FSSP Finland
Pyhän Pietarin pappisveljeskunnan
Suomen apostolaatti
Isä Benjamin Durham FSSP fssp-finland@sanctis.net

Newsletter 2009/02 April 5th, 2009

I n the Early Church, Lent was seen as preparation towards Easter. For the
catechumens, this penitential season was a long spiritual preparation for Bap-
tism, which they would receive in the long Easter Night. Through Baptism, the
darkness of the world fades into the joyful Light of Christ that shines in the
hearts of the faithful.
According to the testimony of Saint Ambrose, this is also the meaning of the
words that we find at the beginning of Holy Mass: Introibo ad altare Dei. Ad
Deum qui laetificat juventutem meam. Those who had been baptised and con-
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firmed would go from the baptismal fonts towards the altar, where they would
participate in the Divine Eucharist with the confidence given to them by the
grace of their rebirth. “This people who had been cleansed,” says Saint Ambrose,
“and vested in the rich garments of grace, goes to the altar of Jesus Christ saying:
I shall go to the altar of God, I shall go to God who rejoices in my youth.”
When we enter a church and, particularly when we participate in the Holy
Sacrifice of Mass, we are reminded of the grace of our baptism, the grace of our
common Christian vocation. Whatever our age, we have the joy of our baptism, of
our spiritual youth which fills us with immense joy as we go to the altar of God to
receive the Body and Blood of Our Lord Jesus Christ.
For many centuries, these same words have been placed on the lips of the
priest and the people as they go to the altar of God, conscious of the ineffable gifts
that they have received from Almighty God in order that they may participate in
the victory of Christ over the world.
In Christ Our Lord,

Fr. Benjamin Durham, FSSP

Coming into the Light of God during Lent

Baptism in the Early Church

B aptism was usually given during the night before Easter Sunday but the bap-
tismal ceremonies actually began at the opening of Lent. This was certainly
the case in the fourth century, a time in which there are many testimonies of the
practice of the Early Church. The candidates were enrolled at that time and be-
gan their immediate preparation for the sacrament, whereas, up until taking this
step, they had been simple catechumens. From the time of their enrollment at
the beginning of Lent, the candidates constituted a new group, the photizomenoi,

those who are coming into the light. The ceremonies of these forty days form a
whole, of which our Ritual makes a single ceremony. A brief look at these ancient
rites is not without its importance.
As we have mentioned, the preparation for baptism was introduced by the rite
of enrollment, which we find described in this way by Etheria in her account of
her pilgrimage: “Whoever wishes to give in his name does so on the eve of Lent;
and a priest notes down all the names. The next day, the opening of Lent, the day
on which the eight weeks begin, in the middle of the principal church, that is,
the church of the Martyrium, a seat is placed for the bishop, and one by one, the
candidates are led up to him. If they are men, they come with their godfathers;
if women, with their godmothers. Then the bishop questions the neighbours of
each person who comes in, saying: ‘Does he lead a good life? Does he respect his
parents? Is he given to drunkenness or lying?’ If the candidate is pronounced be-
yond reproach by all those who are thus questioned in the presence of witnesses,
with his own hand the bishop notes down the person’s name. But if the candidate
is accused of failing in any point, the bishop tells him to go out, saying: ‘Let him
amend his life and when he has amended it, let him come to Baptism.’”
The rite described by Etheria is that of Jerusalem, and is analogous to that
of Antioch, thus described by Theodore of Mopsuestia: “Whoever desires to come

