Thursday of the Twenty-ninth Week in Ordinary Time

MSF chapel window, with symbols of
God's providence (an eye) and God's eternity,
the serpent consuming itself

 Lectionary: 476

For when you were slaves of sin, you were free from righteousness.
But what profit did you get then
from the things of which you are now ashamed?
For the end of those things is death.

I was invited once to provide a Mass for Catholic youth and their guardians at a rodeo in Minnesota. This was not a televised, big-deal event. It was a sporting event for young people who might dream of going professional but were expected to take their places in the farming and beef industries. Unacquainted as I was with this kind of event, I could think of few scriptures that might inspire young athletes. Ancient Israel had few, if any, competitive events and despised the Greeks who did. 

I might have used this text from Saint Paul's epistle to the Romans. He urged his newly baptized Christians to refrain from wasteful practices that indulge the body's crude desires and destroy its vitality. As he said, "For the end of those things is death."

Medieval ascetics were especially eager to prove they were not slaves to sin, and could live righteously by strict disciplines. If the age of martyrdom ended when the Roman Empire adopted Christianity as its official state religion, they would practice "white martyrdom" by severe asceticism. 

From the few surviving accounts of her life, Saint Clare might never have eaten a square meal. She was abstemious as a child and, it was said, would hide food in her apron at the table to give to the poor at the door. After entering the convent, she ate so little that the local bishop and Saint Francis joined forces to insist that she eat at least one biscuit every other day. 

But Francis was hardly the man to talk since he ate little, rarely touched wine, kept midnight vigils, wore thin rags against the Italian winter, traveled on foot continually, slept on the ground, wore a hair shirt, and occasionally scourged himself with a flail. Practices like these persisted well into the twentieth century and, for all I know, might remain in some remote monasteries. 

However, these white martyrs also knew the danger of these practices. An anonymous tract (perhaps written by John of Banillo) called Pax Anima, urges restraint with those practices:  

First, therefore, establish firmly the bent and inclination of your heart, that whatsoever you do externally may have its root and principle in the interior; for though penance and austerities are commendable, used with discretion according to every one’s necessity and condition, yet shall you never thereby arrive at true virtue if they are not founded on and regulated by the interior, but rather grasp at vanity and the empty shadow of glory.

He urged his disciples to, 

...stand upon your guard and watch; which watching consists in subduing, pacifying, and quieting all the movements of the soul, so that whatsoever tempest of passion or breath of sensuality begins to arise, you immediately calm it before it hath produced any disorder there. Be sure you do this upon every the least disturbance either in or out of prayer, and then shall you know how to pray as you ought when you have thus learned to act and discharge the duty of your station. And this must be done, not with force, but with sweetness, since nothing is more opposite to peace of spirit than violence.

The point is, we're not slaves of sin. We belong to the Lord and our relaxation, pleasures, leisure, and rest are subject to his authority. We should want nothing but that which the Lord wants for us.  And we pray daily that the Lord will not lead us into the temptation of "red martyrdom."