My friend Joan is living in Rome and blogging on her visits to the ancient churches — with lots of photos. Save her in your favorites, and check often.

Rod Bennett, whose book on the Fathers is one of my all-time favorites, has returned to blogging, though at a new address. Give him a welcome.

Today, Pope Benedict concluded his series on St. Augustine (five parts!). There were so many pilgrims that the overflow had to be gathered into St. Peter’s! Teresa Benedetta, as always, provided almost simultaneous translation (for which she deserves our effusive thanks and ardent prayers)…

Dear brothers and sisters,

Today I would like to conclude my presentation of St. Augustine. After having dwelt on his life, his works, and some aspects of his thought, I wish to go back today to his interior life which made him one of the greatest converts in Christian history.

To this interior experience, I particularly devoted my reflections during the pilgrimage I made to Pavia last year to venerate the mortal remains of this Father of the Church. I wanted to express the homage of the entire Catholic Church but also to show my personal devotion and acknowledgment of a figure to whom I feel very much connected for the part that he has played in my life as a theologian, priest and pastor.

Even today we can retrace the experiences of St. Augustine, thanks above all to his Confessions, written in praise of God and which originated one of the most specific literary forms of the West, the autobiography, that is, a personal expression of one’s consciousness about oneself.

Whoever reads this extraordinary and fascinating book, which is still widely read today, will easily realize that Augustine’s conversion was neither sudden nor fully realized immediately, but that it could be better defined as a true and proper journey, which remains a model for each of us.

This itinerary certainly culminated in his conversion and baptism, but it did not end on that Easter Vigil of 387 when the African rhetorician was baptized by Bishop Ambrose in Milan.

Augustine’s journey of conversion, in fact, continued humbly until the end of his life, so that one can say that its various stages – one can easily distinguish three – made up a unique act of conversion.

St. Augustine was a passionate searcher for the truth – he was from the very beginning and all his life. The first stage of his journey of conversion was his progressively coming close to Christianity. Actually, he received a Christian education from his mother Monica, to whom he was always closely linked, and although he led an undisciplined life in his youth, he always felt a profound attraction to Christ, having drunk love for the name of the Lord with his mother’s milk, as he himself underscored (cfr Confessiones, III, 4, 8).

But philosophy, too, especially Platonic, contributed to bring him closer to Christ by showing him the existence of the Logos, creative reason. The philosophers’ books showed him that there was Reason, from which the whole world sprung, but they did not tell him how to reach this Logos which seemed so remote.

Only reading about the faith of the Catholic Church in St. Paul’s letters revealed the truth fully to him. This experience was synthesized by Augustine in one of the most famous pages of the Confessions: He recounts that, in the torment of his reflections, he retired to a garden, where suddenly he heard a child’s voice which repeated to him a lullaby he had never heard before, “Tolle, legge, tolle, legge…” (Take and read, take and read) (VIII, 20,29).

He then remembered the conversion of St. Anthony Abbot, the father of monasticism, and with great urgency, he turned to the Pauline epistolary which he had in his hands earlier, opened it, and his glance fell on the passage from the Letter to the Romans where the Apostle exhorts the Romans to abandon the ways of the flesh and ‘put on the Lord Jesus Christ’ (13, 13-14).

He understood that at that moment, those words were addressed to him, that it came from God through the Apostle, and showed him what to do right then. Thus, he felt the shadows of doubt dissolve and he found himself finally free to give himself completely to Christ: “You converted my being to you”, he commented (Confessiones, VIII, 12,30). This was his first and decisive conversion.

The African rhetorician reached this fundamental stage of his long journey, thanks to his passion for man and for the truth, a passion which brought him to look for God, great and seemingly inaccessible. Faith in Christ made him understand that God, apparently so remote, was really not. In fact, that he had made himself close to us by becoming one of us.

In this sense, faith in Christ fulfilled Augustine’s long search along the path of truth. Only a God who made himself ‘tangible’, one of us, was a God to whom one could pray, for whom and with whom one could live. But it is a way to follow with courage as well as humility, opening us to a permanent purification of which each of us is always in need.

With that Easter Vigil Baptism of 387, as we said earlier, Augustine’s journey was not done. He returned to Africa where he retired with a few friends to dedicate themselves to a life of contemplation and study. This was the dream of his life. He was called to live totally for the truth, with the truth, in friendship with Christ who is the Truth.

