First Meditation for the Fifth Week of Lent
Not many prayers of Mother Church make us tremble. The Improperia do.
These are the prayers (sometimes known as The Reproaches) that we shall hear on Good Friday. As though the sight of Our Lord’s bitter agony is not enough, Holy Church haunts us with these spine-tingling passages:
My people, what have I done to you
How have I offended you? Answer me!
I led you out of Egypt,
from slavery to freedom,
but you led your Savior to the cross.
My people, what have I done to you?
How have I offended you? Answer me!
For forty years I led you
safely through the desert,
I fed you with manna from heaven,
and brought you to a land of plenty; but you led your Savior to the cross.
My people, what have I done to you?
How have I offended you? Answer Me!
What more could I have done for you.
I planted you as my fairest vine,
but you yielded only bitterness: when I was thirsty you gave me vinegar to drink,
and you pierced your Savior with a lance.
Dom Gueranger says of the Improperia: “…they are unsurpassed in simple beauty, dramatic feeling, and depth of impressiveness”.
The Improperia train a glaring light upon our souls. We are compelled to consider all the gifts that Our Redeemer has showered upon us, and our response of ingratitude. Ingratitude expressed in our hesitancy, in fact, refusal, to rouse contrition for our sins. Contrition is expressed in sorrow of love. This technical spiritual phrase refers to the proper understanding of sin, not a violation of law, but as a breach of Love. It is this breach that causes St. Peter to weep after his betrayal of Our Lord, when their eyes met. It is sorrow of love that moves St. Mary Magdalene to bather Our Savior’s feet with her tears. An old tradition tells us that St. Peter wept so bitterly for the rest of his life that the tears created permanent creases upon his face.
Not only are we grieved by our sins of commission, so explicit to our examens, but also to those sins of omission that often mask themselves as more benign. It is to these that Saint Newman addresses himself in his Sermon, #3, The Calls of Grace: “God’s opportunities do not wait; they come and they go. The Word of Life waits not – it if is not appropriated by you, the devil will appropriate it. He delays not, but has his eye wide open always and is ready to pounce down and carry off the gift which you delay to use”.
As we gaze upon the Crucified with the approach of Good Friday, we bow ourselves lower and lower in the sadness of what we have done, and what we have not done. Our heart is slashed all the more, as we repeat to ourselves the words of Jesus in the Improperia: “My people, my people, what have I done to you or how have I offended you? Answer me! I fed you with manna from heaven, and brought you out to a land of plenty; but you led your Savior to the cross”.
Till now we have taken the Savior for granted. After this, how could we ever again?