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to Holy Baptism, let him present himself to the Church of God... A man who is
delegated for the duty of enrollment writes down your name in the Book of the
Church, and also that of the witness. As in a trial, the person who is accused must
stand up, so you are to hold out your arms in the attitude of one who prays, and
to keep your eyes cast down. For the same reason, you are to take off your outer
garment and to be barefoot, standing on haircloth.”
The literal meaning of these rites is obvious, -- what interests us is the in-
terpretation given to them by the Fathers. The examination which precedes the
inscription in which the claims of the candidate are discussed, signifies for Theo-
dore of Mopsuestia that at this moment Satan “tries to argue against us, under
the pretext that we have no right to escape from his domination. He says that
we belong to him because we are descended from the head of our race. We must
hasten to go before the judge to establish our claims and to show that we did not
belong to Satan from the beginning, but to God Who made us to His Own image.”
Of course, we can compare this scene, as Theodore does, to the temptation of Our
Lord in which Satan “tries to lead Christ astray by his wiles and temptations.”
Even the attitude of the candidate is symbolic: he is clad only in his tunic and is
barefoot, “to show the slavery in which the devil holds him captive and to arouse
the pity of the judge.”
Theodore’s interpretation brings out one of the themes of baptismal theology
– the conflict with Satan. The baptismal rites constitute a drama in which the
candidate, who up to this time has belonged to the demon, strives to escape his
power. This drama begins with the enrollment and is not concluded, as we shall
see, until the actual baptism. We notice that Theodore relates the trial which
the candidate undergoes, on the one hand, to the temptation of Adam, on the
other hand to that of Christ. This parallelism of the scene of Paradise and that of
Baptism, with that from the life of Christ in between, will appear all through the
course of the baptismal catechesis. We also notice that the Gospel of the Tempta-
 
tion is found in the Roman liturgy on the first Sunday of Lent, and this should be
interpreted in the light of the fact that this was the Sunday of enrollment.
The symbolism of the actual enrollment is given to us by Saint Gregory of
Nyssa: “Give me your names so that I may write them down in ink. But the Lord
Himself wil engrave them on incorruptible tablets, writing them with His own
finger, as He once wrote the Law of the Hebrews.” The visible writing in the
register of the Church is the figure of the writing of the names of the elect on the
tablets of Heaven. For Gregory, this inscription is a figure of our inscription in the
Church of Heaven. Our sponsors will take great care to teach us, strangers as we
are to this city, everything concerning life in this city, so that we may accustom
ourselves to it. We cannot but feel as we step into a church, that we step out of
the profane and into the sacred, that we leave the world for another world, that
we step out of time in order to enjoy a real contact with eternity. As those who are
baptised, whose soul is beautifully transfigured and transformed, we do not step
into this church like a stranger passing by – we have a right of citizenship, we
know that we belong here through our illumination, our baptism which gave us
such a right. In the end, we know that it is in the Church that we belong and that
the sacred temples here on Earth are but the figures of the Heavenly Jerusalem.
On the first Sunday of Lent, the candidates were examined and enrolled and
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the forty days that followed were a time of retreat. “From this day on,” writes
Saint Cyril of Jerusalem, “turn away from every wicked occupation; speak no un-
befitting words but raise the eyes of your soul and contemplate the angelic choirs
and the Lord of the universe seated on His throne, with His Son at His right
hand and the Spirit beside Him.” This preparation consists on the one hand in
stengthening faith against the attacks of error: this is the purpose of the Lenten
catecheses. And, on the other, it is a time of purification in which “the rust of the
soul should be removed so that only true metal will remain.”
During this time, the catechumens come to church every day, at the hour of
Prime. Etheria tells us: “The custom here (that is, in Jerusalem) is that those
who are going to be baptised come every day during Lent, and first they are ex-
orcised by the clerics. The exorcisms are the expression of the conflict which is
being waged between Christ and Satan around the faithful soul. The devil makes
a supreme effort to keep the soul in his power. The rite of exorcism itself has for
its precise purpose to free the soul little by little from the power that the demon
has exercised over it. Saint Cyril writes: “Receive the exorcisms eagerly, whether
they be insufflations or imprecations, for this is salutary for you. Consider that
you are gold that has been adulterated and falsified. We are looking for pure gold.
But as gold cannot be purified of its alloys without fire, so the soul cannot be puri-
fied without exorcisms, which are divine words, chosen from the Holy Scriptures.
As goldsmiths, blowing on the fire, cause the gold to separate from the ore, so the
exorcisms put fear to flight by the Spirit of God, and cause the soul to rise up in
the body as if in its ore, putting to flight the enemy, the demon, and leaving only
hope of life everlasting.”
After the exorcism every morning came the catechesis: “Then,” writes Eth-
eria, “they place a chair in the Martyrium for the Bishop, and all those who are
to be baptised sit in a circle around him, both men and women, and their god-
fathers and godmothers, and also all those who wish to hear, provided they are