It was a beautiful dream that lasted three years, until when, against his wishes, he was consecrated a priest in Hippo, destined to serve the faithful, continuing to live with Christ and for Christ, but in the service of all.

This was very difficult for him, but he understood from the beginning that only by living for others, and not only for his private gratification, could he really live with Christ and for Christ. Thus, renouncing a life of pure meditation, Augustine learned, often with difficulty, to offer the fruit of his intelligence for the benefit of others.

He learned to communicate his faith to simple people, and living that way in what became his city, he carried out tirelessly a generous and onerous service that he described in these words in one of his beautiful sermons: “To preach continuously, discuss, reiterate, edify, be at the disposal of everyone – it is an enormous responsibility, a great weight, an immense effort” (Serm. 339,4).

But he took this weight on himself, understanding that this way, he was closest to Christ. To understand that one reaches others with simplicity and humility was his true and second conversion.

But there is a third stage in the Augustinian journey, a third conversion: that which brought him every day of his life to ask God’s forgiveness. Initially, he had thought that once he was baptized – in a life of communion with Christ, in the Sacraments, in the celebration of the Eucharist – he would attain the life proposed in the Sermon on the Mount: the perfection given in Baptism and reconfirmed in the Eucharist.

In the latter part of his life, he understood that what he had said in his first preachings about the Sermon on the Mount – that is, that we Christians would thereafter live that ideal permanently – was wrong. That only Christ himself was the true and complete realization of the Sermon on the Mount.

We are all always in need of being ‘washed’ by Christ, who washes our feet, and to be renewed by him. We need permanent continuing conversion. Up to the end we need the humility to recognize that we are sinners on a journey, until the Lord gives us his hand conclusively and introduces us to eternal life. In such an attitude of humility, lived day after day, Augustine died.

This attitude of profound humility before the one Lord Jesus introduced him also to the experience of intellectual humility. Augustine, in fact, who is one of the greatest figures in the history of ideas, wished during his final years to place all his numerous works under lucid critical examination.

That was the origin of Retractiones(Revisions) which, in this way, placed his theological thinking, which was truly great, within the humble and holy faith of what he called simply with the name Catholic, that is, the Church.

“I understood,” he wrote in this very original book (I, 19,1-3), “that only one is truly perfect, and that the words of the Sermon on the Mount are completely realized only in one – in Jesus Christ himself. The whole Church, instead – all of us, including the Apostles – must pray every day: forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us.”

Converted to Christ, who is truth and love, Augustine followed him the rest of his life and has become a model for every human being, for all of us in search of God.

That is why I wished to conclude my pilgrimage to Pavia by symbolically offering to the Church and to the world, at the tomb of this great lover of God, my first encyclical, Deus caritas est.

In fact, the encyclical owes a great deal, especially in the first part, to the thought of St. Augustine. Even today, as in his time, mankind needs to recognize, and above all, to live, this fundamental reality: God is love, and the encounter with him is the only response to the anxieties of the human heart. A heart that is inhabited by hope, perhaps still obscure and even unconscious in many of our contemporaries, but which for us Christians, already opens the future, such that St. Paul wrote, “in hope we are saved” (Rom 8,24).

I dedicated my second encyclical, Spe salvi, to hope, and even that owes a great deal to Augustine’s thoughts and his encounter with God.

In a very beautiful text, Augustine defined prayer as the expression of desire, and stated that God responds by opening up our hearts to him. On our part, we should purify our desires and our hopes in order to receive the kindness of God (cfr In I Ioannis, 4, 6). Only this, in fact, opening us up to others, saves us.

Let us pray therefore that in our life we may be granted to follow everyday the example of this great convert, encountering like him, in every moment of our life, the Lord Jesus, the only one who saves us, purifies us, and gives us true joy and true life.

CNS posted a nice bit, with photo, on the blessing of the courtyard of St. Gregory the Illuminator at St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome. St. Gregory’s life began in the third century and illuminated the fourth. He brought Christianity to Armenia in 301.

Junior posted a photo of the courtyard after our visit there last year, but it hadn’t been blessed at that time. Look closely. You’ll see the difference.

If Hollywood had made a movie of the life of “the Illuminator” when I was a kid, it would’ve starred Lou Ferrigno or Arnold Schwarzenegger. Don’t you think? Like “the Terminator” or “the Hulk.” Only luminous.

