The First Sunday of Lent 2024

Truly it is fitting and just, meet and profitable to salvation, that we should give Thee thanks always and everywhere, o Lord, holy Father, almighty and everlasting God, through Christ our Lord: Who for forty continual days and nights dedicated this fast without hungering. For “afterwards He was hungry”, (i.e. not before: Matt. 4, 2), not for the food of men, but for their salvation; nor did He long for the feasts of wordly foods, but rather, He desired the sanctity of souls. For His food is the redemption of the peoples, His food is the disposition of the whole will, as He taught us to labor not for the food that is set forth in earthly banquets, but that which is received in the reading of the divine Scripture. And therefore... (an ancient preface for the First Sunday of Lent, largely based on a homily of St Maximus of Turin (38, de Quadragesima II; PL 57, 309D et seq.))

Christ in the Desert, ca. 1515-20, by the Italian painter Alessandro Bonvicino (ca. 1498 – 1554), generally known as “Moretto da Brescia – the Little Moor from Brescia.” (Public domain image from Wikimedia Commons.) 

VD: Qui continuatis quadraginta diebus et noctibus hoc ieiunium non esuriens dedicavit. Postea enim esuriit, non tam cibum hominum quam salutem. Nec escarum saecularium epulas concupivit, sed animarum desideravit potius sanctitatem. Cibus enim eius est redemptio populorum, cibus eius est totius voluntatis affectus, qui nos docuit operari non cibum qui terrenis dapibus apparatur, sed qui divinarum Scripturarum lectione percipitur. Et ideo.