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Our Mass formularies for pre-Lent and Lent go back to at least the time of St. Gregory the Great (+604), and certainly before. What was going on back in the day? Plague and famine had ravaged the population. The invading Lombards threatened Rome itself with sword and fire. Both for Septuagesima and this Sexagesima Sunday we hear the cry of the Church to God for help and mercy.
Our historical context also includes the fact of the Roman Station Churches. Last week, we were at St. Lawrence outside-the-walls, near the tomb of the holy deacon burned alive on an iron grate. Today the Station is St. Paul’s outside-the-walls, the place of Paul’s execution and burial. It is as if the Church is asking the catechumens, aspiring to baptism, “Are you sure you want to take this on?” The catechumens and baptized alike with the Pope and cortege made their way from the heart of the City under the long covered walkway that stretched from the great defense walls to the Ostian Basilica, St. Paul’s. Having arrived at the basilica, the Entrance Antiphon or Introit solemnly chants the alarmed and desperate Psalm 43 (RSV 44):
Rouse thyself! Why sleepest thou, O Lord?
Awake! Do not cast us off for ever!
Why dost thou hide thy face?
Why dost thou forget our affliction and oppression?
For our soul is bowed down to the dust;
our body cleaves to the ground.
Rise up, come to our help!
Deliver us [for the sake of thy steadfast love]!
The Mass leans heavily on St. Paul today, as it should by his tomb.
For Sunday’s Epistle, from 1 Cor 11 & 12, we hear Paul’s own account of his many trials and sufferings in being a disciple of Christ while we stand, if only in spirit, by his tomb. As a matter of fact, in a rare instance outside the feasts of saints and on a Sunday, the Collect mentions Paul by a trope called antonomasia. Here it is divided into its elements:
Deus, qui conspicis,
quia ex nulla nostra actione confidimus:
concede propitius;
ut, contra adversa omnia,
Doctoris gentium protectione muniamur.
I like the lovely alliterations of those “k” sounds, the open “ah”, the buzzing “n”.
I don’t think this prayer in any form survived to live in the Novus Ordo. The jam-packed Lewis & Short Dictionary informs us that conspicio means “to look at attentively”. In the passive, it is “to attract attention, to be conspicuous”. Conspicio is a compound of “cum…with” and *specio (the * indicates a theoretical form which has to do with perception). The useful French dictionary of liturgical Latin we call Blasé/Dumas says that conspicio refers to God’s “regard”, presumably because God “sees” all things “together”. The last word here is from munio, which is “to build a wall around, to fortify, …protect, secure, put in a state of defense; to guard, secure, strengthen, support”. When this prayer was developed, that’s what the Romans needed.
CLUNCKY LITERAL VERSION:
O God, You who perceive
that we confide in no action of our own:
propitiously grant;
that against every adverse thing
by the protection of the Doctor of the Gentiles we may be walled around.
In the Epistle reading from 2 Cor 11 and 12 St. Paul gives us a portrait of how we must live, the battle we face as Christians, the suffering we may be called to endure. It is an apt reading before Lent, for catechumens and seasoned Catholics alike, to inspire us to consider the discipline of our Christian life.
More context. Some of the Corinthians had been attacking Paul as not knowing what he was talking about. In turn Paul hit them with being Satan’s minions and false prophets. He counters (the first part of the reading) with the dangers he has experienced, being beaten and shipwrecked and hungry and mugged and betrayed, and so forth. The point is straightforward: you must be ready to suffer even these things because this is what being a disciple of Jesus can cost. Being beset and weak in the Lord is, contradictorily, reward and strength. This is the point of the verse that follows the reading (i.e. 2 Cor 12:10): “For the sake of Christ, then, I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities; for when I am weak, then I am strong.”
Paul’s sufferings stand as proof of his authority. But there’s more. Well on in the liturgical Epistle reading we find something striking precisely where the break was made between what we in modern times call chapters 11 and 12. After Paul writes about his hardships, he brings in “visions and revelations of the Lord” (2 Cor 12:1). In 12:1-6 Paul relates that he received visions of some kind. He describes himself being “caught up into third heaven”. It was a mystical experience of some sort. He speaks as if he is talking about some other person: “I know a man in Christ who fourteen years ago…”.