Christians. During these forty days, the Bishop goes through all the Scriptures,
beginning with Genesis, explaining first the literal ans then the spiritual sense.
And the end of five weeks of instruction, they receive the Symbol (the Creed),
and its teachin is explained to them phrase by phrase.” These catecheses end, on
the Sunday before Easter, with the redditio symboli (the recitation of the Creed).
The time of catechesis is that in which the foundation of faith is laid, while the
purification of the soul is also being accomplished. As for the redditio symboli,
Theodore of Mopsuestia sees it as being the counterpart of the exorcisms. While
these free the soul from slavery to Satan, “by the recitation of the Creed, you bind
yourself to God, by the meditation of the Bishop, and you make a pact to perse-
vere in charity toward the divine nature.” We shall notice that the double aspect
of struggle with Satan and conversion to Christ will be found in the whole baptis-
mal liturgy. All of it is a mystery of death and resurrection, and these preparatory
rites are already marked with this character.
The last rite in preparation for Baptism took place during the Easter Vigil.
This was the renunciation of Satan and adherence to Christ. This rite forms part
of the preparatory ceremonies although it is placed in the liturgy of the easter
Vigil. The origin of this rite is quite ancient: we find it in all the writers and in
all the Churches, in Jerusalem, in Antioch and in Rome, going as far back as

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Tertullian.
The renunciation of Satan is described by Cyril of Jerusalem: “You first en-
tered the vestibule of the baptistry, and, while you stood and faced the West,
you were told to stretch out your hand. Then you renounced Satan as if he were
present, saying: I renounce you, Satan, and all your pomp and all your worship.”
The formula of Theodore of Mopsuestia is analogous, “Once more you are stand-
ing on haircloth, with bare feet, you have taken off your outer garment, and your
hands are stretched out to God in the attitude of prayer; Then you kneel but you
hold your body upright. And you say: I renounce Satan, and all his angels, and
all his works, and all his worship, and all his vanity, and all wordly error; and I
bind myself by vow to be baptised in the name of the Father, of the Son, and of
the Holy Spirit.”
Cyril explains to us why the renunciation takes place while the candidate
faces the West: “As the West is the region of visible darkness, and since Satan,
who has darkness for his portion, has his empire in darkness; when you turn
symbolically toward the West, you renounce this dark and obscure tyrant.” This
symbolism goes back to the pre-Christian world. The ancient Greeks placed the
gates of Hades in the West, where the sun goes down. We frequently find it in the
Fathers of the Church: Gregory of Nyssa sees the West as “the place where dwells
the power of darkness.”
We are now on the threshold of the decisive act by which the liberation of the
soul will be accomplished. Theodore of Mopsuestia, here again, insists on this
aspect: “Since the devil, whom you, beginning with the heads of your race, once
obeyed, has been the cause of many evils for you, you must promise to turn away
from him. Yesterday, even if you had willed it, you could not have done so: but
since, thanks to the exorcisms, the divine sentence has promised you freedom,
you can now say: I renounce Satan.”
 
