christ our Lord wanted to give to all those whom he has saved.

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through his infinite sacrificial love. Now, therefore, you can also right away see why a course on religion in the context of an adult education program has an important part. And why I want to lecture on the meaning of late and on the liturgy of late is because of this homotrope. Why? Because the nature and essence of Christianity isn't, I repeat it, not a philosophy. The essence of Christianity is the participation of the life of Christ. And we incorporate the two baptism, dying and rising with Christ in the sacrament of baptism, incorporated into our Lord's mystical body.

[12:42]

We take part in this divine life. Why did not a first-line teacher song through, which we did not know before? He did not only give us an example according to which we should live, which we should imitate, but he gave us his own life. so that we in the power and through the power of this life may be configured and may become in this way brothers of our Lord and real true children in a completely new sin of our heavenly Father. I dear friends, we have said yesterday set away to the second Sunday of Lent.

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And you remember that the gospel of the second Sunday of Lent, it is the gospel of the transfiguration of our Lord from on take. And you still, I assure you, still have before you this picture. There is Moses on one side, there is Goliath on the other side, there is Christ the Lord in the center, and the glory of his divinity before the eyes, desperate eyes of the apostles. He overflows as it were into his body and transfigures his body and his God. so that they are white as snow. Now, that gospel, my dear friends, gives you clearly, intricately, the essence of Christianity. You will have Moses.

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He was the teacher. He gave me the Old Testament on Mount Sinai. He was the mediator through which a law was propagated among the chosen people as the mandakatha, as the constitution of their life, as the nation under God. But this law was addressed to the people as a request, as a demand, as a command. It was by the law It was therefore imposed upon them as an obligation. It was an exhortation. It was an admonition. It was a rule of hunger. But as St.

[15:52]

Paul says, it was a litum and not a spirit. And what does that mean? The exaltation, the rule, the call of the Lord tells you what to do, but it does not give you the life, the power, the spirit to which you are reformed in your inner heart so that you are eager and able to fulfill the Lord. The law and the world and rule is a request, but it needs it to, let us say, to win over a man to live up to this law. That was Moses.

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Moses gave the rule. But he did not, was not the mediator who also would give the spirit, the life itself. Then you see on the other hand, on the other side of our Lord, the transfigured Christ you see in the diary. Elias is the representation of the accepter. Elias withdrew, as you know, into the wilderness, and there he lived, for one can say he was the first monk. He lived a life of fasting and of mortification. And as a result of this, his effort of mortification, he then, fed by the divine,

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Nourishment that was given to him by the angel wandered to Mount Poach, where also Moses was, and there he heard the small voice of Siloam, the voice of divine mercy. But this, hearing the voice of the Divine Mercy, was in some way the result, shall we say, of loving, of a life of the aesthetic of inner mortification. He realized in this his mortification that he was not better than his father. So Elias, the vision that Elias saw, was really the divine answer to his inner, I can say, his capitulation. He capitulated, seeing the insufficiency of his own natural effort and resources.

[19:06]

He capitulated to the divine wealthy, and he heard the still small voice of silence, as we are being told in Holy Scripture. So Elias, in some way, represented another law, another era. One can say that Elias was, hearing the still small voice of silence, was pointing to a new order, the order of mercy, the order of divine grace, pointing to. And this order of divine grace and divine mercy is the visible healing fullness in our Lord Jesus Christ. He is the one in whom Moses, Aaron, Elias, the lawgiver, Aaron's three penitents, we are said, come to their permanent, their fulfillment.

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Our Lord Jesus Christ is the Son of God to whom we should listen. His mission, therefore, is to give us and to speak to us and reveal to us the power of the Father. He is not the one whose voice we only hear in terror and in fright and in our heart, but our Lord Jesus Christ is the voice of the Son He reveals to us the goodness and infinite love of the Father. Nobody has ever seen the Father, but the Son who was in the Father's bosom, he has made it known to us. And where did our Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, what did he tell us?

