by prof. Trident Cosmo.
.
. As every year the Church during the Lenten Season, invites all Christians to fast and abstinence in order to live more intensely the paschal mystery.
Today, we know, fasting is discovered for several reasons. It 's a measure healthy for our bodies weighed down by consumerist attitude become increasingly evident in rich countries: as you eat more than is required by the body, then in the name of aesthetics and physical well-being going for diets and fasts. Still, there is one who fasts for political reasons, fasting is so ostentatious and shown, very eloquently made by the media as an instrument of pressure and struggle.
this time of fasting should not be blamed, but rather as to reflect and bring out clearly the specificity of Christian fasting. Fasting and abstinence, along with prayer, almsgiving and other works of charity, belong always to the penitential practices of the Church: these, in fact, the permanent need Christian's conversion to the kingdom of God, asking forgiveness for sins, imploring the aid of God, of thanksgiving and praise to the Father. To do this we need to know how to say 'no', do the work of resistance and struggle, to know how to defeat something even if all this good life and not just in terms of thought, but also with the body.
Speaking of fasting, I wish to bring some noterelle history, written by prof. Giuseppe Poli, Professor of Modern History at the University of Bari, who dutifully thank you.
In 1537 he was invited to a Lenten preacher site (the learned and talented speaker, with its compelling and persuasive arguments, explaining Lent through an uncommon eloquence) which resulted in the Municipality of Molfetta a charge of about 10 ducats. Based on current prices at the time, that amount was equivalent to the value of a quarter of a vineyard with olive trees-almond trees: that is the best quality of land that could then be traded. The amount claimed for the Lenten season was all-encompassing as was necessary for his stay, from wood to heat the food for subsistence. A glance at the statement of charges, one is struck by the frugality of the diet which he was subjected throughout the period of Lent. With regular monotony of her two daily meals consisted of a portion of oily fish (for mostly sardines), some 'bread (not always wheat) and vegetables (lettuce, fennel, tops, etc..) all washed down with a modest amount of wine. This diet was started on February 14, Ash Wednesday, and ended only at Easter that year fell on 1 April. Only at that time our Lenten preacher had a chance to change his meal and he was offered the kid meat, eggs and cheese, as well as the usual quantity of wine. For on Easter Monday he still ate eggs and cheese, and so in the following days, alternating the eggs to the meat, until next Thursday when they probably departed from Molfetta.
As frugal, treatment reserved for the preacher must not forget that still represented a privileged position that many of his contemporaries will certainly have envied. If the simplicity of the diet was required by common religious and ecclesiastical status, it should be pointed out that fasting and abstinence were the permanent condition in a society that was measured daily with food problems.
Fortunately, not all touched the same fate and some evaded the fate of poor nutrition and inadequate. So between papers kept in local archives, prof. Poly has been able to read a joker that during Lent he had broken the traditional abstinence from meat. The incident reported by an unspecified Adurno Don Scaturro, who, for relief (his) conscience ", claims to have learned that such an expert Telemachus had been seen magna a piñata de turd (thrush) during Lent of 1606 ". To emphasize the desire of the protagonist deliberately transgressive, the reporter says that "said Telemachus not only havea tycoon turd but likewise an omelette of eggs" (sic).
do not know the end of this episode. But, given the rigid discipline of the Church in those days and some references in the document, we can assume that the unwary Telemachus certainly incurred some inconvenience. The Scaturro recalls, in fact, the odyssey of a relative who was accused of having practiced witchcraft, had to travel unnecessarily to Andria Bari and to obtain absolution.
More fortunate, however, was the Archpriest Fr Marcello de Luca, who, in truth, it broke the prohibitions of Lent, but it relates to Easter lunch at the sake of completeness, "This Don Marcello - writes in his chronicle a bit 'the almost gossipy peer Canon Jerome Visagie - of good conversation was man will, of great lepidezza, particularly in the game, the month of April, there was a good and having Tabola a large contract in indigestion pasca year 1710, mocking, mocking, passed in a better life ".
"That's often the world," would say Alessandro Manzoni (Cap.VIII).
.
* Text by the prof. Trident Cosmo.
* Picture taken from the web.
0 comments:
Post a Comment