The Modern Catholic Dictionary’s definition of Lent includes the following: “Originally the period of fasting in preparation for Easter did not, as a rule, exceed two or three days. But by the time of the Council of Nicaea (AD 325) forty days were already customary. And ever since, this length of time has been associated with Christ’s forty-day fast in the desert before beginning his public life.”
If you’re a sports fan or if you pay attention to national events, you know about the National Football League (NFL) Kansas City Chiefs’ linebacker who shot and killed his girlfriend last week and then committed suicide. The football player was Jovan Belcher. What caught my attention was the immediate rush to judgment by journalists and commentators in the sports and news media, most of whom wanted to place the blame on. the “gun culture” and the “violent game of football.”
We were all born with a strong tendency toward pride, the mother of all sins. Because of our fallen human nature, we were also born with a tendency toward each of the other root passions of lust, anger, avarice, envy, gluttony, and sloth; furthermore, as a result of the individual unique traits that each of us were born with, combined with the environment we grew up in and our life experiences, we each entered adolescence, and later adulthood, with a predominant tendency toward one of the other six root passions.
Of the seven root passions or sins – pride, lust, anger, avarice, envy, gluttony, and sloth – the most deadly is pride. It was an appeal to pride that persuaded Eve to defy her Creator: “…you shall be as Gods, knowing good and evil.” (Genesis 3:6)
Eve responded, “Of the fruit of the trees that are in paradise we do eat: But of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of paradise, God hath commanded us that we should not eat; and that we should not touch it, lest perhaps we die.” Genesis 3:2-3. Every time a sin is committed, something within us dies. The result of sin is always death. This has been true from the beginning of time.
One Friday afternoon during my first year in law school (1979), while I was sitting in the law library, a girl who was in one of my classes walked over to me and asked, “What is that book you’re reading?” She had seen the title of the book, The Woman Shall Conquer, and was wondering what it was about.