Today's reading from the handbook was really about the unfortunate consequences of fallen human nature. As the reading points out, we tend to start things with new enthusiasm, but our fervor tapers off over time and, eventually, an unfortunate "business as usual" routine creeps into all our endeavors, even those that we do for God. The examples of this kind of devolution in the life and history of the Church are too numerous to enumerate, but we can give just a few examples and see what we can learn from these examples.
First of all, we see that at the very beginning of the monastic movement, in late 3rd and early 4th century Egypt, there was great fervor that animated first St. Antony and then those who decided to follow him into the far desert. In those early years, the great monastic foundations of Nitria, Kellia and Scetis (modern-day Wadi al-Natrun) came suddenly into being, and before long had hundreds of inhabitants. Those first generations of monks lived a very strict life with great self-imposed restrictions on shelter, diet and clothing. By the end of the century and the beginning of the 5th century, the "old-timers" can be heard complaining that the original fervor had disappeared. Monks, who in old times had been famous for eating only once a week, now took meals every day and some more than once a day. Cells that were originally one simple room had been elaborated into complexes numbering as many as four or five rooms, not counting outbuildings. Early monks walked for great distances to fill containers with water from the river or, in the case of Scetis, at the marsh. Later monks became accustomed to building their cells closer and closer to the water (and thus closer and closer to the inhabited world that the original monks had set out to flee). The "old-timers" became pessimistic about the future of monasticism, even at the most fervent location at Scetis. A prophetic proverb came to be commonly said: "When you see cells at the edge of the marsh, know that the destruction of Scetis is at hand." The prophecy did in fact come true in 454. Bedouin raiders came out of the desert and massacred the monks in Scetis.
Since we are talking about Egypt, we can also point to an example of the same phenomenon that comes from the Nile valley itself. At the very beginning of Coptic Christianity, it was the custom that the Holy Liturgy was not offered unless all of the Hours had been completed before it. In those days of great fervor, this meant reciting the entire Psalter (all 150 Psalms of David) every day. Contemporarily, the principle still exists in the Coptic Liturgy that it is necessary to complete the Psalter before the start of the Mass. So, a deacon will come out of the sanctuary hold a card with the numbers of the psalms appointed for each Hour printed on it. He will go to each person and assign to him and or her a psalm. Then, each person, individually, takes his or her book and reads the psalm in a low voice, at the same time that all the others are reading their psalms. Thus, the psalms are completed and the service can continue.
Nevertheless, we need not go as far as Egypt for examples of this same phenomenon. When we go to confession, and the priest assigns to us a penance of perhaps a few Our Fathers and Hail Mary's, it would be well for us to remember the heroic penances that people did in the past for the same things or similar things to those that we just confessed. The lightest penance that we know of from those days was what is commonly referred to as a quarantine, because it lasted forty days.
So, the question naturally follows: how do we keep our fervor alive? How do we resist the temptation to build our cell near the marsh, figuratively speaking? The handbook is telling us that we can avoid the slide into lukewarm complacency by changing officers regularly. But what about individually? How do we maintain the saltiness of our Christian life? For this, there is no substitute to deliberately making ourselves uncomfortable, even if quite gratuitously. Is there something we enjoy that is perfectly legitimate? Give it up for the sake of the Kingdom. Then, when you're used to being without it, bring it back. Our assignment is to lovingly imitate a crucified God. We have to realize that we can't do that when we're comfortable. I think of the saying of Saint Thomas More: "You would be surprised how many people think it possible to ascend to Heaven on featherbeds."
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