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What was his word? His word was, a word of regeneration, a word which was life. You have words of eternal life, St. Peter said. And this word of our Lord Jesus Christ was in last analysis the small steel voice. I would call it the voice of the Lamb. that was being led through the slaughter without uttering a word of protest, the still small voice of Siren, the still small voice of the Lamb that died for us, that we may live through His, that with victory, tell this love. This love and this new life that the Son of God gives to us.

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This life we can see, as it were, in the form of the Transfiguration, simply taking possession of this bodily human nature and feeling it in such a way that we can see his glory. And of course, he, our Lord Jesus Christ, he is the second Adam. His human nature he has taken on as the head of many brethren. He therefore gives human nature that in this we can see us. He took us into his divine light. And he filled this human nature with the fullness of a new divine energy, the glory of God.

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And that is what he does also to us. This configuration in the mystery of the Holy Land, it becomes a power which works in us. In Holy Mass, we see before us the altar and it is Mount Tabor. And we see on this altar, we see our Lord Jesus Christ, present there with his body and with his blood. Present there, therefore, as the Lamb, as its Lady. But this Lamb then invites us to come to the marriage feast and to receive in his body and his blood, to receive in the transfigured, glorious, risen Son of God, so that in this way his divine light

[24:27]

may enter into our souls. We eat it, we drink it, as it were, and there we can see how this divine life of our Lord Jesus Christ, this transfiguring new blood we eat, fills all those who, in receiving our Lord's body and blood, are literally, as it were, incorporated into it. And in this, my dear friends, we can see the whole essence of the Christian life. You can see that it is not only believing a new revelation, a new truth, that it is not only following a good example. Christ our Lord is not the same as Buddha, and he is not the same as Socrates, Socrates was a good teacher. Buddha was a great ascetic.

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Our Lord Jesus Christ is a fountain of life. He is the one who fills our whole being with the life of this divinity, which was contained in him as St. Paul says, corporalica. in a bodily way. It needs really this kind of realism to make it clear to us that Christianity and that the church is really and truly the body of Christ, and that we, you and I, that we are members of this mystical body. and that he accomplishes many works of his mystical body by participating in his death and in his resurrection, by offering and surrendering ourselves with healing, and then by receiving healing as our spiritual food.

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Now then, if you realize then that this is the essence of Christianity, then you also, one way or another, see that that means that part of the life of the church in which our Lord Jesus Christ becomes, as in the Eucharist, as the outstanding example, becomes presently real physically, with the abundance of his divine and risen life, that this liturgy is really the heart of the church. There is the fountain. There you must see the divine life. Not, therefore, our church's black room. After all it can have, with the pulpit as the center, and with people sitting around in such a way that they can listen to the voice of the Queen.

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Our churches, our Catholic churches, are painted around the altar. And this altar is the place where Christ performs for us his sacred saving action of his death and of his resurrection. And these altars in our churches are, at the same time, tables, Catholic tables. There we are invited to come, take this and eat, drink it, this is my blood and this is my blood. And therefore, our churches already in their external structure call to everybody with eyes to sleep. that here is the center of our vision. Here we really come together and we really are true. We see ourselves as our Lord's mystical body.

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Therefore, the church, the parish church, is the heart and center of the life of the entire parish which is moved around it, not because there happens to be somebody who is a good preacher, but because there is the altar, and there is Christ, there is the tabernacle, there is the presence, there is the ones to be received by us. So my dear friends, therefore, that is the reason why the liturgy simply has an indispensable place in any program of adult education. This we have to understand. That is also the reason why a word on debit is really of great importance. And please ask the Holy Spirit that we do this in the right way and that you receive through these words and poor words that I can say about it, strong inspiration and something like

[29:58]

which makes you see the importance of these 40 days for Easter, and also let us add the importance of the days after Easter, including therefore Pentecost. So the first thing I wanted to explain to you, that is the difference between the Christmas season and the Easter season. because then you see why they're also the fundamental importance of millennium. You see, the ecclesiastical year really can be divided and consist of two cycles, as we call them. One is in the winter, and then is the Christmas cycle, or as we also call it, the Advent season in the larger sense of that word, reaching from the first Sunday of Advent down to the Feast of the True Education, there is one part, the Christmas season.

