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Saturday, April 8, 2023

AN EASTER RESOLUTION: Bring Back the 3-Hour Fast

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AN EASTER RESOLUTION: Bring Back the 3-Hour Fast

I wish every reader of The Remnant a blessed Eastertide. This feast more than any other, serves to remind us that as dark as our predicament is today, it was still darker for the first Christians at the very birth of Christianity. The Feast of the Resurrection calls to mind that even as the Third Day was imminent then, when Christ hung from the Cross two thousand years ago, so too is the Third Day imminent for us. We just need to resolve to keep the Faith as they did, and to follow Magdalene from the Cross to the Tomb.

 

Do we have what it takes to do that? I think we’ll soon find out. And if we wish to pass that test, we should probably brace ourselves for something so terrible that no Christian since Calvary has seen anything like it.

Again, do we have what it takes?

In the Easter 2023 print edition of The Remnant newspaper, I made a small suggestion that I think may be of some help to the clans of Christendom as they make themselves ready.  And I’d like to share that with online readers of The Remnant, as well.

So, here goes: For the moment, Christ is still with us in the unbloody Sacrament of Calvary; Francis is trying to snuff out our sanctuary lamps but, as of yet, many of us still have the Latin Mass. Still, being in denial serves no good purpose since, obviously, history is repeating itself. The Betrayer is approaching, and The Master may soon be taken away in chains again. Soon enough, as the Latin Mass is criminalized, we may find ourselves in upper rooms, hiding for “fear of the Jews” – and the Romans. 

Scripture tells us that on Holy Thursday, the night the Son of God was arrested in the Garden of Gethsemane, He asked His very closest friends to watch and pray with Him one last time, even as the soldiers, guided by The Betrayer, moved through the night to lay hands on Him. 

Again, time will tell. But we are not without guidance on how to proceed. Scripture tells us that on Holy Thursday, the night the Son of God was arrested in the Garden of Gethsemane, He asked His very closest friends to watch and pray with Him one last time, even as the soldiers, guided by The Betrayer, moved through the night to lay hands on Him. 

In other words, prayer and vigilance still matter. 

“And Jesus saith to Peter: Simon, sleepest thou? Couldst thou not watch one hour? Watch ye, and pray that you enter not into temptation. The spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak. And he cometh the third time, and saith to them: Sleep ye now, and take your rest. It is enough: the hour is come: behold the Son of man shall be betrayed into the hands of sinners. Rise up, let us go. Behold, he that will betray me is at hand.” (Matthew 14:37)

Who is The Betrayer today? Yes, I understand, the most pious among us will remind us that we are the betrayer, since we are sinners. The reality is a bit more complex than that. Christ established a hierarchical Church which as part of a revolution against Christ the King, has been infiltrated and has subsequently betrayed us all. The sheep have been scattered because the shepherd has been struck. And it is no fault of ours that confusion and apostasy now set the stage for worldwide Tenebrae.

The hireling shepherds stole the Truth away from us, but we had no part in their apostasy.

“What is truth,” Pilate mockingly asks the captive Jesus Christ. Today, many of our bishops (including the Bishop of Rome) seem to be asking us the same question, and in the same derisive tone: “What is truth, O ye rigid Traditional Catholics who would throw your stones from the seat of Moses?!” 

Is Francis Judas the Betrayer, or is he Peter the Denier? We’ll find out soon enough. But what is certain is that Team Francis is plotting the betrayal of the Mystical Body of Christ.

Francis’ loathing for the Truth of Tradition is abundantly manifest, as he leads a lost world in a singularly unimportant crusade against climate change. But, Francis, what about the global campaign to change the City of God into the City of Man? What about the Revolution that would cancel the social Kingship of Jesus Christ, Francis? What of that Truth?

Is Francis Judas the Betrayer, or is he Peter the Denier? We’ll find out soon enough. But what is certain is that Team Francis is plotting the betrayal of the Mystical Body of Christ. They have already undermined Christian marriage in Amoris Laetitia. And now they are moving to undermine what’s left of the Mass by ordaining women and abolishing the all-male priesthood.

Francis says that his bishops—the Successors of the Apostles—should decide on their own whether or not to bless so-called “gay unions.”  Last week, one of Francis’s chief advisors, Cardinal Jean-Claude Hollerich, told the world that he believes the Vatican needs to relax the Church’s prohibition of “gay sex,” arguing that the Church “must not ask the impossible” of homosexuals when it comes to the sin that “cries to Heaven for vengeance.”

