Forty Days And Forty Martyrs

Several Sundays ago, we followed Our Blessed Lord into the wilderness.  There we beheld the Son of God, as he undertook a long fast of forty days and forty nights.  He went without food and drink, giving us an example of how we must subjugate our frail human bodies with their fallen nature, beating them into submission to the higher human faculties of the intellect and the will.  A human intellect based on the knowledge of the divine, and a human will in conformity with the divine will of God.

We are now at the Fourth Sunday in Lent, and we venture forth once more into the wilderness with Our Lord.  But what a difference between the rigor with which he followed his own fast with no pity on himself, as he deprived himself of food and drink for the full forty days, and this time when he does take pity, not on himself but on the multitude.  He gives us a shining example of how we should be hard on ourselves but not on others.  For he saw that the crowd was hungry, and that they could not simply be sent home, as many of them would faint on the way.  Here were five thousand people in need, and Our Lord fed them with five loaves and twelve fishes.

It’s no coincidence that this example of our Lord’s compassion on the people is read just past the half-way point of Lent.  Our merciful mother the Church recognizes the willingness of our spirit and the weakness of our flesh.  She knows better even than we ourselves that we’re being tempted to let go of some of our earlier enthusiasm, our resolutions to fast and do penance.  Perhaps we’re discouraged, tired, losing the courage and fortitude to continue our struggle against our fallen nature.  Losing an hour of sleep last night hasn’t helped any.  And so, on this Laetare Sunday, the Church relaxes her rules for the day.   For one last time before our images and statues are draped with purple for next Sunday’s opening of Passiontide, the Church places the mercy of God before our eyes, as our Lord feeds the fasting multitude.  We are strengthened with the words of today’s Gospel, reminding us that though we might be in the midst of the Great Fast of Lent, nevertheless he provides us with the food of encouragement and renewed vigor.

We’re reminded too of another great leader who led his people into the wilderness.  The entire Hebrew people followed Moses, and like the five thousand in today’s Gospel, they had nothing to eat.  Miraculously, our merciful God sent them Manna from heaven, and the Hebrews were fed not merely for   forty days and forty nights but for the entire forty years as they wandered through the wilderness seeking the Promised Land.  It was only when Moses climbed Mount Sinai to receive the Ten Commandments from God that he did not partake of the Manna, that Bread of Heaven.  Instead he prepared himself for this great event by fasting.  And how long did he fast?  For forty days and forty nights.  Evidently the number forty has great significance for us.

So on this Fourth Sunday in Lent it behooves us to take note that this year there also occurs the Feast of the Forty Holy Martyrs of Sebastopol.  We should take this opportunity to examine what happened to these poor men so that their example may further strengthen us in our Great Lenten Fast.

The Forty Holy Martyrs were Christian soldiers in the army of a pagan emperor.  To try and tempt them to renounce their faith they were made to undress and walk out on to a frozen lake where they would spend the night, or as long as it took for them to either deny their faith or die of the cold.

And as they stood there out on that lake, freezing cold in the dead of winter, they rejoiced in their suffering as today we rejoice this Laetare Sunday in the midst of our Lent.  They rejoiced of course because they had the opportunity to suffer and die for the Christ who suffered and died for them.  But they also rejoiced because their number was forty.  That holy and mystical number, as foreshadowed by the forty days of Our Lord’s fast, the number also of days he chastised the earth when it rained for forty days and forty nights, and all mankind was drowned, save those on Noah’s Ark of Salvation.

Are we discouraged today that Lent is lasting too long?  Look back at these Forty Martyrs – because back on the shore of that lake where they stood dying, their torturers had lit fires to entice them back from their suffering.  Just as the devil tempts us to take that extra meat when we shouldn’t, or to ease off in some other way on our penance.  Just as our poor, weak flesh tempts us to give up on Lent, to shorten those forty days.  These forty holy martyrs could see those fires burning on the shore, and knew they would be given warmth and food and shelter and comfort.  And behold indeed, one of their number betrayed them.  One of these forty decided to shorten his penance.  He walked back to the shore and presented himself to the soldiers guarding the fire.  And sure enough he was allowed to warm himself and save his poor, weak, body.  His soul though?  I’m not so sure he saved his soul.  And what of the other thirty-nine martyrs.  They wept bitterly, no longer able to rejoice that their number was forty, that they were no longer complete.  And then a strange sight.  Back on the shore, inspired by divine grace, one of the guards, seeing that their number was no longer forty, stripped himself, and walked out on to the lake to join the 39 others, declaring himself a Christian, offering himself as a martyr and restoring their number.

Be strengthened by this story.  If, God forbid, you relax your penance for a moment, if you weaken and fall, replace the penance you failed in with another penance.  Let your Lent not be thirty-nine days, but forty.  Let it be complete.