[31:02]

This Christmas season covers the winter. Winter is naturally a nightmare. During this wintertime, we steep right as the Word of God, entering into this nightmare as a new life. And the Christmas season really is, in its essential character, it is a contemplative season. You know, during the winter, one concentrates on spiritual things. During the summer, one is distracted and the muscles, you know, get kind of itchy for work. But during the winter season, one gets lost and one becomes able to receive and to listen to the world. And that is the reason why the church and why the Christmas season of the church is this season in which we mainly listen to the Word of God.

[32:04]

It is that season which puts before us and which practices in a special way the virtue of faith. If you remember the last Sundays after the Epiphany season, it demands always in the Holy Communion with this beautiful verse, which is supposed to be sung while people receive Holy Communion, and it says, they all were amazed over the things that were seen from the mouth of God. That beautiful verse we quote summarizes the spirit of the Christmas Eve as a contemplative spirit in which we with Mary sit down at the feet of our Lord Jesus Christ and we drink in the new light of the Word of God which leaped from his heavenly throne and was manifested to us as a new light.

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at which we gaze in wonderment and we follow in joy as the three magi on the peace of Jupiter. Then, in secularization, my son, there the changes rapidly add extension Now we enter a stadium. St. Paul describes it to us. He describes Christian life as a stadium, and we are the ones who run in the rain. And then in the gospel, you find the laborers entering the vineyard. and they don't check tragedy on Sunday, you see the one who is active and busy throwing the seed into the story which has been plowed by the work of the profound. On Christmas Sunday, you hear the gospel, and now we go up to Jerusalem, and there the beauty of charity is announced to us.

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That sacrificial love, which is the heart and center of the delicacy. Around Christmas and winter is the divine truth and is the faith. During the Lenten season, it is our joining the Lord Jesus Christ, who takes upon himself his cross and goes up to Jerusalem, there to be sprinkled upon him and there to be surrounded into the hands of his enemies and to be killed, that through this sacrifice we may be saved. And therefore, it is the season of the divine chapter. That is the first thing that we have to see here this day. Now, the second point that I would like to bring to you tonight, that is, take a look at the structure of the Lenten season and see the tremendous and marvelous variety of thought which the Church during this time puts before our eyes.

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The Lenten season has not been, let us say, planned systematically by somebody in Rome, let's say one senior, who sits down at the green table and says, now let us make up a nice Lenten liturgy. Thank God, not the way in which this beautiful season began. But as everything in your church, it developed organically. There was a constant growth. The little seed from which the Lenten season started is really the paschal night. But I say the little seed of ever this paschal night as every seed contains in itself really the whole tree. Because this Paschal Night is the central mystery of our Lord's charity. The Paschal Night is that night in which he departs through death into the glory of his resurrection.

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We call it Paschal Night. What does it mean, Paschal Night? It comes from Pascha, as you know. And the word Pascha means There I throw another word at you that I should do. Casca means the passing through death into life of the Lord Jesus. We can never separate, my dear friends, these two, the death of Christ and his resurrection. In the death of Christ, our Lord told a love that does not seek its own. But this love that does not seek its own passes through death into the glory of the resurrection. You see, death can only heal those who cling and try to cling religiously to their life.

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But our Lord Jesus Christ was the charity of his Heavenly Father. Therefore, he did not live for himself, but he lived for his God. Not living for himself, he fulfilled the will of his Father in everything he did. And therefore, death has absolutely no party. Death is not able to heal the one who does not want to preserve himself. If death gets a hold of selfless love, now then death becomes for selfless love a means to fulfill its own inner aspiration. Selfless love, when it dies, is really perfect, because death is the fulfillment of its mission, and that mission of selfless love is sacrifice.

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Therefore, selfless love changes, as it were, the sting of death and turns death into a sacrifice and sacrifices the triumph of selfless love, sacrifices the beginning of a new life. And so also in our Lord Jesus Christ, his passing through death is really only a passing through death. The end of his death is eternal life, not for him, but for all those for whom he died. He died for us that we may not live anymore for ourselves, but for him who died for us. Therefore, the pastor, this passing of our Lord Jesus Christ, through the day into the fullness of the resurrection. That is the sacral mystery which we celebrate in the Passover night between Holy Saturday and Easter Sunday.

