Every year about this time, I begin yearning for Lent. It can't get here fast enough for me. I always feel as if I'm hung all about with rags and in need of washing, and I can't begin to get cleaned up until Ash Wednesday.
You would think that I could just go ahead and get a head start on things, but it just doesn't work. It seems to me, and I'm pretty sure I'm correct in thinking so, that the season of Lent enables us to do things we could never do before. Suddenly, I can go without salt, or get up early to pray, or quit playing Free Cell, or all sorts of things that sound good like a good idea, but never quite pan out in Ordinary Time. Things that seemed impossible before become almost easy. I'm not saying that it's easy to not eat salt, but that it's easier to persevere in not eating salt. (You can see that I'm being haunted by the specter of salt-less days.)
There is one thing that is really difficult for me in Lent, and that is meatless Fridays. This is peculiar because: a) I actually like meatless meals and it's not unusual for me to go without meat more than one day a week, and b) I hardly ever eat meat on Fridays anyway. Still, Fridays in Lent seem to come with their own penitential burden. For five days a week for eight years, Bill and I passed by a restaurant that was cooking barbeque on our way home. On 253 days a year, we sailed past without even noticing. Then came the first Friday in Lent and we would both say at the same moment, "Oooh, that smells sooo good," and thus it went through Good Friday.
I'll also add--just to make your Lent a little more punishing--that while I was looking on the USCCB website for the officially worded rules about fast and abstinence for the bulletin, I found a Q&A page that went counter to what I've heard about Sundays in Lent in recent years.
Apart from the prescribed days of fast and abstinence on Ash Wednesday and Good Friday, and the days of abstinence every Friday of Lent, Catholics have traditionally chosen additional penitential practices for the whole Time of Lent. These practices are disciplinary in nature and often more effective if they are continuous, i.e., kept on Sundays as well. That being said, such practices are not regulated by the Church, but by individual conscience.Try not to hate me. Actually, it doesn't say that you must give up those things on Sunday, but still I will have it in the back of mind nagging at me.
In case anyone is interested, there is a link to the meditations on the Stations of the Cross that I wrote in 2012 on the sidebar.
AMDG
I always find special graces enable me generally to keep my Lenten penances. I don't find myself simultaneously helped not to eat those things and especially desirous of those things. But what I find is that time slows to a standstill. Lent is the only period of adult life when time moves as slowly as childhood.
ReplyDeleteAs far as Sundays are concerned, I keep some things for the whole of Lent, such as giving up websurfing (I take one day out on - is it called Laudate sunday? - the one in the middle). It would be absurd to give up for six days and then check out on Sunday the news and what Mac and you were saying! Other things, like meat, I give myself Sunday off. This Lent I am going to see if I can give up wine for the whole 47 days. But Sunday is a feast day, and Lent is 40 days of fasting, if Jesus' example is anything to go by, so I'm not dissuaded by your American bps from meat on Sundays in Lent! Grumpy
This year Lent is really sneaking up on me. What, already? I have to say that I am not looking forward to it at all. Usually I give up caffeine, but the last few years this has become really hard on me (and on my family, I dare say). It's almost like I'm choosing "falling asleep at work" as a Lenten practice. Maybe I need to think of something else this year.
ReplyDeleteI have never tried giving up coffee or tea. That would be absolutely beyond me. It's another one for which it just would not work to take Sundays off. You'd be flying out the window all day, and then crash horribly on Monday. My teacher Professor Louise Cowan, when asked if she gave up wine for Lent, said 'we give up luxuries not necessities'.
ReplyDeleteI sometimes joke that I'll give up alcohol, chocolate, and coffee for Lent. The joke is that I avoid them all year if I possibly can. Especially coffee, the very odour of which causes me to feel ill.
ReplyDeleteThis is very strange. Apparently Blogger is not sending me notification of comments.
