In Seasons of Celebration (1965), a book that contained essays stretching back a decade and a half, Thomas Merton noted that, although the Roman Catholic Church had in the second half of the twentieth century relaxed some of the fasting laws in Lent, the individual Catholic was obliged to practice acts of self-denial and charity in order to "die to himself" and then go on to live in the "Spirit of the Risen Christ." (2) The emphasis upon death in
ascetic theology stemmed from the earliest history of Christianity, as Owen Chadwick pointed out, during which, in the midst of the persecution of Christians, believers fully expected to give their lives in imitation of Christ and in the expectation that the world would soon be coming to an end.