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And this is the sacral mystery of our Christian faith. And therefore, that was the beginning of the entire liturgy. There, this was the first piece out of which one can say the entire liturgy and the whole ecclesiastical year developed through the century. The first step to develop the history of this paschal night was that the time of commemoration was instituted. And this style of percolation imitated, of course, that percolation which our Lord Jesus Christ himself went through before he entered into his death. There was his dying and his being buried as percolation for his resurrection. His being buried was celebrated on Holy Saturday. And because burial in that way is not an action, Holy Saturday was celebrated as a time of complete rest and as a time of complete part in order to prepare for the celebration of the Paschal Night.

[41:12]

And very good Friday, of course, also was celebrated as the memorial of the death of the Lamb, the Papal Lamb. And our Lord Jesus Christ himself again had prepared this, his sacrifice on Friday by, at the Last Supper, giving his body and giving his blood under the sacramental species, so that into the hands of his church, so that his apostles and priests we celebrate this year's Transictus, this Pascha, in the sacramental form of the Last Supper of the Mass. So in this way, we have the Holy Triduum. And this Holy Triduum, therefore, is its naturally gross art of the memorial of our Lord's passing to death into resurrection. The next step was then the celebration of Holy Aton's birthday.

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And that, of course, developed because it is clearly seen that in the Gospels we have a preparation of six days before the Pascha is celebrated. And therefore, Palm Sunday is that day in which Christ our Lord, as the Paschal Lamb, enters into Jerusalem and in this way opens that great week of His Passion. This entrance into Jerusalem is really the beginning of this aska. And then later on, one wheat condensate, one layer after the other, was added to this holy wheat. First, another wheat of preparation, which begins then and brings us to Passion Sunday, because it is said, we see it in the Old Testament, that the Passover lamb was celebrated and was offered on the 14th day of the month of Nisan. Therefore, the first beginning of all this is the first day of the month of Nisite.

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Therefore, a 14-day preparation to this offering of the sacrifice of the Passover lamb is clearly indicated in the Old Testament, as then was also instituted in the Church of Rome. This brings us to passion subject. Then we have another week in which The parish in Stadley really started as a pastoral celebration for the faith. Then we have another week in which the Catholic humans were being prepared for their taking part in the past of our Lord Jesus Christ. And that first only was for a week, with a week which starts with the Sunday Natal. Rejoice, O Jerusalem. That Sunday was originally the Sunday where the neophytes come together and they present themselves for baptism to receive the last preparation.

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Therefore, it is our Sunday, the great joy of the Mother Church over the new manifest that come to her in order to receive life through our Lord's death and resurrection. It is our Sunday. And then we have another. The preparation was extended. The male parents not only received the last minute instruction, but they underwent a whole series of exorcisms, of examination. And these examinations and these exorcisms bring us then to another mark. milestone in the development of the Lenten season, and it is the third Sunday in Lent. That is the Sunday which opens up the week of the exorcisms and of the scrutinies, in which the Sadducees have been freed by the blessing power of the Church from the bondage to Satan.

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And then, Another step was taken, and that was to extend this whole period of population to the 14 days, the last week were 14 days, which the ancient found everywhere in Holy Scripture in the Old Testament. There is the 40 days of the birth of Elias before he saw the glory of the Lord on Mount Horeb. There are the 40 days of fasting of Moses before he went up to Mount Sinai and saw the vision of the tent of the Old Testament. And then there are the forty days of past of our Lord Jesus Christ himself. And therefore, the quadrigesimus Sunday was then fixed as the solemn beginning of the Passover season. And then, because on Sunday there is no past, in order to make the forty days full, then three more days were added, and that brings up up to a Wednesday as the beginning of the fact of the Lenten Passover.

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So in this way, you see right away, there are different layers historically in the Lenten season. I don't want simply to primarily approach things as simply historical facts, but what I wanted you to realize is that the Lenten season is not, let us say, a compact and a beautiful whole. where, as you would say, from as whence the beginning, as whence the now, everybody starts contemplating the passion of the law, or making this the stations of the cross. That is not really the historical and the meaning of the structure of life. And I think one thing which is important for the people to celebrate Lent really in its liturgical fullness is to realize this, that Lent is not only a devotion to the action of our Lord Jesus Christ, but that Lent is a wonderful, beautiful, varied spiritual organism.

