On Lenten Reading.

Mid-Lent, time drags. My nominated charity has acquired so much loot from my mistakes: all curiosities, not hard news. But I’ve kept up my Lenten reading.

            Lent brings slowness: for a portion of the year to contemplate our sorry selves in search of the Way. For Christians, Jesus Christ is both Way and Truth, and this fact takes time in contemplation.

            Lenten reading, spiritual, inspirational, historical or ethical? I’m reading Alberti’s Book of the Family, a 15^th century discussion on the ethics of households. The wife is a child, who shouldn’t, like other ‘little girls’ wave her arms about while chattering with girlfriends, but comport herself with silent dignity before neighbours and servants. She must guard, keep, preserve whatever comes into the house. Men can gesture freely in loud arguments.[1]

            Illiterates have no Latin. Without Latin, you lack rhetoric, eloquence, beauty of expression. You can’t cite the finest authors of antiquity. It’s to be hoped the vernacular will someday catch up.

            Every day rendering thanks to God who in his mercy gives gifts: tranquillity of heart and respect for the family. By my Lenten reading, I see what has been thought: life as it has been lived.   

      

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[1] Albert, Leon Battista, 1404-1472. Renaissance humanist, architect and polymath. Alberti was in Holy Orders; he never married. His own family is said to have laughed at his book, which was written in the vernacular. Today his writings are considered classics of Italian literature.