Then They Will Fast

The following is from Servant of God Prosper Guéranger, o.s.b.

Abbot Guéranger († 1875) was a Benedictine monk and the
first abbot of Solesmes, which was instrumental in revitalizing
Benedictine life in France after the French Revolution.

Penance consists in contrition of the soul and mortification of the body; these two parts are essential to it. The soul has willed the sin; the body has frequently
cooperated in its commission. Moreover, man is composed of both soul and body; both, then, should pay homage to their Creator. The body is to share with the soul either the delights of heaven or the torments of hell; there cannot, therefore, be any thorough Christian life, or any earnest penance, where the body does not take part, in both, with the soul.

But it is the soul which gives reality to penance. The Gospel teaches this by the examples it holds out to us of the prodigal son, of Magdalene, of Zacchaeus, and of Saint Peter. The soul, then, must be resolved to give up every sin; she must heartily grieve over those she has committed; she must hate sin; she must shun the occasions of sin. The sacred Scriptures have a word for this inward disposition, which has been adopted by the Christian world, and which admirably expresses the state of the soul that has turned away from her sins: this word is conversion.

The Christian should, therefore, during Lent, study to excite himself to this repentance of heart, and look upon it as the essential foundation of all his Lenten exercises. Nevertheless, he must remember that this spiritual penance would be a mere delusion were he not to practice mortification of the body. Let him study the example given him by his Savior, who grieves, indeed, and weeps over our sins; but he also expiates them by his bodily sufferings. Hence it is that the Church, the infallible interpreter of her divine Master’s will, tells us that the repentance of our heart will not be accepted by God unless it be accompanied by fasting and abstinence.