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The passion and time, in that strict sense, are Uniting oneself with the sequence of Christ begins only two weeks before Easter Sunday. We have this special name, and I think we should keep it. Lent as a whole is not called Passion Time, but only the last two weeks of Lent are called Passion Time. I think that is important also in this way, that, for example, it gives you an opportunity to make your participation in Lent a thing which, let us say, gradually increases. Sometimes I have the fear, I don't know, I'm jumping from my seat, I have the fear if we have 40 days before Lent, And in this time, now during these 40 days, we begin of this order.

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And I repeat these little practices of mortification. Now, I think when we continue that, let us say, all the way through as a kind of a uniform exercise, I don't know if not many people, when they come to the end of these 40 days and look back, maybe consider it more as a history of kind of forgotten or broken resolution. It seems to me that somehow it may be better also in order to increase our inner zeal, for example, to increase also our multiplications as time goes on. And, for example, stop, let's say, with Cassius Ferdinand, a regime, let us say, of stricter multiplication. And then again, to mark out wholly with else the week may be of still greater multiplication.

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So that in this way our participation, as far as participation in the sufferings of life is concerned, may become an organic and increasing thing, towards the end and good quality and respectability, reaching a certain natural and logical climax. Another thing which I think also is important for you to realize, and that is that the Lenten season does not only consist, let us say, of certain layers, as I just wanted to explain to you, devoted, let us say, to various mysteries and affinities. The last two weeks of Lent is yet passing time. Therefore, spiritually, contemplation of the passion of our Lord Jesus Christ, as particularly greater mortifications, more sacrifices, but that weeks before them, the first four weeks of life, may be more a prize of spiritual reading.

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of instruction, of growth in Christian wisdom, unless it might take part in the instruction spiritually which the neophytes used to receive during its weeks, so that the first part of Lent may be more devoted and marked by increase in spiritual receiving or spiritual teaching. in reading, lecture, holy reading, spiritual reading, holy scripture. And then later in the last two weeks of Lent. Then we have another thing I wanted to call your attention to. And you will see then, if you observe that during the Lenten season, you will see how the whole richness of the Lenten season opens up to us. We can say this, that there are not only, let us say, various layers which separate the various weeks of Lent, but there are also certain themes which single out and which characterize every day of Lent.

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You know, you can see that in the Lenten season, if you take your missal, for example, study the Thursday of Lent, And without knowing anything about the historical development of the Latin season, you will very soon find out that these Thursdays of Lent have a very specific, very defined character and a kind of a leading theme. These Thursdays of Lent are indeed the year historically the latest addition to the Latin literature. They were put into the Lenten liturgy at a time when the institution of the catechumenate, or the preparation of the neophyte, had fallen already into despotism, because Rome was converted, and these birthdays of Lent were composed in the 7th century, and in the 7th century the catechumenate was not anymore a Lenten institution.

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And therefore, these Thursdays follow and emphasize the idea of payment and of fasting. And in a special way, it seems to me, these Thursdays of Lent and with that, you come to another law that you can follow through the whole of Lenten liturgy. We can say that the capital of the various days of Lent is to a great extent influenced by the goal to which they lead. They all lead to Holy Week. And in Holy Week, to account the outstanding days across Easter Sunday as the day of the resurrection, you would have Holy Saturday as the day of rest with Christ in the tomb. And you had a Good Friday, and it was the day in which our Lord Jesus Christ died on the cross. And you had Holy Thursday.

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Now, Holy Thursday, as you very well know, is that day in which the all-encompassing, infinite charity of our Lord Jesus Christ as the High Priest comes to its full manifestation. Then you see him kneeling down at the feet of his apostles, washing their feet. And that is the unique way to figure out the spectrum of pain. Our Lord washing our dirty feet, the spectrum of pain. The reconciliation of the sinner. Then you have the execution of the Holy Eucharist. This is my body, this is my blood. The high priest giving himself as victim and as food to the church. So these traces of these ideas you can see clearly also in the parish days of Lent.

