In the Prayer over the People, the priest prays that “by observing the age-old disciplines along their pilgrim journey, may they (your people) merit to come and behold you forever.”
I find this language disturbing in its suggestion in that the wording suggests that the discipline of Lent will merit salvation which is not the faith of our Church.
The Council of Trent decreed that “though He (Jesus) died for all, yet do not all receive the benefit of His death, but those only unto whom the merit of His passion is communicated” and that “in that new birth, there is bestowed upon them, through the merit of His passion, the grace whereby they are made just.” (Session Six, Chapter 3)
The Council goes on to say: “Having, therefore, been thus justified, and made the friends and domestics of God, advancing from virtue to virtue, they are renewed, as the Apostle says, day by day; that is, by mortifying the members of their own flesh, and by presenting them as instruments of justice unto sanctification, they, through the observance of the commandments of God and of the Church, faith co-operating with good works, increase in that justice which they have received through the grace of Christ, and are still further justified.” (Session Six, Chapter 10)
Our Lenten discipline has an important role in cooperating with the grace of God and enabling that grace to increase within us. However, the Prayer Over the People lacks any such nuance.
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