Certain liturgies add to the name of Satan, “and his angels.” The great com-
mentators add that these angels are not demons but men who submit to Satan
whom he makes his instruments, and of whom he makes use to make others fall.
They are “those who apply themselves to profane learning and who cause the er-
ror of paganism to penetrate further into the world, the poets who increase idola-
try in their fables and the leaders of heresies, who, under the name of Christ,
have introduced their own vices.”
Now come “the pomps, the service and the works of Satan.” The first expres-
sion is the most difficult and has been the subject of much discussion. The expres-
sion “pomp of the devil” properly signifies the worship of idols. Some scholars
believe that it is the procession of demons; the word thus designating persons.
Others, such as Cyril of Jerusalem, seem to think that the pomps are the proces-
sions and games which constitute the worship of idols, which is the worship of
Satan. “The pomp of Satan,” says Cyril, “is the passion for the theatre, for horse-
races in the hippodrome, for games in the circus and all the vanities of this kind.
And also it is the things which are laid out in the feasts of idols, -- food, bread and
other things that have been soiled by the invocation of impure demons. These
foods, which are part of the pomp of Satan, are pure in themselves, but soiled by
the invocation of demons.”
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We observe that the spectacles of the theatre, the hippodrome and the circus
formed part of the pomp of the devil inasmuch as they included acts of worship
that were manifestations of idolatry. But as idolatry receded, we find that the
accent is placed on the immortality of the spectacles. This is also to be seen in
Theodore of Mopsuestia: “What are called the wiles of Satan are the theatre,
the circus, the stadium, the athletic contests, the songs, the organs played by
the water, the dances, that the devil has sown in the world under the guise of
amusements, to incite souls to their ruin. He who shares in the sacrament of the
New Testament must keep himself from all of this.” The aspect of immorality
was, moreover, associated even in the most ancient Fathers with that of idolatry.
So Cyril, speaking of the pomps of Satan, speaks “of the folly of theatre, where
one sees farces and mimes full of things that should not be seen, and the foolish
dances of effeminate men.”
To the renunciation of Satan and of his pomps corresponds the adherence to
Christ. Let us again take up Saint Cyril’s text: “When you have renounced Satan
and broken the old pact with Hades, then the Paradise of God opens before you,
the Paradise that He planted in the East from which our first father was driven
out because of his disobedience. The symbol of this is that you turn from the West
to the East, which is the region of light. So you were told to say: I believe in the
Father, in the Son and in the Holy Spirit, and in the one Baptism of penance.”
The profession of faith made while facing the East complemented the abjuration
made while facing the West. The rite is found in the baptismal liturgy of Milan:
“You were turned to the East. For he who renounces the demon turns himself
to Christ. He sees him face to face.” We know that this ‘orientation’ of prayer is
found in other places as well as the Baptismal liturgy. It was a general custom to
turn to the East to pray, and Saint Basil ranks it among the most ancient tradi-
tions of the Church.

Here appears the eschatological significance of the rite: it may have its origin
in St Matthew’s Gospel: “As the lightning comes from the East, so shall the Son
of Man appear.” But this primitive meaning, related to the waiting for the end of
time, was soon attenuated; and often the East simply meant Christ Himself. This
symbolism is caonnected with the the passage in Zacharias, VI, 12: “The Orient is
His name.” This is the explanation of the baptismal rite found in Saint Ambrose:
“You are facing the East. The man who renounces the demon turns to Christ and
sees Him face to face.”
But in the fourth century, the symbolism most frequently used is a differ-
ent one. Prayer facing the East is connected with ideas of Paradise. Saint Basil
gives us this explanation: “It is by reason of an unwritten tradition that we turn
to the East to pray. But little do we know that we are thus seeking the ancient
homeland, the Paradise that God planted in Eden toward the East.” Facing the
East, then, the catechumen pronounces his allegiance to Christ. The word “alli-
ance” is often used here. As Theodore of Mopsuestia notes, the adhering to Christ
is, properly speaking, the act of faith required for Baptism: “The divine nature
is invisible, and faith is required on the part of the man who presents himself to
promise to live henceforth without wavering in familiarity with it. Invisible also
are the good things which God has prepared for us in heaven, and for this reason

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we must believe.”
With the renunciation and profession, the preparation of Baptism was finished
on the threshold of the Easter night. The aspirant for Baptism, having officially
professed his will to abandon idolatry and to consecrate himself to Christ is able
to receive the sacrament. But this long preparation is a witness to the personal
nature of the action that has been accomplished. We see that through the various
rites and ceremonies that it is, in fact, sincere and whole-hearted conversion that
is the condition required in order to receive Baptism. During this Lenten Season,
even for those of us who have been baptised, we are reminded of this need for con-
version. We are conscious of the great gift of Paradise that has been given to us,
the great gift of eternal life through God’s grace. As we look towards Easter, we
are called to turn away from Satan, from darkness and to turn back to the Light
who is Christ. May these remaining weeks of Lent be a preparation to re-live the
vital mystery of our baptism; a mystery which leads us to rise from the waters of
baptism, clothed in the garments of everlasting life.

