Saint Martin‘s Lent
We are entering into a new liturgical season tonight that was traditionally called Saint Martin‘s Lent or the Forty Days Fast of Saint Martin (Quadragesimal Sancti Martini).
In preparation for the coming of Christ, Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays were observed as fasting days – starting after the feast day of St Martin and lasting until Christmas night. It was a little less intense than the traditional Lenten season – but still very much marked by acts of penance through prayer, fasting, and almsgiving. There could be no better patron for this season than Saint Martin of Tours:
“He was assiduous in prayer. Indeed, we read in his legend that no hour or minute passed which he did not devote either to prayer or to sacred reading. Whether at work or at reading he never took his mind from prayer. (…)
Jacobus de Voragine: The Golden Legend. Readings on the Saints, Princeton University Press 1993, p. 682-683
He lived a very austere life. (…) he usually slept on the floor with only a single hair cloth over him. (…)
There was no limit to his compassion for the poor.“
The bishop of Tours raised the dead and powerfully drove out demons. One day, the devil tried to fool Saint Martin, appearing to him “in the semblance of a king, clothed in purple, wearing a diadem and golden shoes“ (ibid., p. 684). In this fashion he claimed to be Christ and tried to entice Martin to adore him. But Saint Martin, in the power of the Holy Spirit, replied:
“I will not believe that Christ has come unless he is as he was when he suffered, unless he bears the stigmata of the cross!“
Jacobus de Voragine: The Golden Legend. Readings on the Saints, Princeton University Press 1993, p. 684
Fasting on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays during Advent
Festum Sancti Martini was celebrated as one last opulent feast day before the forty days of fasting beginning the following day: people ate goose and drank new wine. Unless the 11th November landed on a Friday – like this year.
Fasting during the Advent season meant to take in only one full and satisfying meal of a simple style on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. A stricter version dating to earlier days and practiced in some regions was to fast throughout all the days of the Advent season and to keep (at least) the aforementioned days as days of abstinence (from meat).
“If you are able to fast, you will do well to observe some abstinence beyond what is enjoined by the Church, for in addition to the ordinary benefits of fasting, namely, lifting up the mind, subduing the flesh, strengthening virtue, and earning an eternal recompense, it is a great matter to be able to command our tastes and inclinations, and to keep the body and its appetites subject to the law of the spirit: and even if we do not fast to any great extent, Satan is the more afraid of those who, he is aware, know how to fast.“
Saint Francis de Sales, Philothea or An Introduction to the Devout Life, TAN Classics, p. 190
Like Lent, the Advent season is a sacred time period we should put to good use. These weeks ahead of the two great festivals – Christmas and the Paschal feast – are surely especially suited for sowing seeds of virtue in our souls. With that soldier of righteousness Saint Martin by our side we can take on the challenge of the spiritual battle of Advent.
Saint Martin, pray for us!
“Blessed Saint, You were born under pagan ways but since your childhood you were chosen to be a Prince of the Church and, as Bishop of Tours, many souls were redeemed and liberated from the satanic forces through your prayers, austerities and blessings.
Prayer to St Martin of Tours
We humbly ask for your intercession before Our Lord Jesus Christ because we want to be worthy of the grace and mercy of the Holy Spirit that lead us from darkness to light into the eternal kingdom, forever and ever. Amen.“