Also on 40

Elsewhere in Scripture, we find the number 40 used differently. It highlights the unfolding revelation of God: God revealing Himself to humanity.

• Moses fasted 40 days on Mt. Sinai, while meeting God.
  
• Elias fasted 40 days before arriving at Mt. Horeb, where he would meet God.
• Jesus Christ fasted 40 days (after His baptism), but before the tempting and the beginning of His ministry ... where humanity met God made flesh.
  

These incidences - the two pivotal Old Testament moments and Christ's fast in the desert - seem to address the other side of Lent. Not Lent as the suffering before rebirth, before salvation, but Lent as preparation to meet God.

- V.

On Holy Childbearing

A pregnancy lasts 40 weeks.

I was recently made aware of the resonance (?) between the 40 weeks of pregnancy, the 40 years the Israelites spent in the desert, the 40 days that the flood was upon the earth, and the 40 days of Lent.

Did God arrange pregnancy to resemble these other, or these other to resemble pregnancy?

But look at this:

• The flood was "40 days upon the earth" before those that were saved could walk the renewed earth.
• Israel suffered 40 years before crossing the Jordan into Canaan.
• A woman suffers 40 weeks before the breaking of waters and a child is birthed into new life.
• The Church suffers through the (nominal) 40 days of Lent before descending into the tomb with Christ and emerging into Paschal new life.
  

This connection between pregnancy and salvation (the world's, Israel's or ours) seems to be what St. Paul is driving at when he says a woman may be saved by childbearing. Not that all will - nor will all benefit from Lent. But for the one that correctly appropriates Lent, Lent is salvific. So too with regard to pregnancy and childbearing.

- V.

Leading Up to Lent

(Of course, it is Lent now.)

In the weeks leading up to Lent, I found myself wanting to calm my soul a little, to back away from the sorrows and the tragedies against which I have been railing recently ... so too those I haven't yet addressed but which simmer on my back burner regardless.

Calm. A chance for quiet and reflection.

A chance to sit down and hammer out what exactly it is I hope to do here. What Vox clamanti is all about. Why we need to have a voice on the Internet. Because there are certainly many others already speaking.

More to come soon.

In the meantime, may you have a blessed Lent. May you have a chance to escape the tyranny of selfishness and pride. May you find Christ this Lent ... in the fast, in prayer, and in acts of self-emptying kindness.

And pray for me, that I may experience the same.

- V.