In a way, we are all different people after 14 years, especially if our life brings us what Paul underwent. We are different while remaining the same. This is one of the advantages to having the same readings every year and the same feasts and cycles: they don’t change, but we do. Therefore, each time they impress newly upon us.
Paul is trying to describe the indescribable and at the same time uphold his authority to the Corinthians. Beyond physical affirmations of his state, there are also spiritual proofs. This includes the famously enigmatic image from which we have the phrase a “thorn in my side”. Probably as a consequence of Paul’s self-awareness of his growing importance, God provided a way to help Paul remain humble and dependent on grace:
a thorn was given me in the flesh, a messenger of Satan, to harass me, to keep me from being too elated.
On the one hand from Homeric Greek onward into Biblical Greek skólops is “a pointed piece of wood”, like a stake. On the other hand, Paul equates the skólops with an “ángelos Satán… messenger of Satan, which sounds very much like a demon. One is tempted to conclude that God allowed Paul some long period of demonic oppression.
Demonic possession is the taking over of a person’s body. Oppression concerns attacks on things that affect a person’s life from the outside, such as financial and employment problems, troubles in relationships, things suddenly breaking down though they were in good working order, annoying infirmities or illnesses. Oppression can also manifest as physical attacks, such as those suffered by St. John Vianney and the amazing Poor Clare St. Veronica Giuliani. The Devil tried to distract her at night when she was trying under obedience to write her spiritual diary and locutions from the Lord and from the Blessed Virgin. The Enemy would hide her writing materials, physically beat her, break her limbs which would heal before morning, show her visions of Hell, appear – scariest of all – in the guise of a bishop.
Peter knew about Paul’s letters and seems to have heard them read or read them himself, proof for which is in 2 Peter 3:15-16:
[O]ur beloved brother Paul wrote to you according to the wisdom given him, speaking of this as he does in all his letters. There are some things in them hard to understand…
We don’t know what the specific suffering was that God lovingly allowed Paul to experience. Some have suggested that it was bad eyesight. After all, in his role, Paul would have needed his eyes for writing. Also, at the time of his conversion, he had been struck blind as Christ’s way to get Paul’s undivided attention. Another possibility is that the “thorn” was a particular person or group who continually vexed Paul, attacked him and his work. We’ve all be there and know the vicious power of such an affliction.
Whatever the stimulus, the “thorn” was, it was severe. Paul begged the Lord to take it away three times. Jesus said, “No” and with some of the most heart-rending words in all the New Testament, one of the only quotes from the Lord Himself outside the Gospels:
My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.
For a moment I’ll circle back to the Collect oration. Does this fit together?
SOMEWHAT SMOOTHER:
O God, who entirely see
that we trust in nothing that comes from our doing,
graciously grant
that, against all adverse powers,
we may be fortified by the protection of the Doctor of the Gentiles.
Is it not true that some of the most impressive people we know, whose example is the most moving, are those who patiently and even with joy endure great suffering? They have a kind of authority when they offer their point of view about things that matter. We tend to attend to them as we tend them.
Just for a moment we might thread in the Gospel passage for Sexagesima, the Parable of the Sower and the Seed. Most of the seeds don’t make it, but some do, magnificently. The seed had to “die” for it to grow and bear fruit. It could be also that, depending on the plant, it had to be pruned, lots of it harshly hacked off, for it to flourish even more.
Adversity is, at times, precisely what we need to prompt us to make necessary corrections, undertake proper vocational actions, and grow by corporal and spiritual works of mercy.
Do you have sufferings in your life now? It is not wrong to ask God to take them from you. Paul did. The Lord did too in the Garden. Both of them, and all of us, must be content with the answer, be it relief even through a miracle, or be it silence through a suspension of consolations. In either case, God’s glory is made manifest in you, you glorious image of God.