Welcome to Lent! This week begins the 40-day period of prayer, penance and sacrifice that leads up to the celebration of Easter. Catholics and Christians of many denominations around the world ate, drank and made merry this past Tuesday, then turned over on Ash Wednesday to begin the period of fasting.
All over the world, there are pre-Lent festivities packed with exorbitant eating or wild festivities for Fat Tuesday. Polish Catholics celebrate “Paczki Day” by lining up outside of bakeries for pre-fast deep fried pastries called polonias. In the United Kingdom, “Shrove Tuesday” is celebrated by eating pancakes, another big calorie bang before the upcoming fast. (A small relief here as I realize that the United States is not the only country to base holidays around the consumption of unhealthy food.) And of course, one of the most famous Lent kick-offs is the Mardi Gras celebration in New Orleans, which I think veered from any kind of religious foundation a long, long time ago.
It doesn’t take more than a couple of minutes cruising online to find posts about the upcoming Lent season. Maybe friends are enjoying steak dinner finales before several bleak vegetarian weeks ahead. Others may be weighing in on how to survive the caffeine withdrawal once beloved coffee is out of the picture. My favorite Lent posts are the treasured farewells to the Facebook community, supposing that everyone else will miss, — let alone even notice — that person’s cyber absence as they log-out until Easter.
Now, I don’t want to downplay the value of goal-making and self-control. There is something to be said about setting worthy goals with a time limit and publicized accountability. But something about moaning over ditching chocolate for a couple weeks to celebrate Christian dedication just doesn’t sit well. Perhaps it circles back to tags of Christian hypocrisy, with hung-over Mardi Gras veterans taking pew seats Wednesday morning to have ashes crossed on their foreheads. Maybe giving up Facebook or other unimportant vices for several weeks, only to return with a triumphant sigh, seems less than consequential compared to the sacrifice that Lent honors.
But I don’t want to let my inner critical beast override the genuine goodness that I think exists at Lent’s core. Friends that attended Catholic high schools, reminded me that Lent was not only about giving up something — despite the relative triviality — but also incorporating acts of service.
Sure, swearing off sweets is in essence self-serving and insignificant, but shifting focus to serving others could actually create some tangible good. Almsgiving, or charity, is the other half to the Lent process. According to religious tradition, the only effective way of removing a vice is to replace it by cultivating a virtue.
Now, I hope you’re not visualizing me yelling at you from one of those awkward street corner ministries. My point here is not to preach — I’m anything but qualified to hand out that kind of advice — but instead, to point out the merits of a two-century old tradition that’s been recently spoiled by societal sabotages.
The new norms paint Lent as a convenient post-New Years resolution dump, spring-cleaning or a pre-beach season fat flush. But if I’m beginning to understand the tradition more clearly, it was never the intention to spend several weeks on crazy binges then a “me”-focused makeover. Rather, time was set aside to refocus our gaze to those around us, and possibly heighten overall spiritual awareness.
Whether or not you’ll be fasting over the next 40 days, maybe we could all use some refocusing on the greater needs that lie beyond ourselves. And our intake of sugary pastries.