St. Gregory is pondering the idea.

Reviewed in Bryn Mawr Classical Review:

Liz James, Art and Text in Byzantine Culture (Cambridge University Press, 2007)

Liz James begins her introduction to Art and Text in Byzantium by saying that the interface between the two is one of the oldest issues in art history. She continues by asking if art can stand alone or if it is always expressed in the written and the oral, making it thereby exposed to subjective interpretation. In Byzantium, says James, the very security of the state depended on the right interface between images and words, and, “above all, Christ, the Word of God.” The Empire was the only major world power that experienced political mayhem resulting from arguments about art. Iconoclasm and the accompanying debates about religious images established “the place of art in society and the relationship of art to words.” James concludes her introduction to the essays that follow stating that although art and text may influence each other the contributors to the volume “seek to explore the complexities of the relationship.” This relationship between images and words is the unifying theme of the work…

Read more. Hat tip: David Meadows.

His Holiness, fresh from his Lenten retreat, returned to St. Augustine in Wednesday’s audience. Teresa Benedetta, ever faithful, translated…

Dear brothers and sisters,

After the pause during the spiritual exercises last week, we return today to the great figure of Saint Augustine, about whom I have already spoken in these catecheses.

He is the Father of the Church who has left the most number of works, about some of which I intend to speak briefly today.

Some of the Augustinian writings are of capital importance, not only for the history of Christianity but in shaping all of Western culture.

The clearest example is his Confessions, without a doubt one of the books from early Christianity that is still widely read today.

Like many Fathers of the Church in its early centuries – but in incomparably vaster measure – the Bishop of Hippo has indeed exercised an extensive and persistent influence, which is evident from the abundant tradition and legacy of his works, which are truly numerous.

He himself reviewed his writings a few years before his death in Retractationes, and shortly after his death, they were all carefully recorded in the Indiculus (list) added by the faithful Possidius to his biography of St. Augustine, Vita Augustini.

The list of Augustine’s works was made with the explicit intention of preserving them even as the barbarian invasions were spreading throughout Roman Africa, and included 1,030 writings numbered by the author himself, along with others that he did not number.

Bishop of a nearby city, Possidius dictated his words in Hippo, where he had sought refuge and was present at the death of his friend, so, almost certainly, his list was based on a catalog of Augustine’s personal library.

Today, the Bishop of Hippo is also survived by more than 300 letters and almost 600 homilies, although these were originally so much more – probably anywhere between 3,000-4,000, the fruit of some 40 years of preaching by the ex-rhetoricist who decided to follow Jesus, and instead of addressing himself to the imperial court, spoke to the simple people of Hippo.

In recent years, the discovery of a group of letters and more homilies have enriched our knowledge of this great Father of the Church.

“Many books,” wrote Possidius, “were written and published by him, many homilies were given in Church and then transcribed and edited, both to refute various heresies as well as to interpret Sacred Scriptures for the edification of the children of the Church. ”

“These works,” wrote his bishop friend, “are so numerous that a scholar could hardly find it possible to read all of them and learn them” (Vita Augustini, 18, 9).

Among this vast literary production of Augustine – more than a thousand publications subdivided into philosophical, apologetics, doctrinal, moral, monastic, exegetic, anti-heretical, besides his letters and homilies – there are a few exceptional works of great theological and philosophical weight that stand out.

First of all, the Confessions, which we have already mentioned, written in 13 volumes between 397-400 in praise of God. It is a sort of autobiography in the form of a dialog with God. This literary genre reflects the life of Augustine, which was a life not closed in on itself and dissipated in various activities, but substantially lived as a dialog with God and therefore, a life shared with others.

The very title indicates the specificity of this autobiography. The word ‘confessiones’ in the Christian Latin that was developed in the tradition of the Psalms, has two meanings that are interwoven.

Confessiones connotes, in the first place, a confession of one’s own weaknesses, of the misery of sinners, but at the same time, it also means praise of God, acknowledgment and recognition of God.

To see one’s own poverty in God’s light becomes praise of God and gratitude that God loves and accepts us, transforms us and lifts us towards himself.

About these Confessions which had great success even in Augustine’s lifetime, he himself wrote: “They exercised such action on me while I was writing them and do so even now when I reread them. There are many brothers who like these writings” (Retractationes, II, 6), and I must say that I, too, am one of these ‘brothers’.

