The Discipline of Lent
A Reflection by Deacon Tracy Jamison, OCDS
Rule-following is one of the characteristic activities of the specifically human form of life. The power to follow rules and to be law-abiding is a natural property that resides in our essentially human powers of intellection and volition. It is the source of the beauty of language, culture, grammar, music, art, poetry, logic, understanding, dialectic, wisdom, science, rhetoric, mathematics, ethics, virtue, self-discipline, religion, obedience, liturgy, marriage, fidelity, good manners, good government, and the like. It gives us self-control over our passions and appetites, and it gives us the rule of law. But in order to be sustained, it requires grace. A basic truth about the human condition is that without the grace of God we cannot sustain the human form of life.
Christ came to give us freedom for excellence in keeping the moral law. He did not come to give us freedom from the moral law. To be a Christian is to be law-abiding. Being moral and self-disciplined in cooperation with the grace of God is essential to being holy. Without grace there is only chaos. We all want law and order in our nation, and we all want self-discipline in our personal lives and families, but only by grace can we obtain and sustain such goods. Without grace we are out of control and headed for misery. Without the Sacraments we quickly fall from grace. Without Christ and his Church there are no Sacraments. Christ is the solution to all our fundamental problems.
Do you feel the pang of hunger? Do you feel the desire for pleasure? Do you feel too cold, too hot, or physically uncomfortable? Do you feel the urge to smoke, or to drink, or to gamble? Do you feel the desire to be admired? Do you feel anger about being treated unjustly? Do you feel offended about being neglected? Do you feel sad over the loss of something you loved? Do you feel fear over the uncertainty of the future? If so, then you are in the perfect situation to practice self-denial and to grow in virtue.
Try a radically different approach to dealing with your natural human desires. Let such feelings go unsatisfied, devise a simple rule of self-denial and alms-giving for Lent, and then do your best to follow it. If at first you don’t succeed, ask for God’s grace, and then try and try again. You will find yourself growing in charity and in solidarity with the poor, the hungry, the dying, the grieving, the homeless, the imprisoned, the undocumented, the disadvantaged, the calumniated, the neglected, the forgotten, and the faithful departed.
We must stop living under the tyranny of our passions and appetites, which blinds us to true goodness. The practice of asceticism is the perennial path to spiritual illumination and true happiness, which is obtained by grace and spiritual poverty, self-denial, and virtue, not by possessions, satisfactions, or comforts. Christ is our only hope for lasting virtue. If we do not allow the kingdom of heaven to regulate our passions and appetites, then they will rule us forever.
The only passion and appetite that has the potential to rule all the others is our implicit human desire for union with God. Only Christ and the Sacraments of his Church can fully satisfy that desire, but our own feeble efforts are also essential. We must habitually deny ourselves, take up the Cross, and follow him along the narrow way that leads to everlasting happiness. Every day the burden gets lighter, and the yoke gets easier, and soon we are surprised to find ourselves joyful.
Dr. Tracy Jamison joined the teaching faculty in 2006 as a part-time lecturer and then began teaching full time in 2011. In 2021, he was promoted to the title of Professor of Philosophy. His teaching spans a range of seminary pre-theology courses, including Logic, Philosophy of Nature, Metaphysics, Epistemology, Introduction to Ethics and History of Modern Philosophy. Two of his elective course offerings have been Immanence Apologetics and Carmelite Mysticism.
Dr. Jamison completed his undergraduate work in Ancient Near Eastern Studies at Cincinnati Christian University in 1987, where he met his wife, Joyce. He entered the full communion of the Catholic Church in 1992. He then earned master’s and doctoral degrees in Philosophy from the University of Cincinnati and made his definitive profession as a Secular Carmelite (OCDS) in 2002.
Dr. Jamison was ordained a permanent deacon of the Archdiocese of Cincinnati in 2010.
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