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And it is this way, you see, originally on Holy Thursday, we celebrated three masses. One mass was celebrated only, or as also today, in the cathedral church, where the high priest of the diocese consecrates the Holy Order. holy honors in which the fullness of the twig, the spirit of Christ, of the Messiah, of the Anointed One, is restricted. Then you have the Mass of the Last Supper, which was celebrated in the evening, and then you have the third Mass, and that was the Mass of the Reconciliation of the Sinner, which was celebrated in the morning. So these three matters on Holy Thursday. Now the liturgical development was described that the mass for the, I say, all probability, the mass for the reconciliation of the sinner was later on transferred to the Thursday which precedes Holy Thursday.

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On that day, if you take your missal and you look into it, you see on this Thursday which precede the Holy Thursday and the Thursday of Passion Week, you see the gospel of St. Mary Magdalene and the great example of repentance and reconciliation. And also in this Thursday, which then, they call it, precedes this Thursday of Passion Week, You can see there very often the, for example, the Thursday that proceeds then in the year, this Thursday, actually in the fourth week of late, you have the Our Lord raising the sun on the riddle of nine. And therefore, also there, you have a conciliation, and you have there the widow, which is saving the church.

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And the tears of the widow, which is sending the church in perfect and true sorrow, praying for those who have to be raised again to life, I mean, for the skin. So there, you can follow that to say, I will read Thursday, and then Thursday, and then again and again, read the same thing as it were this time. And it is mostly these Thursdays are devoted to the church in a potential modernist talk for Christians. those of the many first who have fallen into the debt of sin and whom she wants to restore to life. Then when you take, for example, also the Friday of Lent. You will see that these pioneers of men, pretty much through the entire season, always in some way refer and configure the death of our Lord Jesus Christ.

[59:02]

And for example, in this coming week, you see Joseph, the one of the brothers, being thrown into the pit. So you see there the figure of our Lord's death in Joseph of Egypt in the Old Testament. So then if you take other things, you can, for example, take the Wednesdays of the Lenten season. And very soon you will see, starting with the third week of Lent, you will see that these Wednesdays of the Lenten season are always devoted to the instruction of the catechumens, to the teaching of the Christian Lord. And it's very useful to study the Wednesdays of the Lenten season. It's a wonderful initiation for you into the spirit, on that day, of true Christian ethics. There you find the official, you find the reference to the proclamation of the law, and also you find the very word of the Ten Commandments.

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But then in the gospel requires the Christian fulfillment. These 10 commandments, not only as the letter, as in the Old Testament, but fulfills in the Son of God made man and in his charity. And you can take other. You can take, for example, a very beautiful thing also is take the Tuesday of Lent. These Tuesdays of Lent also belong to a more recent development in the Lenten season. By recent, I pray that they belong probably into the sixth century. We call that a week. But on these Tuesdays, you can see a very beautiful thing, too, that most of these Tuesdays take place and are celebrated in the church which belongs Two, for example, is dedicated to, now take, for example, Santa Volvina.

[61:15]

Santa Volvina in Rome, and a deacon in the Church of Rome. Or take, for example, St. Chariacus, also a deacon in the Church of Rome. So, Santa Poliziana, for example, also. So on these Tuesdays, these Tuesdays are usually devoted to, now one can say, to the to disturbing ministering law. One can say that the Tuesdays provide you with examples for unskilling. They celebrate the idea of unskilling. So I only indicate that you also, as a little indication to yourself, maybe to see the various mis-manifests of living in this tremendous, beautiful variety. And we can see that if you do this in the way which I just indicated, it will lead you naturally then to a better understanding of the three main ways in which every creature is invited to take the living and active part in the next season, and that is healthy, well, and honest living.

[62:36]

It would be true that these three things, these three works, give a considerable great deal to the formation of the Lenten literature. You can see that right away if you remember the beginning of Lent. You have a Wednesday, and you have a Thursday, and a Friday. Now, if you take your mystery, And then you will realize that the Ash Wednesday teaches you how to pray. Thursday, following Ash Wednesday, teaches you how to pray. And the Friday following that gives you and tells you the glory of God's gift. It's a little, you know, call me the patients of the bathroom and think a little and it's really clear to you what is really the meaning of these three main ways in which we participate and practice the spirit of the living scene.