Thanks to these Confessions, we can follow, step by step, the interior journey of this extraordinary man who had a great passion for God.

Less well-known but equally original and very important are the Retractationes, written in two books around 427, in which Augustine, then an old man, undertook a ‘review’ (retractatio) of all his written works, thus leaving a singular and most invaluable literary document that is a lesson in intellectual sincerity and humility.

De civitate Dei (of the City of God) – a powerful and decisive work for the development of Western political thought and the Christian theology of history – was written between 413 and 426 in 22 volumes, occasioned by the sacking of Rome by the Goths in 410.

Many pagans who survived, along with many Christians, had said, “Rome has fallen, and the Christian God and the Apostles can do nothing to protect the city. In the days of the pagan divinities, Rome was the caput mundi, capital of the world, and no one could imagine that it could fall into the hands of an enemy. Now, with the Christian God, this great city no longer appears safe.”

So (they were saying that) the God of the Christians could not protect, and therefore, could not be a God to trust. To this objection, which reached deeply into the hearts of many Christians, St. Augustine replied with his great work, De civitate Dei, clarifying what we should expect from God and what not to, what the relationship is between the political sphere and that of faith, of the Church.

Even today, this book is a source for defining well what true secularity is, and the competency (jurisdiction) of the Church, the true great hope that faith gives us.

This great book is a presentation of the history of a mankind governed by Divine Providence but actually divided by two loves. This is the fundamental design of his interpretation of history – as a battle between two loves: love of oneself “to the point of indifference to God”, and love of God “to the point of indifference to oneself” (De civitate Dei, XIV, 28), which leads to full freedom to be for others in the light of God. This, therefore, is perhaps St. Augustine’s greatest book, with the greatest permanent importance.

Equally important is De Trinitate, a work in 15 volumes on the principal nucleus of the Christian faith – faith in the Trinitarian God – which he wrote in two time periods. The first 12 volumes wre written between 399-412 and published without his knowledge, and he completed the work in 420, when it was published in full.

In this book, he reflects on the face of God and seeks to understand this mystery of the God who is unique, the only Creator of the world, of us all, and still, because this one God is trinitarian, is also a circle of love.

He seeks to understand the unfathomable mystery: the Trinitarian being, in three persons, as precisely the most real and most profound expression of teh unity of the one God.

De doctrina Christiana is a true and proper cultural introduction to the interpretation of the Bible, and at the same time, a conclusive interpretation of Christianity itself. It, too, had a decisive importance in the shaping of Western culture.

Even with all his humility, Augustine was certainly aware of his own intellectual stature. But for him, more important than writing great works of high theological value was bringing the Christian message to the simple people.

This most profound of his intentions, which guided his whole life, is expressed in a letter to his colleague Evodius, informing him of his decision to suspend for the time being his dictation of the books making up De Trinitate “because they are too laborious and I think they may be understood only by a few; more urgent are texts which I hope will be useful to many” (Epistulae, 169, 1, 1).

Therefore, he thought it was more useful to communicate the faith in a way understandable to all rather than write great theological works. This acutely felt responsibility regarding the proclamation of the Christian message was responsible for writings such as De catechizandis rudibus, which was both a theory and a praxis of catechesis, or the Psalmus contra partem Donati.

The Donatists were the great problem in the Africa of St. Augustine – a schism that was African in origin. The Donatists affirmed that true Christianity was African and opposed the unity of the Church. The great bishop fought this schism all his life, seeking to convince the Donatists that it is only in Christian unity that Africanness itself could be authentic.

And to make himself understood by the simple people, who could not understand a rhetoricist’s grand Latin, he decided: I should write even with grammatical errors in a very simplified Latin. And he did this, especially in this Psalmus, a kind of simple poetry against the Donatists, to help all the people understand that our relationship with God and peace in the world could only grow in the unity of the Church.

In Augustine’s literary production addressed to a much larger public, particularly important is the sheer mass of his homilies, often extemporaneous but transcribed during the preaching to be published for immediate circulation.

Among these are the very beautiful Enarrationes in Psalmos, widely read in the Middle Ages. The very practice of immediate publication of thousands of homilies by Augustine – often beyond the author’s control – explains their dissemination and subsequent wider diffusion, but also their vitality.