ReplyDeleteAnyway, Grumpy, maybe I should give up whine for Lent, I don't drink often enough to give up wine. If time would slow down, it would be such a blessing that no Lenten penance would be too hard. My husband and I say the rosary on the way to work and it seems like every day I'm saying the Joyful Mysteries. It's like the whole week is made of Mondays. I've always had things that I did on Sundays and things I skipped on Sundays, too, but the internet (the part of it that I gave up) was something I allowed myself on Sundays usually. I'm glad you stopped in before you disappear for Lent. I'm going to write a series of blog posts on St. Martin once Lent begins.
Craig, I have often thought that if I gave up coffee, it would be more of a penance for Bill and the people I work with than it would be for me.
AMDG
O I don't enjoy it at all. It's as if Lent lasts 200 days. It seems as if one has given up the web and meat for months and months, and it is 17.3 days. It's 22 days to go until the end of Lent forever and for ever. Grumpy
ReplyDeleteI don't enjoy the time going so slowly. But in another sense (which seems contradictory and probably is) I enjoy the way time is 'sanctified' during Lent. It feels dull when one gets out at the other end into ordinary time.
ReplyDeleteYes, that forever feeling is slowly coming back to me, but right now, I'm ready for it. The thing is, you don't come out at Ordinary Time, you come out to all those weeks of rejoicing. I love Easter and about the first week, but by the 4th week, I'm well and truly ready to be ordinary. I'm not a very good rejoice-er. I think I need to get better at that, but I think I'm too cautious.
ReplyDeleteAMDG
AMDG
I do think (or perhaps feel, rather) that Sundays should be notably more festive than the surrounding days. But of course if the surrounding days are very austere, it doesn't take much to make Sunday special.
ReplyDeleteSundays are always a bit more festive for us because we go out to breakfast with friends.
ReplyDeleteAMDG
For me, for giving up various kinds of things, Sundays off is the difference between nearly impossibly awful and pretty doable. And I'm a fairly disciplined person. For a less disciplined person, being told taking Sundays off is not really up to scratch could very likely mean that they don't give up anything at all. Likely I'm just saying it as a greedy pig, but I don't think this is a prudent call by the USCCB.
ReplyDeleteWell, they do say it's up to our discretion. I will probably just keep on doing like have always done--Sundays for some things and not for others.
ReplyDeleteAMDG
There's two things. One is what we are probably going to do for Lent. And as always I am going to give up some things for the whole 47 days, some for the 40 non-feast days, and some things I will crash and burn on after 3 days. What I'm worst at is the actual fast days - I end up just not having breakfast!
ReplyDeleteThe other is the wisdom of the Bp's remarks. There are good things about it. It is always good to be challenged to perfection. I like anything that brings our fasts into line with the Orthodox, and I have never heard of the Orthodox taking Sundays off. It would be an exaggeration to add 'And nor have I met any orthodox outside converts and theology professors who fast at all'. It would be a grossly unfair exaggeration, but it makes the point that such rulings tend to divide the faithful into the weak and the strong, the weak being by far the larger group.
For 18 months I have followed a diet you can find on the Web called 'No Sweets, No Snacks No Seconds'. I started from the book, which was recommended by Jennifer Furtweiler. Later I found there was a website. The idea of the book is, none of the three 'S's, 'Except on days that Begin with S', that is, except for 'Special Days', Saturdays, Sundays, your birthday, Christmas. That's what it says in the book. I found that, on the website, the author has altered that to 'except sometimes on Days that begin with S'. Because he had people following the diet, pigging out on Saturdays and Sundays, and then complaining that they lost no weight. It seems to me by analogy (and I do apologize for the vulgar analogy, I know that the clergy in particular hate fasting to be compared to dieting) that it would not have been impossible for the Bps to explain that feast days should be celebrated in Lent, but in a low key way.
Yes, Janet they do say its up to our discretion, but it reminds me of the headmaster of my brother's boarding school writing letters about Parents Day with statements like 'It is up to you what you shall be wearing but I shall be wearing White Tie'.
I'm trying to figure out if this comment was from Grumpy and I've proceeding as if it were.
