In the traditional liturgy of Lent, each ferial day has a deep historical root connected to the system of stational churches in Rome, organized mainly by Popes Saint Gregory the Great and Saint Leo the Great. Tuesday of the second week of Lent has its station designated at the ancient basilica of Santa Balbina, located on the small Aventine hill. The choice of this stational church is not random, but reflects the spirit of penance and pilgrimage of early Christian Rome, where the Pope, the clergy, and the people gathered daily to walk in procession singing litanies to the sacred site of the day, in order to celebrate the Eucharistic sacrifice over the relics of the martyrs. Saint Balbina, virgin and martyr of the 2nd century, daughter of the tribune Quirinus, converted to Christianity and embraced the crown of martyrdom, becoming an emblem of Lenten purification through the shedding of her own blood out of love for Christ. The pilgrimage to this sanctuary served to remind the catechumens preparing for baptism, and the public penitents seeking reconciliation, that true conversion requires the total sacrifice of oneself. The Lenten ferial structure prior to 1950 preserves intact this spatial and spiritual pedagogy, where the urban geography of Rome is transformed into a vast open-air reliquary, teaching that the journey toward Easter is sustained by the merit and intercession of the holy martyrs who preceded us with the sign of faith.
🎵 Introit (Ps 26, 8 and 9 | ib., 1)
Tibi dixit cor meum, quæsívi vultum tuum. vultum tuum, Dómine, requíram: ne avértas fáciem tuam a me. Ps. Dóminus illuminátio mea, et salus mea: quem timébo?
My heart says to You: I seek Your face, Lord, I will seek Your presence; do not hide Your face from me. Ps. The Lord is my Light and my Salvation; whom shall I fear?
📜 Epistle (3 Kings 17, 8-16)
In diébus illis: Factus est sermo Dómini ad Elíam Thesbíten, dicens: Surge et vade in Saréphta Sidoniórum, et manébis ibi: præcépi enim ibi mulíeri víduæ, ut pascat te. Surréxit et ábiit in Saréphta. Cumque venísset ad portam civitátis, appáruit ei múlier vídua cólligens ligna, et vocávit eam, dixítque ei: Da mihi páululum aquæ in vase, ut bibam. Cumque illa pérgeret, ut afférret, clamávit post tergum eius, dicens: Affer mihi, óbsecro, et buccéllam panis in manu tua. Quæ respóndit: Vivit Dóminus, Deus tuus, quia non habeo panem, nisi quantum pugíllus cápere potest farínæ in hýdria, et páululum ólei in lécytho: en, collige duo ligna, ut ingrédiar, et fáciam illum mihi et fílio meo, ut comedámus et moriámur. Ad quam Elías ait: Noli timére, sed vade, et fac, sicut dixísti: verúmtamen mihi primum fac de ipsa farínula subcinerícium panem párvulum, et affer ad me: tibi autem et fílio tuo fácies póstea. Hæc autem dicit Dóminus, Deus Israël: Hýdria farínæ non defíciet, nec lécythus ólei minuétur, usque ad diem, in qua Dóminus datúrus est plúviam super fáciem terræ. Quæ ábiit, et fecit iuxta verbum Elíæ: et comédit ipse et illa et domus eius: et ex illa die hýdria farínæ non defécit, et lécythus ólei non est imminútus, iuxta verbum Dómini, quod locútus fúerat in manu Elíæ.
In those days, the word of the Lord came to Elijah the Tishbite, saying: Arise, go to Sarephta of the Sidonians, and dwell there: for I have commanded a widow woman there to sustain you. Elijah arose and went to Sarephta. And when he came to the gate of the city, he saw a widow woman gathering wood. He called her, and said to her: Give me a little water in a vessel, that I may drink. And when she was going to fetch it, he called after her, saying: Bring me also, I beseech you, a morsel of bread in your hand. And she answered: As the Lord your God lives, I have no bread; I have only a handful of meal in a pot, and a little oil in a cruse. Behold, I am gathering two sticks that I may go in and prepare it for me and my son, that we may eat it, and die. And Elijah said to her: Fear not, but go, and do as you have said: but first make for me of the same meal a little hearth cake, and bring it to me; and afterward make for yourself and your son. For thus says the Lord the God of Israel: The pot of meal shall not fail, nor the cruse of oil be diminished, until the day wherein the Lord will give rain upon the face of the earth. She went and did according to the word of Elijah: and he ate, and she, and her whole household. And from that day, the pot of meal failed not, and the cruse of oil was not diminished, according to the word of the Lord, which He spoke by the mouth of Elijah.