In other words, Team Francis is engaging in a blitzkrieg against Christian moral theology – and this while initiating a spiritual holocaust against Traditional Latin Mass Catholics the world over. 

Who is The Betrayer…?

But our consolation is that this has all happened before, and yet our fathers and mothers in the old Faith continued to follow Christ anyway. Judas betrayed Him, Peter denied Him, and the only act of collegiality recorded in the Bible took place in the Garden when the first bishops “all fled,” leaving Jesus alone and in chains.

No historical event offers us more hope than does this, because it reminds us that no matter what happens, the Church that The Betrayer is trying to destroy will rise again.

And yet today, more than two thousand years later, we continue to celebrate the triumph of Jesus Christ over death, regardless of the weakness of the first pope and bishops of a Catholic Church composed of both a divine and a human element… obviously.

So, no historical event offers us more hope than does this, because it reminds us that no matter what happens, the Church that The Betrayer is trying to destroy will rise again. The question is what do we do in the meantime? Those of us who dare to hope to be numbered among the friends of Jesus who will be asked to watch with Him, have a duty to stay awake – but maybe for more than just one hour.

Here is my proposal: At the very least, let’s bring back the three-hour Eucharistic fast. Many traditional Catholics still fast from midnight onwards as was called for by the 1917 Code of Canon Law. Others observe the three-hour fast mandated by the reforms of Pope Pius XII in the 1950s. What is certain is that fasting from food and drink before Holy Communion is an essential discipline that dates back to at least the 3rd century. Tertullian, for example, (d. AD 240) writes about the fast in his Ad uxorem 11.5.  It was essentially a continuation of the Jewish fasting traditions which dated back even further before the time of Christ.

In the wake of Pope Paul VI’s disastrous decision to relax the Eucharistic fast to just one hour, most Catholics lost sight of any fasting requirement at all, even despite Canon 919 of the Code of Canon Law of 1983 which stipulates “at least one hour” fasting from food and drink. Like Paul VI’s “reformed” Friday abstinence requirement, however, the Communion fast was buried beneath debris from one of the time bombs of Vatican II. 

But what about us? Can we watch and wait for just three hours? I suggest a worldwide effort to restore the three-hour fast at the very least and starting right away.

But what about us? Can we watch and wait for just three hours? I suggest a worldwide effort to restore the three-hour fast at the very least and starting right away. Let us do this in reparation for the outrages, sacrileges, and indifference with which He is offended in the Blessed Sacrament, as well as in petition that Christ will remain with us a little while longer in the tabernacles of the Latin Mass. Perhaps through this small sacrifice we may even feel emboldened to beg Our Lord to make us worthy to “watch with Him” now so that we may be honored to stand with Him at the foot of the Cross. 

This is a little thing, but it’s something we can all do – children, large families, even the elderly—together and united in a demonstration of fealty to Our Blessed Lord, that through this gesture He may see that our spirit is indeed willing and that we will never abandon Him even if on occasion we might need His gentle reprimand to wake up and watch with Him.

Until then, Christ has risen as He said, Alleluia! Let us be glad and rejoice. Happy Easter.

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Last modified on Saturday, April 8, 2023
Michael J. Matt | Editor

Michael J. Matt has been an editor of The Remnant since 1990. Since 1994, he has been the newspaper's editor. A graduate of Christendom College, Michael Matt has written hundreds of articles on the state of the Church and the modern world. He is the host of The Remnant Underground and Remnant TV's The Remnant Forum. He's been U.S. Coordinator for Notre Dame de Chrétienté in Paris--the organization responsible for the Pentecost Pilgrimage to Chartres, France--since 2000.  Mr. Matt has led the U.S. contingent on the Pilgrimage to Chartres for the last 24 years. He is a lecturer for the Roman Forum's Summer Symposium in Gardone Riviera, Italy. He is the author of Christian Fables, Legends of Christmas and Gods of Wasteland (Fifty Years of Rock ‘n’ Roll) and regularly delivers addresses and conferences to Catholic groups about the Mass, home-schooling, and the culture question. Together with his wife, Carol Lynn and their seven children, Mr. Matt currently resides in St. Paul, Minnesota.