Below is a sublime liturgical reflection from the pen of my favorite spiritual writer, Abbot Prosper Guéranger. It is an excerpt from The Liturgical Year for the Tuesday of Quinquagesima Week, where that profound Benedictine master writes about the hatred we Christians are called upon to have for the world.
That Mardi Gras is the popular name for this liturgical day will help the reader to understand the aptness of the theme.
Look if you will for a more balanced, devout, and theological treatment of this subject. I don’t think you will find it.
Tuesday of Quinquagesima Week
by Dom Prosper Guéranger, O.S.B.
The fundamental rule of Christian life is, as almost every page of the Gospel tells us, that we should live out of the world, separate ourselves from the world, hate the world. The world is that ungodly land which Abraham, our sublime model, is commanded by God to quit. It is that Babylon of our exile and captivity, where we are beset with dangers. The beloved disciple cries out to us: ‘Love not the world, nor the things which are in the world. If any man love the world, the charity of the Father is not in him’ (I John ii, 15). Our most merciful Jesus, at the very time when He was about to offer Himself as a sacrifice for all men, spoke these awful words: ‘I pray not for the world’ (John xvii, 9). When we were baptized, and were signed with the glorious and indelible character of Christians, the condition required of us, and accepted, was that we should renounce the works and pomps of the world (which we expressed under the name of Satan); and this solemn baptismal promise we have often renewed.
But what is the meaning of our promise to renounce the world? Is it that we cannot be Christians, unless we flee into the desert and separate ourselves from our fellow-creatures? Such cannot be God’s will for all, since, in that same Scripture, wherein He commands us to flee from the world, He also tells us what are our duties to each other, and sanctions and blesses those ties which He Himself has willed should exist among us. His apostle, also, tells us to use this world as though we did not use it (I Cor. vii, 31). Can there be contradiction in God’s commandments? Is it possible that we are condemned to wander blindly on the brink of a precipice, into which we must at last inevitably fall?
There is neither contradiction nor snare. If by the world, we mean these visible things around us which God created in His power and goodness; if we mean this outward world, which He made for His own glory and our benefit; it is worthy of its divine Author, and to us, if we but use it aright, is a ladder whereby our souls may ascend to their God. Let us gratefully use this world; go through it, without making it the object of our hope; not waste upon it that love, which God alone deserves; and ever be mindful, that we are not made for this, but for another and a happier, world.
But the majority of men are not thus prudent in their use of the world. Their hearts are fixed upon it, and not upon heaven. Hence it was, that when the Creator deigned to come in into this world, in order that He might save it, the world knew Him not (John i, 10). Men were called after the object of their love. They shut their eyes to the light; they became darkness; God calls them ‘the world.’
In this sense, then, the world is everything that is opposed to our Lord Jesus Christ, that refuses to recognize Him, and that resists His divine guidance. Those false maxims which tend to weaken the love of God in our souls; which recommend the vanities that fasten our hearts to this present life; which cry down everything that can raise us above our weaknesses or vices; which decoy and gratify our corrupt nature by dangerous pleasures, which, far from helping us to the attainment of our last end, only mislead us — all these are ‘the world.’
This world is everywhere, and holds a secret league within our very hearts. Sin has brought it into this exterior world created by God for Himself, and has given it prominence. Now, we must conquer it, and trample upon it, or we shall perish with it. There is no being neutral; we must be its enemies or its slaves. During these three days {of Carnival}, its triumphs are fearful; and thousands of those who, at their Baptism, swore eternal enmity to it, are enrolling themselves its votaries. Let us pray for them; but let us also tremble for ourselves; and that our courage may not fail us, let us ponder those consoling words, which our Savior, at His last Supper, addressed to His eternal Father. He is speaking of His disciples, and He says: ‘Father! I have given them Thy word, and the world hath hated them, because they are not of the world, as I also am not of the world. I pray not, that Thou shouldst take them out of the world, but that Thou shouldst keep them from evil’ (John xvii, 14-15).