Almost immediately, in fact, the preachings of the Bishop of Hippo became, because of their author’s fame, highly sought texts that served even other bishops and priests, texts that were adaptable to ever new contexts.

The iconographic tradition – which we can see in a Lateran fresco dating to the sixth century – shows St. Augustine with a book in one hand, certainly to represent his literary production which so influenced Christian mentality and Christian thought, but also to show his love of books, for reading, and for gaining knowledge of older cultures.

At his death, he left nothing, said Possidius, but “he urged to always conserve diligently for posterity the library of the Church with all its codices”, as well as his own writings.

In his works, Possidius writes, Augustine is ‘always alive’ and benefits those who read his writings, even if “I believe that those who saw and heard him when he preached in Church had profited more from that contact, but most of all, those who had experience of his daily life among the people” (Vita Augustini, 31).

Yes, even for us, it would have been beautiful to hear him alive. But he truly lives in his writings, and is present with us, and we see the permanent vitality of the faith to which he had given his entire life.

The Art Newspaper gives us more detail on that long-lost patristic-era page recently found in Egypt. Thanks to Roger Pearse for the lead.

The Tablet published an op-ed that more than hints the Fathers were anti-Jewish. Globetrotting gurublogger Gashwin Gomes gives good graces back to the ancients, linking here once, twice, or thrice along the way.

I think it’s bad form to judge the Fathers anti-Jewish — or, for that matter, the rabbis of the Talmud anti-Christian. Neither the Fathers nor the rabbis were playing by our 21st-century rules. There are no third-century examples of bureaus of interreligious affairs, staffed by career clerical diplomats. Our ancestors, Christians and Jews, did religious controversy the rough-and-tumble way. I don’t want us to return to their modes of argument, but they might eschew ours, and for good reasons.

I’m glad Gashwin quoted Jacob Neusner, who wishes that both Jews and Christians would respect each other’s desire to live by their respective rules. Christians have a mission to all peoples. It’s not anti-Jewish to include Jews in that number and even to pray for their conversion when we pray for everyone else’s. By Christian principles, it would be anti-Jewish not to. I don’t expect my Jewish friends to think I’m right in the matter of Christian mission. If they did, after all, they would be Christian. If they pray for my conversion, even publicly, I’m happy that they wish me the greatest blessing they know.

It’s not anti-Jewish to pray, in St. Paul’s words, that “all Israel will be saved” (Rom 11:26), any more than it’s anti-Christian for Jews to wish we wouldn’t.

Last week I found a clean, well-lighted place to browse the Patrologia Graeca. Lots of sites have dumps of the PG in various states of disarray. But this one is alphabetized by author and then by work. (I’ve used it twice today!)

But what about the Patrologia Latina? Again, you’ll find lots of dumps that are impossible to browse. But, at last, Hermeneutic of Continuity leads us to well-ordered online libraries of the PL: here and here.

Thanks to Father Brian for pointing out these sites.

It’s a great time to be a nerd.

I spent yesterday morning speaking to a “History of Christianity” class at California University of Pennsylvania. What a bright and lively group of students! I talked about my book The Mass of the Early Christians. Students kept me in conversation for a long time after class ended — until the gracious prof who invited me, Dr. Paul Crawford, dragged me off to lunch. The student conversations have continued via email.

I have a dread fear of public speaking. But this day was a delight.

An alternative to Valentine’s Day: the feast of St. Trifon the Pruner (3rd century). It’s big in Bulgaria. (Do we give prunes instead of chocolates? I don’t know if my wife will approve.)

Meanwhile back in surreality, Dr. Boli invoked the martyr St. Valentine as an image of his love for his lady.

KVSS radio recently conducted a multipart interview series with Yours Truly, based on my book The Resilient Church: The Glory, the Shame, & the Hope for Tomorrow. My friend Kris McGregor and I take a stroll through two millennia of history. So far, KVSS has posted two installments. Hope you like them.

A (relatively) easy-to-use site with a massive collection of patristic works in Greek. It’s the Patrologia Graeca handily organized by author and then by title — all alphabetical. Hat tip: Jim Davila.

A seminarian friend of mine, Fred, sent me the following article, titled “The Fathers of the Church on Fasting.” It’s timely counsel for this first Friday of Lent, 2008, though it first appeared in the Feb. 18, 1888 edition of The Ave Maria: A Magazine Devoted to the Honor of the Blessed Virgin. There’s no byline on the piece, but it’s copyrighted in the name of Rev. D.E. Hudson, C.S.C.