[63:42]

What is really pastime? Pastime means, of course, originally abstaining from food. The classical day in which in the Old Testament fasting was practiced is the famous Yom Kippur. That means the Jewish day of atonement. On this Yom Kippur, this day of atonement, you had the Jews up to this day practice fasting as a complete fast and abstinence from food during the day, and also completely stopping of work. So that is the idea really of fasting that you can see. Fasting means that we abstaining from food, we proclaim before God that we do not have the right out of ourselves

[64:46]

and a claim to be and to live, because guilt and our fear have taken away from us this life. In fasting, what do you do? You go to God's side and you judge with God against yourself. You pronounce in some way voluntarily and you anticipate as it were a death sentence against you. You agree with it. You do not have as eternal the right and claim to live because the law of God puts death and punishment to sin. So in that way, fasting is really this, entering into, let us say, the justice of God against our sins. Then, fasting therefore means our death, our participation in that voluntary death that our Lord Jesus Christ took upon himself when he, as the Lamb of God, carried the sins of the world and died for us.

[65:58]

But thank you, Lord, out of this fasting, because I told you before, we are Christians. We can now consider death as an isolated fact. Death is never the end. Death for us is always the beginning, the beginning of the resurrection. This resurrection, the resurrection of the spirit after the flesh had been surrendered to God, this resurrection of the flesh is expressed in prayer. Prayer is defined, as you know very well, as the resurrection of the mind. The resurrection of the mind. Prayer is that act through which the soul, free as it were from the inborn emptiness of the flesh, dies into the infinite ocean of God of heaven.

[67:00]

Prayer. Prayer is moving in God's infinity, where as world and as voice and song of God's giving is our equal to God's self-giving love. Where is that infinite love coming in and going into being fused into God's infinite love? Then you have the prayer of giving. And what is of giving? Ungiving is the Pentecost of the soul. Ungiving is the communication, the pairing of your abandonment with the poor. Ungiving is that charity which, and it raises the many, in which to go out of yourself, in which to walk with, limit your own step within it, are broken.

[68:03]

And in our giving, the life and the world our pure charity and mercy goes out and gives life to the poor of all. And in that way, our giving is our participation in the spirit of animals. You see, therefore, already in the very celebration of life and in these works in which we participate, in which we express the spirit of death. You see the whole mystery of our redemption. We die with Christ in fasting, we rise with Christ in prayer, and we bring out the abundance of the spirit in our giving of this all-embracing charity. So this great idea claims to see a little on both of the beauty of the Lenten season, and you realize that the word which accompanies us during this part of the Lenten season is a word of one of the octopterists, the Lenten masters, in which we hear our Lord say, and I look for one that would win me together with me, but there was none.

[69:21]

I thought of one that would comfort me, and I found none. The latest season is the invitation that our Lord Jesus Christ, as the Son of Man, attending to Jerusalem, to Golgotha, in order to surrender as a victim for our sins at the Lamb of God, he was, as it were, for a companion, He cries for his hope. He cries in his loneliness for those who will be with him. And the Lenten season is that time in which we, as those who have received the Spirit of our Lord Jesus Christ, in faith, with him, take an active part in what he has done for the whole world. And therefore, the Lenten season is the way in which we participating in the death of our Lord Jesus Christ, and are altered to the glory of his resurrection, and become ready then to share the abundance of Christ with others.

[70:30]

Therefore, the next season is also for you, dear deceitful, in which you are spiritually reborn. in which you realize that you, as yet, really cherish the church of God, that you are the living and proven, the glory of heaven, and that therefore, only through out of this abundance, you should go and share it with others and become real apostles. Lenten season is therefore the time in which you not only die with Christ, in which you not only rise with him into the newness of life, earning with you to repeat and to end with what we thought we had begun with, in which you are really as agile, we are able to share with others the life that you have received in and What do you need?

[71:36]

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