Septuagesimatide: Slow and steady progress is the Catholic way

Human beings are often awed by dramatic and immediate transformations. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing: the seemingly miraculous turns in someone else often reveal to us possibilities for ourselves that we thought impossible. But, for most things in life (natural and supernatural), a gradual change is often preferable to a drastic one.

Those who go from poverty to riches often very quickly end up back in poverty. One 2011 study of Florida lottery winners showed that for winners who had distressed finances but won between 50 thousand and 150 thousand dollars, bankruptcy was only delayed and not averted in most cases. Craig Brown, who leads a team of business professionals helping more than a hundred professional athletes manage their money, claimed in 2022 that nearly four of five professional athletes go broke within three years of retirement. Neither of these findings are particularly surprising since, in many though not all cases, the determining factor in financial success is the collection of habits developed over time related to work, spending, and saving.

So, too, in terms of health. Many of us need to lose a bit (or more!) of weight. Many doctors and nutritionists will applaud weight loss whether done quickly or slowly, but, as one exercise physiologist I read puts it, “Quick fixes typically don’t last, as many people revert back to old habits soon after shedding the pounds.”

No doubt there are certain situations where something drastic is required. Addictions to dangerous drugs sometimes require the immediate and permanent cessation of the habit. But when it comes to our overall physical or financial health, it seems, it is usually not immediate and visible results but the development of habits that matters. Slow, less drastic changes often work better in this realm than big shifts.

This is why, when you go on a retreat, the retreat master will often emphasize the importance of developing in your prayer a few concrete, reasonable resolutions that you can begin to work on in your life. What is important, however, is that these resolutions be indeed few, concrete, and reasonable.

They need to be few because attempting to completely overhaul your life immediately in every area is usually a mistake since you will no doubt be overwhelmed by the many areas of temptation and weakness the Lord does not simply take away from you or miraculously cause you to conquer.

The resolutions need to be concrete and reasonable because over-broad, vague, or impossible resolutions are too easy for us to sneak around. In his classic book about the sacrament of penance, Pardon and Peace, Fr. Alfred Wilson wrote about penitents who make such big promises after confessing their venial sins: “Vague resolutions leave a large loophole for subconscious self-deception; for example, a vague resolution to be kind to everyone may easily overlook the one person about whom it should principally revolve, i.e. that person at home or in the office who is really difficult and gets on everybody’s nerves.”

The key is responding to the grace of the Holy Spirit in such a way that we recognize both how patient God is and how he wants to lead us, step by step, to perfection. If we are really sorry for our sins, whether grave or venial, and truly bothered by our faults, then it is important that we realize that God is often providing us with a next step that we need to focus on. When we become obsessed with becoming perfect right now, we become bitter when it doesn’t happen right away and often stop moving. Better to be humble and follow the Lord on a slow path to perfection than become angry that we can’t become perfect instantly and give up. The Protestant spiritual writer Eugene Peterson was not wrong when he described Christian discipleship as “a long obedience in the same direction.” The question is not how quickly we get there, but whether we keep going in that same direction.

As it is for our life as a whole, so it is for those periods designated in the Church year for more intensive obedience. We often get to the end of a retreat and only then find ourselves acclimated to the silence and praying. We often get to the end of Lent and only then find ourselves used to the extra prayers or penances we have resolved upon. This can be mortifying in the ordinary sense of the word—we’re ashamed at how little we’ve let the Lord do in us and how long it’s taken. But if we take accept this properly, it can be mortifying in the theological sense—we can be humble about ourselves and thank God that He has been faithful even if we have been slow and recalcitrant. We can be thankful that he has brought us this far at all and intends to take us further.

All of this suggests something about how we might approach the season of Lent coming up next month. The month of February is, for those in the modern Roman Rite (or Novus Ordo), all categorized as part of Ordinary Time. But for Catholics on the older Roman Rite, Byzantine, and Anglican Ordinariate calendars, there is kept the tradition of a gradual progression into Lent.

In the Western rites, it’s usually called Septuagesimatide, so called because it starts roughly seventy days before Easter (the number is symbolic more than exact). It starts three weeks before Ash Wednesday and is often known as Pre-Lent. The details are different depending on which liturgical calendar one is talking about, but in both East and West, this season actually begins the season of penitential practices by introducing them in smaller doses.

The goal here is to warm ourselves up, so to speak, with our ascetical exercises—always increasing the amount of prayer and the amount of sacrifice we make. Even if many of us aren’t on a calendar that includes this warm-up period, it might be worth considering what we’re going to do when Lent comes and to start making progress toward that goal in the month of February. If our aim is to attend Mass daily, we can start going three or four times a week. If it is to give a higher percentage of our income to the Church or a charity, we can start bumping it up a bit more in the weeks before Lent starts.

My UST-Houston colleague, Chorbishop Andrew Younan, a Chaldean Catholic priest, likes to say, “God works slowly and quietly.” If we are to be God’s co-workers, as St. Paul says (1 Cor 3:9), we need to learn to work with Him at the pace he sets. He isn’t as much concerned with how fast we move as how thoroughly we learn how to move as He does and to His rhythm.

Let’s make this time leading to Lent, whether it’s called Ordinary Time or not, a time of making slow and steady progress an ordinary part of our spiritual life.

(Reprinted with permission from The Catholic Servant.)