Thinking about Lent

I am very happy to say for, I think, the first time in my life, that I am looking forward to Lent this year.  I won’t swear to the fact that it’s the first time I’ve said that, but it’s certainly the first time I can remember thinking it.  Even when I wasn’t a practicing Catholic I sort of dreaded Lent every year.  I would often choose something to give up, fail miserably, and be wracked with guilt for forty days.  This pattern continued unabated post-reversion.  I don’t even remember what I tried to give up most years but it was always a disaster.  I know that failure can be quite valuable.  And, I know that God often wants to show us stuff in the midst of our failures, stuff like Grace and Divine Sufficiency.  But there was still a part of me that didn’t want to continue to choose a penance this year that I had a proven track record of Completely Stinking At.  

Two years ago, for some reason, I came up with the idea of fasting more.  A lot more.  The Church requires Catholics to fast only on Ash Wednesday and Good Friday but I think I heard a homily on the topic of fasting (that in itself is a wonder since we hear precious few good homilies) and was duly inspired.  I don’t remember the exact details of the conversation with my husband about my fasting plans but, knowing me, I proposed something like going without food until dinner time every day for the entire forty days.  That’s the way we roll:  I make a completely over-the-top and wildly optimistic suggestion and he tempers it with a combination of knee-jerk pessimism and reason and then we work out an idea that is actually good.  And that is exactly what happened with our fasting plan.  

Somehow we found ourselves wondering what the “old” fasting rules were.  Even my non-Catholic readers are probably aware that many of the externals of the Catholic faith changed post-Vatican II.  It is hard, sometimes, to sort out what was actually practiced by the average Catholic but it used to be that every day of Lent was a Fast Day (and that every Friday all year round was a day of Abstinence, that is, no meat, unlike now where that is only required during Lent).  This much we knew.  So we pulled our our antique Catholic Dictionary and looked up the regulations for fasting.  As it turned out, the regulations weren’t all that strenuous, at least at first glance.  They called for 4oz. of bread at breakfast and 8oz of bread at lunch.  Dinner was normal.  That amount of bread is equivalent to a standard-size French baguette.  And we even had the luxury, that first year, of living twelve steps from an old-fashioned bakery with hot, fresh (and inexpensive!) baguettes available every day.  

So we decided to go for it in way that would gradually ramp up the fasting as the weeks went by.  One fast day the first week (Ash Wednesday), two the next, and so on until we fasted every day of Holy Week.  We also kept up with the general “spirit of abstemiousness” with which the whole family approaches Lent.  Less dessert, less alcohol, more prayer, etc.  And it was great.  I really did it.  I’m not saying it was easy.  I admit, the first few days of noshing on fabulous bread all day long hardly felt like penance but as the days of fasting increased each week I started to get a little tired of bread.  I wasn’t ever exactly hungry fasting this way, but it did infuse my day with a certain sense of deprivation.  It was a constant reminder every time I’d wonder what to make for breakfast (my favorite meal) or when I’d instinctively reach to finish off a snack one of the kids left on the table.  

We repeated the fast last year and, again, it was a really good experience.  Meditating on the success of this particular fast two years in a row my thought was, “What a gift.”  And by that I mean, the Church and all she offers.  The tradition of fasting has been with the Church from the beginning and if I simply take that up and follow it the way the Church says I should, the graces abound.  I used to drive myself to distraction coming up with my own penances and trying to follow them (you have no idea the kind of legalistic mental gyrations I can pull off when chocolate is involved).  Now I just take what is given to me and enter into the penitential simplicity of the season.

So, needless to say, this year, for Lent, I’ll be fasting.  It will look a bit different this year since I don’t really eat bread anymore.  We also now make a point of observing the Ember Days which are a seasonal time of fasting.  I experimented a bit with different ways to fast during the December Ember Days and my plan this year is to fast completely from food from 10-5 for each day that we designate as a Fast Day.  I’ll eat a normal breakfast and dinner.  We’ll also be starting with two fast days the first week and then doing three days a week for the first few weeks.  We’ve found the last two years that three days of fasting is kind of hard and four is significantly harder.  

And, with that, I’m going to try to talk my husband into a “Vigil of Mardi Gras” hot fudge sundae since he won’t be home tomorrow.