The following is from a Lenten pastoral of one of the English bishops, published last year. It was out of season when it came under our notice, but the passage seemed so pointed and so forcible that we put it by for reproduction at a future time. A re reading has only confirmed our impression of its excellence. Few, indeed, nowadays set a just value on the practice of fasting, the privileges of which are so real and so precious. The Bishop’s own words, not less than the eloquent passages he quotes, will show that it is one of the principal means of spiritual progress, as well as a remedy against sin and other evils:

The Apostle of the Gentiles did no more than carry on the tradition of penance, in himself setting the example of a life in which he well knew the minister of God ought to take the lead. “In all things let us exhibit ourselves as the ministers of God, in much penance . . . in labors, in watching, and in fastings.” Can there be any doubt that what has always been the spirit of the Church has its source in the will of Our Lord, made known to us, through the interpretation of that will, by those of whom St. John speaks in his first Epistle, in these striking words: “That which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon, and our hands have handled of the Word of Life . . . that which we have seen and heard, we have declared unto you”? And in later times the Doctors of the Church took up and continued the same traditional teaching; and their eloquent words, while they indicate their own practice, were commonly such a panegyric on fasting as to give a very high idea of the esteem in which they held it. “What is fasting,” asks St. Ambrose, “but that which is heavenly, both in meaning and substance? Fasting is the nourishment of the soul, and the food of the mind. Fasting is the life of the angels. Fasting is the death of sin, the destruction of guilt, the remedy of salvation, the source of grace, and the foundation of chastity. By this path God is more easily approached.” The great St. Jerome writes: “Fasting is not merely a perfect virtue: it is the foundation of all the other virtues; it is sanctification, purity, and prudence, – virtues without which no one can see God.” In a discourse upon fasting, St. Peter of Ravenna uses the following beautiful words: “Fasting, a we all know, is God’s fortress, the camp of Jesus Christ, the rampart of the Holy Ghost, the standard of faith, the mark of charity, and the trophy of holiness.” The passages just quoted deal mainly with the virtues which fasting indicates, promotes, and fosters. Let us add the words of some of the Fathers, who speak of it as a remedy against sin and other evils. “Fasting,” says St. Leo, “gives strength against sin, represses evil desires, repels temptation, humbles pride, cools anger, and fosters all the inclinations of a good will, even unto the practice of every virtue.” One Father more, the great St. John Chrysostom, shall give us his authoritative teaching on this important subject: “Fasting purifies the mind, calms the senses, subjects the flesh to the spirit, renders the heart humble and contrite, disperses the clouds of concupiscence, extinguishes the heat of passion, and lights up the fire of chastity.”

How strongly do all these sentiments of the Fathers of the Church contrast with the notions and language of men in the days in which we live! One might almost suppose, at the first glance, that we belonged not only to a different age, but to a different Church. And yet the Church has never ceased, on her part, to inculcate on her children the duty of fasting; and in willing obedience to her, multitudes in every age have sanctified their souls. Open the life of any saint or servant of God, and all of them, in their manifold variety of person and character and holiness, will be found to practice fasting as one of the principal means of their spiritual progress. Yes, the tradition and the practice endure to this day with the children of the Church, and will endure unto the end of time. But it is still true, nevertheless, that the spirit of penance has so far decreased, that a very large and, we fear, an increasing proportion of the faithful, from one cause or another, or without cause at all, fail to observe the law of fasting. It is just possible that so serious a relaxation may have led some to suppose, either that the law is not of strict obligation, or that they at least may with a safe conscience elude it if they can. But the precept of the Church is clear enough. We learned it as children in our Catechism; it is proclaimed yearly for the season of Lent; we know that it has ever been observed; it comes to us hallowed by the example of Our Lord; and we know well that after “the bridegroom was taken away,” the general precept that man should fast has been definitely fixed by the Church for the season of Lent and its forty days, that so we might more nearly imi¬tate our Divine Redeemer. The Church herself was, so to speak, cradles in the rigors of fasting; her Apostles and her first pastors followed her example; and the first observance of this holy season took place in so early an age of her existence, that its beginnings are lost in obscurity. History knows no time when it was not observed; and the Church in all ages has never ceased to proclaim the fast and its obligations, to the utmost limit of her world wide domain.