We’re at the time of year where we just celebrated the final echo of the Christmas season, the feast we call the Presentation of the Lord, also known as Candlemas.
Candlemas, of course a joyful event, but also an event where our Blessed Lady hears the sorrowful prophecy of Simeon that a sword will pierce her heart. Thus, the day is a decidedly stark pivot from the joys of Christmastide to a time of year they used to call Shrovetide. A time we begin to prepare for the season of Lent.
We also hear this time of the year called Carnevale, which literally means “farewell to the flesh”. It is meant to be a season of waning feasts related to the Epiphanies (concluding with Mardi Gras, or Shrove Tuesday) and a waxing of a spirit of penance and somberness as we approach Ash Wednesday and the great fast of Lent.
Our readings today also seem to represent a spiritual pivot in that we see a foretaste of the season of Lent that invites us to understand those things in our lives that are contrary to the faith so that we can abstain from them during Lent…in a very real way we can say farewell to the flesh.
Many biblical scholars believe John the Baptist was beheaded around the time of the second Passover event in the ministry of Jesus. This would have been around the time of the bread of life discourse at the Capernaum synagogue where Jesus made it clear that we must eat His Flesh to have eternal life, and that the flesh of human nature is of no avail.
John the Baptist, being a forerunner of Christ in all things, was a forerunner of the Passion of Christ through his beheading.
At the beheading of John the Baptist, the ministry of Jesus Christ seemingly took a stark pivot directly toward Calvary. Everything at that point became about preparing for His passion, death, and resurrection at the next Passover and preparing the Apostles to lead the Church He was starting.
Similarly, reading of the beheading of John the Baptist should invoke a stark pivot of our spirituality during these short weeks of Ordinary Time.
Just as John the Baptist challenged Herod to look at his life, we must challenge ourselves to look at ours. What are those things in my life that are not congruent with the Catholic faith? How am I being called to become more deeply conformed to Jesus Christ this Lenten season? How am I being called to use this Lenten season to decrease so that Jesus may increase through me? How am I being called to more fully live out the Paschal mystery in my daily life?
Reflecting on these types of questions now, can help create fertile ground for the seeds of Lent to be sown in. With grace, we’ll enjoy the spiritual blooms of Easter.
Benedictine monk, Dom Guéranger, offers further spiritual advice in his book “The Practice of Lent”:
“By entering into the spirit of the Church in sober, mournful, preparation for the penitence of Lent, by growing in holy fear of God, by considering what original sin and our own sins have done to deserve God’s judgments, by rising up from indifference, by realizing our need for the saving sacrifice of Christ, we will remember great detail during Lent. In meditating upon our spiritual infirmities, and upon the wounds caused in us by sin, —we should be ready to enter upon the penitential season. We have a clearer knowledge of the justice and holiness of God, and of the dangers that await an impenitent soul; and, that our repentance might be earnest and lasting, we have bade farewell to the vain joys and baubles of the world. Our pride has been humbled by the prophecy, that these bodies would soon be like the ashes that write the memento of death upon our foreheads.”
Embracing the spirit of Shrovetide, reflecting on the preparation of Jesus for his passion, reflecting on those things we are asked to forego in order to more deeply conform to Christ, can help ensure we have the most efficacious Lent possible. Doing so can help make the Pashcal Mystery a very real part of our life so that our sufferings can truly be united with Christ. In faith, we might die with Him in order that we might rise with Him…just like John the Baptist.
Thanks be to God.
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