On the Difficulties of Virtue

L et us put the whole question of progress in the Christian virtues in a simple

form: The end of the Christian virtues is union with God, which implies
the renunciation of one’s self. This requires two kinds of knowledge and two
kinds of effort -- the knowledge of God, which should be ever progressive, and the
knowledge of one’s self, which should be ever progressive. The knowledge of God
teaches us not only what He is, but what He does for us; the knowledge of one’s
self teaches us what we are not, and what we are unable to do for ourselves with-
out the divine help: it is the great and difficult task of getting at the truth about
ourselves in which the light of God alone can help us. But these two greatest of
 
lessons are best learnt by alternate light and trial; for in His light we know God,
and In our trial we learn to know ourselves.
The two fundamental efforts of Christian virtue are these: the first is to leave
our own selfish affections as much as we can, and the get as near to God with our
will and affections as we may. The second is to get the habit of acting as much on
principle ans as little on sentimentality as we can. For sentiments spring from
our own subjective feelings; they have no light in them; they are always changing;
they are too apt to be allied with what St. Paul calls ‘the spirit of the flesh,’ to act
from impulse, often from temper, and to have an element of self-love in them; and
they have no wisdom in them. But principle are presented to us in the light of
God; they are calm, fixed, true, just, wise, unchangeable; from God and not from
ourselves; so that when indifferent to all that moves within us, whether pleas-
ant or unpleasant, except what speaks in our conscience, where those principles
reside, we act on principle, we follow the serene guidance of God, and give to Him
our will. But even with good desires, it is long before many souls can reach this
peaceful state of serenity, owing to the want of self-knowledge and the purifica-
tion of their sense and sensibilities.
The whole labour of virtue consists, therefore, in transferring the will from
the attractions of nature to the attraction of grace, and in getting out of that
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narrow selfishness and away from those morbid sensibilities, to reach the divine
atmosphere of truth and justice. This demands inward labour and the pain of
sacrifice, with sober and steady perseverance, and not unfrequent conflicts with
the obstinacy of nature. David understood this difficulty when he asked of God:
‘Bring my soul out of prison, that I may praise Thy name’. But the very first dif-
ficulty is that of sight. The forms of the virtues may be in the mind in a certain
way, and some little of them may be known by experience, but it requires a special
grace and special correspondence of the will to fix attention on their profounder
sense. The light is still, perhaps, in the summit of the soul, unable to reach the
interior, and reveal the condition of the soul, for it is arrested by pride or self-love,
obstruction the way to centre of the spirit. We see not what calls for correction or
reform until by violent acts the old habits are broken down, when humility opens
the soul, light enters, and we obtain deeper knowledge of ourselves…

Many, O Divine Lord, turn away from Thee, as if Thou wert a light that is
waning or already extinguished, or a conquered King without a people, or an
intruding stranger in the land, or even a dangerous and outlawed enemy.
Forgive, O Lord, in Thine infinite mercy, all those who indeed still cleave
to Thee in the secret of their hearts, but do not confess Thee openly. Have
mercy also on those, who were once Thy friends and companions at Thy table,
but who now consort with Thine archenemies and who with the Scribes and
Pharisees cry ‘Crucify Him’. Restrain all those who estrange our youth from
Thee, the Divine Friend of children, and let Thy warning words about scan-
dal burn deep into their consciences...
Thou knowest, O God of Wisdom, the hour in which Thy divine word shall
still the storm of opression. Still as of yore Thou askest with royal dignity:
‘Will you also go away ?’ for Thou dost not force or bind any man. But we
answer with Peter, with the same sacred vow: ‘O Lord, to whom shall we go?
Thou hast the words of eternal life’. (Erzbischof Conrad Groeber)