Dear Friend, 

Reflection by Fr. Douglas Milewski, S.T.D.

The Fat Time of the Year

They didn’t have Advent in the earliest centuries of the Church.  It probably didn’t appear until close to the 6th century.  But even without the season proper, the month of December offered special meaning to the faithful.  In the longer growing season of the Mediterranean climate, mid-December followed close upon the harvest.  It was a time of great abundance, the “fat” time of the year, and Pope Leo the Great (reigned 440-461) knew exactly what it called for.

Each mid-December the Church marked several days of fasting, what came to be called Ember Days.  Given the special circumstances that accompanied the December fast, though, the Pope realized the Lord was providing an occasion for more than the usual penitential exercise.  Amidst the bounty of God’s earth, it was a time to imitate God’s love like none other, bestowed upon the one creature who bore the Creator’s image and likeness.  God gave the days and God gave the goods by which His image could be re-fashioned as He truly is, that is, in love.  “He gives us the very means by which we can perform the works that we do, so that we might love not only Him but also whatever He loves (Ser. 12.1).”

God’s abundance that surrounded the Christian meant, therefore, he or she had to practice a corresponding largesse by sharing such bounty.  But how far should it extend?  Here, too, Pope Leo minced no words.  “The broad scope of Christian grace extends to every part of the whole earth, despairing of no one and teaching that no one must be left out (Ser. 12.2).”

This was truly jejunium gaudiosum, “joyous fasting”.  It was fasting to make others full, in imitation of the love of God.

Jump ahead sixteen centuries and the same time of the year is far “fatter” in our America than Pope Leo’s Rome could ever have imagined.  From Thanksgiving to Christmas, we rejoice in an abundance of God’s gifts vaster than our forebearers in the Faith knew.  Not just food from the land, but countless other material goods, means of communication, means of reaching out to others, means of healing bodies and souls.  Rightly does God’s grace despair of no one, leaving no one out.  Rightly, then, might we rejoice, because we have an unparalleled chance to imitate God with gifts limited only by our imagination and creativity, an abundance He has poured into our hands to mirror Him in our own days.

Fasting to the full.  The fasting that makes others full.  That glorifies God to the full.     

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Fr. Douglas Milewski, S.T.D., Associate Professor of Undergraduate Theology, earned an S.T.B. in Theology from the Pontifical Gregorian University, Rome, and an S.T.L. and an S.T.D. in Patristic Sciences and Theology from the Institutum Patristicum Augustinianum of the Pontifical Lateran University, Rome. His doctoral dissertation is titled “‘Nos Locus Dei Sumus.’ Augustine’s Exegesis and Theology of John 17 in the Light of In Evangelium Ioannis Tractatus CIV-CXI.” Father Milewski’s specializations include the theology, literature and history of early Christianity and the Fathers of the Church, in particular, Saint Augustine.