DeleteI was thinking about what you said earlier about not getting on the internet on Sundays and I think that's really right because when I gave up the internet for Lent or Advent, which I frequently do, and I allow myself access on Sundays, I spend the whole week thinking about the email I am going to write on Sunday.
And if I give up sweets, I can't eat them on Sunday because one bite of anything with sugar in it is for me like alcohol for an alcoholic. With salt, eating it on Sunday would just make Monday that much more the horrible. It's probably much easier to just give it up altogether. Although I will say that the one Lent when I gave up salt, I thought that by the end of Lent I wouldn't miss it, and I was just flat wrong about that.
I've been thinking about the fasting/dieting relationship lately and wonder if some of the clergy just don't have it wrong there. If our bodies and souls are intimately entwined, which they are, anything that is truly good for our bodies should be good for our souls. Of course, if you are dieting as part of a Lenten discipline, it has to be somehow done in tandem with your spiritual practice, but I don't think it's just flat wrong to do it.
AMDG
They could only be absolutely different if no one ever exerted some free will and self-disicpline to help them not eat whatever they'd given up for Lent and simultaneously if no one ever was given grace through prayer to help them diet. Otherwise, they probably overlap!
ReplyDeleteI didn't have any salt for a couple of days when I moved house in early February. I had no idea food tasted so bland without it. My cooking is seldom criticised, and in fact the only complaint I usually get is that I don't use enough salt. So I'm not one who sprinkles it in everything at will. But no salt ... that really was surprisingly bad.
ReplyDeleteYep.
ReplyDeleteIt ought to make it easy not to eat too much, though.
ReplyDeleteAMDG
Outside of academic journals and books, I have ventured into print only two or three times. And all of those were about fasting! It's because the sermons I hear on fasting and how not to do it, are a compleat Lent in and of themselves. I have a very sweet tooth. I would not put myself on a alcoholic level - I can eat one bar of chocolate and leave it at that. But I do love sweets and cakes and pastries, especially Halvah, Lemon Merangue Pie, and Nougat. I will make do with the odd doughnut or Chelsa bun when these delicacies are not forthcoming. For my first ten or twelve years as a Catholic I religiously gave up all sweet things during Lent. I once nearly fainted at the smell of sugar outside a bakery. Through all of those years, I would sit and watch some deacon or priest rise and in the most sarcastic and cutting terms condemn 'giving up sweets' (sweets said with a snarl). They thought Lent was about giving up something 'serious', not about giving up 'sweets' (spat out with contempt). These chaps did not have a sweet tooth. They were addicted to something else. And they wanted us to give that up, whatever it was :) And this indeed made me Grumpy
ReplyDeleteMy husband bakes. So, there will be a pie, or a cake, or chocolate chip cookies, or bread sitting on the table which I have to pass a dozen times a day. This is a tremendous downfall of mine.
DeleteAMDG
All this talk of salt made me think of the expression "salt of the earth." Which we use to describe a good, essential person. So maybe it would fall under Grumpy's teacher's rubric of "we give up luxuries not necessities."
ReplyDeleteSweets, though...
Because of the readings, we've had several homilies lately on the benefits of salt lately, but then at lunch the priest, my boss, watches me salt my food and says, "Don't you have hypertension." ;-)
ReplyDeleteI read a week or so ago that they decided it is all wrong about salt being bad for us.
ReplyDeleteI read that a while back, too. Who knows?
ReplyDeleteAMDG
I was telling someone at linch today about the american Bps and he said instantly the purpose is ecumenism with the Orthodox. He seemed so embarrassed that Id geuss he advised them on it
ReplyDeletewell, i intend to keep taking advantage of the refrigerarium anywa.
ReplyDeleteIt's the cooling off that worries me, although I suppose you could make a case that not fasting on Sundays makes Mondays doubly penitential and that it was therefore a salutory practice.
DeleteAMDG
that person is anonymous but not Grumpy
ReplyDeleteGoodbye Grumpy. See you after Easter.
ReplyDeleteAMDG