St. Michael's Lent 2026 - Reading #13 - Asceticism
Reading
The family of God has a consolation that cannot deceive — while the mocker asks, “Where is thy God?”
"The whole family of God, most high and most true, has therefore a consolation of its own,--a consolation which cannot deceive, and which has in it a surer hope than the tottering and falling affairs of earth can afford. They will not refuse the discipline of this temporal life, in which they are schooled for life eternal; nor will they lament their experience of it, for the good things of earth they use as pilgrims who are not detained by them, and its ills either prove or improve them."
Pilgrims use goods; ills prove or improve.
Augustine answers the insult: "As for those who insult over them in their trials, and when ills befall them say, 'Where is thy God?' we may ask them where their gods are when they suffer the very calamities for the sake of avoiding which they worship their gods, or maintain they ought to be worshipped; for the family of Christ is furnished with its reply: our God is everywhere present, wholly everywhere; not confined to any place. He can be present unperceived, and be absent without moving; when He exposes us to adversities, it is either to prove our perfections or correct our imperfections; and in return for our patient endurance of the sufferings of time, He reserves for us an everlasting reward."
Asceticism ends in that reward — not in the mocker’s question.
Reflection
Prove or improve. Every hardship that reaches your household arrives with one of those two purposes attached, and often both. The tight month proves what you actually trust. The hard season with a child improves your patience by force. Nothing is wasted on a pilgrim; that is the whole economics of this week's fast. The man who knows this stops asking his trials for explanations and starts asking them for their cargo.
The second week of St. Michael's Lent closes here, and notice what Augustine calls the sufferers: a family. The consolation is not issued to isolated soldiers but to a household with a Father.
As you close this week, gather yours, and tell them plainly what the fire has been teaching: that nothing this world takes from us was ours to keep, and nothing God keeps for us can be taken. That sentence, believed by a father, becomes the load-bearing wall of a home. Next week, the enemy's strategy itself comes into view.