John Henry Newman: Parochial and Plain Sermons, Vol. 6

14 And when He had fasted forty days and forty nights, lie was afterrilHE season of humiliation, which precedes Easter, lasts for forty days, in memory of our Lord's long fast in the wilderness.* Accordingly on this day, the first Sunday in Lent, we read the Gospel which gives an account of it; and in the Collect we pray Him, who for our sakes fasted forty days and forty nights, to bless our abstinence to the good of our souls and bodies.

We fast by way of penitence, and in order to subdue the flesh. Our Saviour had no need of fasting for either purpose. His fasting was unlike ours, as in its intensity, so in its object. And yet when we begin to fast, His pattern is set before us; and we continue the time of fasting till, in number of days, we have equalled His.

There is a reason for this; — in truth, we must do nothing except with Him in our eye. As He it is, through whom alone we have the power to do any good

ward an hungered.

f."— Matt.

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Fasting a Source of Trial.

thing, so unless we do it for Him it is not good. From Him our obedience comes, towards Him it must look He says, " Without Me ye can do nothing 1 ." No work is good without grace and without love.

St. Paul gave up all things "to be found in Christ, not having his own righteousness which is of the law, but the righteousness which is from God upon faith 2 ." Then only are our righteousnesses acceptable when they are done, not in a legal way, but in Christ through faith. Vain were all the deeds of the Law, because they were not attended by the power of the Spirit. They were the mere attempts of unaided nature to fulfil what it ought indeed, but was not able to fulfil. None but the blind and carnal, or those who were in utter ignorance, could find aught in them to rejoice in. What were all the righteousnesses of the Law, what its deeds, even when more than ordinary, its alms and fastings* its disfiguring of faces and afflicting of souls; what was all this but dust and dross, a pitiful earthly service, a miserable hopeless penance, so far as the grace and the presence of Christ were absent? The J ews might humble themselves, but they did not rise in the spirit* while they fell down in the flesh; they might afflict themselves, but it did not turn to their salvation; they might sorrow, but not as always rejoicing; the outward man might perish, but the inward man was not renewed day by day. They had the…