📖 Gospel (Mt 23, 1-12)
In illo témpore: Locútus est Iesus ad turbas et ad discípulos suos, dicens: Super cáthedram Moysi sedérunt scribæ et pharisǽi. Omnia ergo, quæcúmque díxerint vobis, serváte et fácite: secúndum ópera vero eórum nolíte fácere: dicunt enim, et non fáciunt. Alligant enim ónera grávia et importabília, et impónunt in húmeros hóminum: dígito autem suo nolunt ea movére. Omnia vero ópera sua fáciunt, ut videántur ab homínibus: dilátant enim phylactéria sua, et magníficant fímbrias. Amant autem primos recúbitus in cenis, et primas cáthedras in synagógis, et salutatiónes in foro, et vocári ab homínibus Rabbi. Vos autem nolíte vocári Rabbi: unus est enim Magíster vester, omnes autem vos fratres estis. Et patrem nolíte vocáre vobis super terram, unus est enim Pater vester, qui in cœlis est. Nec vocémini magístri: quia Magíster vester unus est, Christus. Qui maior est vestrum, erit miníster vester. Qui autem se exaltáverit, humiliábitur: et qui se humiliáverit, exaltábitur.
At that time, Jesus spoke to the multitudes and to His disciples, saying: The scribes and the Pharisees have sat on the chair of Moses. All things therefore whatsoever they shall say to you, observe and do. But do not act according to their works; for they say, and do not do. For they bind heavy and insupportable burdens, and lay them on men's shoulders; but with a finger of their own they will not move them. And all their works they do to be seen by men. For they make their phylacteries broad, and enlarge their fringes. And they love the first places at feasts, and the first chairs in the synagogues, and salutations in the marketplace, and to be called masters by men. But be not you called masters. For one is your Master; and all you are brothers. And call no man your father upon the earth; for one is your Father, Who is in heaven. Neither be you called masters; for one is your Master, Christ. He who is the greatest among you shall be your servant. And whosoever shall exalt himself shall be humbled, and he who humbles himself shall be exalted.
✨ The search for the divine face through charity and humility
The Introit antiphon of this liturgy places on our lips the essential cry of the penitent soul: "I seek Your face, Lord". Finding the face of God requires the purification of the inner gaze, something frontally opposed to the attitude of the Pharisees denounced in the Gospel. Pharisaical hypocrisy consists in substituting the search for God's gaze with the eager search for the gaze of men. Saint John Chrysostom, in his Homilies on the Gospel of Saint Matthew (Homily 72), warns that vainglory is a tyrannical passion that steals the merit of all virtues, transforming piety into mere theater. The Lord does not condemn the authority of the Chair of Moses, but the terrible dissonance between the taught word and the lived life. To contemplate the face of the Only Master, Christ, the soul must descend the steps of self-exaltation and put on the condition of a servant, understanding that true greatness in the Kingdom of Heaven is not measured by the fringes of one's garments or by the titles flaunted, but by the depth of obedience and voluntary self-annihilation out of love for the brethren.
The true disposition to attract the divine gaze and providence is revealed in a sublime way in the Epistle, through the figure of the widow of Sarephta. While the Pharisees accumulate power and attention, the widow surrenders the sustenance of her own life. She is on the verge of death by starvation, possessing only a handful of flour and a few drops of oil, but before the word of the prophet Elijah, she practices the supreme sacrifice of charity. Saint Augustine, reflecting on this mystery (Sermon 11), teaches that that woman, by offering material food to the prophet, was reaping the seed of spiritual grace. She did not trust in the tangible security of her scarce goods, but placed her absolute faith in the word of the Lord directed to her. Her material indigence became the receptacle of the immeasurable miracle, for the flour of her faith did not fail and the oil of her charity did not run dry. She found the face of the invisible God by welcoming the man of God with a generosity that surpassed the attachment to her own earthly life.
The union of these two liturgical realities teaches us that the encounter with the Lord, supplicated in the Introit, is only realized at the intersection between the abandonment of oneself and the surrender to the other. The presumption of the Pharisees blinds them to the presence of God, for they are full of themselves and of the desire for worldly glory. In contrast, the widow of Sarephta, emptied of resources and selfishness, becomes the perfect model of the Lenten soul that humbles itself to the dust and, therefore, is exalted by miraculous providence. To seek the face of God is, therefore, to accept that true wisdom does not dwell in the first chairs of the synagogues, but in the silence of a poor home in Sarephta, where the little one has, when given with oblative love, becomes the inexhaustible source of grace that will lead us, purified of all vanity, to the joys of eternal Easter.