Kingdom Harbor

A Christmas gift to myself this year was a collection of Sunday Sermons from the ancient Church Fathers. They are arranged according to the Church Calendar with about 5 or 6 sermons each Sunday for that week’s Gospel text from the likes of Chrysostom, Ambrose, Jerome and Augustine.

This first Sunday in Lent I read a few sermons on Jesus’ temptation in the desert. The ancient church fathers were quite creative and ingenious in their treatment of Scripture, and in this case mathematics. Here’s a snippet from a sermon by Gregory the Great on the significance of forty days of Lent:

Having just heard the Gospel account of the Forty days fast, we must consider for ourselves, why it is this abstinence is observed for forty days? For Moses also fasted forty days, that he might receive the Law (Ex 34:28). Elijah in the desert fasted for forty days (III Kings 19:8). And He who is the Author of all men, coming amongst men, went entirely without food for forty days and forty nights. And we, as far as we are able, must also endeavor to mortify our bodies by abstinence during this yearly time of Lent.

Why is the number forty observed if not that the excellence of the Decalogue (Ten Commandments) is perfected by the Four Books of the Gospel? For as ten multiplied by four makes forty, so we perfectly fulfill the precepts of the Decalogue when we faithfully observe the Four Books of the Holy Gospels.

From this another thing may be learned. In this mortal body we are composed of four elements; and it is because of this same body we are made subjects to God’s Commandments. The Commands of the Law are given to us in the Decalogue. And since it is through the desires of the body we have despised the Commandments of the Decalogue, it is just that we chastise this same flesh four times ten times.

And if you wish there is yet another thing to be understood from this time of Lent. From this present day till the joyful solemnities of Easter there are six weeks; that is, two and forty days. From which if you subtract the six Sundays there remain thirty-six days of abstinence. And since a year continues through three hundred and sixty-five days, we, when we mortify ourselves for thirty-six days, give to the Lord a tithe as it were of our year; so that we who have lived for ourselves throughout the year we have received, may, during His tenth of it, die to Our Maker through abstinence.

And so, Dearly Beloved, as it was commanded in the Law to offer tithes of all things, so let you offer Him a tithe of your days. Let each one mortify his own body, as far as his strength allows, and let him weaken its desires, and lower the pride of its evil lusts, so that he may become, in the words of Paul, a living sacrifice (Rom. 12:1). A man is both living and a sacrifice when he has died to the desires of his body, though he has not departed from this life. It is the pleasure-loving body that leads us into sin; mortification leads us back to forgiveness. The parent of our death (Adam) sinned against the commandments of our life, because of the fruit of the forbidden tree. We therefore who because of eating having fallen from the joy of paradise may, as far as we are able, return to it once more through fasting.

—St. Gregory the Great (540-603 A.D.), Sermon given in the Basilica of Saint John, on the First Sunday of Lent.