Patrick Comerford
Lent began this week with Ash Wednesday. The Church Calendar today remembers Perpetua, Felicity and their companions, who were martyrs at Carthage in the year 203. Today is also the World Day of Prayer, with the theme ‘I made you wonderful’ from the Cook Islands. The day is being marked with a service in Stony Stratford Community Church at 10:30 this morning (7 March 2025). Before this day begins, however, I am taking some quiet time this morning to give thanks, to reflect, to pray and to read in these ways:
1, today’s Gospel reading;
2, a short reflection;
3, a prayer from the USPG prayer diary;
4, the Collects and Post-Communion prayer of the day.
Matthew 9: 14-15 (NRSVA):
14 Then the disciples of John came to him, saying, ‘Why do we and the Pharisees fast often, but your disciples do not fast?’ 15 And Jesus said to them, ‘The wedding-guests cannot mourn as long as the bridegroom is with them, can they? The days will come when the bridegroom is taken away from them, and then they will fast.’
Today’s Reflection:
In the Gospel reading at the Eucharist today (Matthew 9: 14-15), Christ answers a question on fasting put to him by the disciples of John the Baptist.
In the traditional Anglican liturgical introduction to Lent, the meaning of Lent is explained and the people are invited to observe it faithfully ‘by self-examination and repentance; by prayer, fasting, and self-denial; and by reading and meditating on God’s holy word.’
The great Lichfield literary figure Samuel Johnson, who I was writing about again last night, once bemoaned the fact that the observance of Lent had fallen into neglect in his time. He wrote in Abyssinia: ‘During the great Lent, they eat neither butter nor milk, not any thing that has had life. They fast all Holy Week upon bread and water; … Thus Lent is observed throughout Abyssinia, men, women and children fasting with great exactness.’
On the other hand, he noted in contrast: ‘Abstinence from lacticinia [milk foods], which included butter, cheese, and eggs, was never strictly enforced in Britain, Ireland and the Scandinavian countries because of the lack of oil and other products that could serve as substitutes.’
Johnson’s diaries show that such fasting was a regular practice for him, including the anniversary of his mother’s death (23 January 1759), during Lent, and from Good Friday until Easter morning. His biographer, James Boswell, notes that Johnson fasted so strictly on Good Friday that ‘he did not even taste bread, and took no milk with his tea; I suppose because it is some kind of animal food.’
In my time of reflection this morning, I am reading once again two commentaries on fasting in two early Patristic sources.
The Didache (Διδαχὴ, ‘Teaching’) is a brief early treatise (ca 50-160) with instructions for Christian communities. While the manuscript is commonly referred to as the Didache, this is a shortened version of the title used by the Church Fathers, The Teaching of the Twelve Apostles (Διδαχὴ τῶν δώδεκα ἀποστόλων).
Some Church Fathers considered it as part of the New Testament but it others rejected it as spurious, and eventually it was excluded from the New Testament canon.
In Chapter 8, the Didache discusses ‘Fast-Days and Prayer’:
1 Do not keep the same fast-days as the hypocrites. Mondays and Thursdays are their days for fasting, so yours should be Wednesdays and Fridays.
2 Your prayers, too, should be different from theirs. Pray as the Lord enjoined in His Gospel, thus:
Our Father, who art in heaven,
Hallowed be thy Name,
Thy kingdom come,
Thy will be done,
As in heaven, so on earth;
Give us this today of our daily bread,
And forgive us our debt as we forgive our debtors,
And lead us not into temptation,
But deliver us from the Evil One,
For thine is the power and glory for ever and ever.
3 Say this prayer three times a day.
The Patristic writer Tertullian (Quintus Septimius Florens Tertullianus) was born, lived, and died in Carthage, in present-day Tunisia, the home town of Perpetua, Felicity and their companions, who are remembered in the Church Calendar today. Tertullian denounced Christian doctrines he considered heretical, but later in life adopted views that came to be regarded as heretical themselves. Late in his life, he left the Church of Rome and joined the Montanists, which explains why he has never been regarded as a saint.
But he was the first great writer of Latin Christianity, and is sometimes known as the ‘father of the Latin Church.’ He introduced the term Trinity and probably also the formula ‘three Persons, one Substance.’
In his Treatise on Prayer (ca 200/206), Tertullian writes (19, 1), echoes Christ’s teaching in this morning’s Gospel reading:
Likewise, regard to days of fast, many do not think they should be present at the sacrificial prayers, because their fast would be broken if they were to receive the Body of the Lord. Does the Eucharist, then, obviate a work devoted to God, or does it bind it more to god? Will not your fast be more solemn if, in addition, you have stood at God’s altar? The body of the Lord having been received and reserved, each point is secured: both the participation in the sacrifice and the discharge of duty.
Today’s Prayers (Friday 7 March 2025):
The theme this week in ‘Pray With the World Church’, the Prayer Diary of the Anglican mission agency USPG (United Society Partners in the Gospel), is ‘The World’s Greatest Leader: Jesus Christ.’ This theme was introduced on Sunday with a Programme Update by the Right Revd Filomena Tete Estevão, Bishop of Angola.
The USPG Prayer Diary today (Friday 7 March 2025) invites us to pray:
Heavenly Father, we thank you for the Anglican Church of Mozambique and Angola, the youngest Anglican province. We ask your blessing on their ministry.
The Collect:
Holy God,
who gave great courage to Perpetua, Felicity and their companions:
grant that we may be worthy to climb the ladder of sacrifice
and be received into the garden of peace;
through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord,
who is alive and reigns with you,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.
The Post-Communion Prayer:
God our redeemer,
whose Church was strengthened by the blood of your martyrs Perpetua, Felicity and their companions:
so bind us, in life and death, to Christ’s sacrifice
that our lives, broken and offered with his,
may carry his death and proclaim his resurrection in the world;
through Jesus Christ our Lord.
Yesterday’s Reflection
Continued Tomorrow
Scripture quotations are from the New Revised Standard Version Bible: Anglicised Edition copyright © 1989, 1995, National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide. http://nrsvbibles.org
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