shattering your small cosmos

For those still dealing with their hangovers from Mardi Gras, today was the reason you got your “holiday”—Ash Wednesday is the official start of the forty days of our season of Lent (for those actually counting and wondering how we got 40 when it’s actually 46 calendar days between today and Easter, it’s because Sundays are feast days and thus not included in the counting; now go back to your liturgical math class).

The days between now and Easter are a time for extreme spiritual discipline. It’s a time for taking serious stock of life and for repentance and cleansing. It’s the time for practicing what have often been called the three “pillars” of Lent: prayer, fasting and abstinence, and almsgiving.

Prayer

The first is obvious; it’s something we should be doing year ‘round, but it’s something that’s especially emphasized during Lent. A primary form of prayer during the season is an emphasis on the Stations of the Cross, a series of prayerful meditations with the assistance of 14 icons or stations along the walls of the nave (or 15, if your parish includes the Resurrection as the last) that illustrate each part of the discipline. There are also typically other opportunities to become more involved in your parish’s prayer life; you may hear a lot more about participating in prayer, meditation, or lectio divina before the Blessed Sacrament during the season. Often the rush of life pushes prayer out of our daily spiritual discipline, and Lent is the perfect opportunity to reestablish it.

Fasting/Abstinence

The most well-known of Lenten practices are those of fasting and abstinence. They don’t mean the same thing.

Fasting is called for only on Ash Wednesday and Good Friday (the memorial of Christ’s crucifixion and death). The official rules of the Catholic Church require all persons from ages 18 to 59 to eat only one meal during the day, with permission granted to have to much smaller meals “sufficient to maintain strength,” and no snacking (the two smaller meals cannot equal another full meal, but liquids are allowed any time). It’s significantly watered-down from the past, when fasting meant having no food or drink during the time set aside for the purpose. The whole idea of fasting is that the time normally spent eating and drinking should be spent in prayer and devotion. I stick to the one-meal rule and drink water, lemonade, or juices (if I have some) instead of eating the rest of the day to maintain my strength and focus. There’s research to suggest that fasting for a time may actually be good for you, so there are practical benefits and not just spiritual ones.

Abstinence is the practice of abstaining from a particular thing during the Lenten season. The official rule is to abstain from eating the meat of animals (beef, poultry, or pork) on Fridays during the season. It’s the reason those fried fish sandwiches at your local fast food joint run out so quickly on Fridays.

It’s very widely practiced by many Christians, not just those of liturgical traditions, to practice abstinence on a fuller scale during the forty days of Lent, giving up something in addition to what’s prescribed by the rules of the season itself. My own practice and that of my lady has been to abstain from meat during the entire season (not just on Fridays) and simply enjoy a lot of fish and salad. It’s somewhat easy for me since I’m not much of a meat lover anyway (I’m not vegetarian, but steaks don’t appeal to me, neither). Usually it’s something that we’ve grown so accustomed to having every day, giving it up for 40 days as a means of sacrifice and practical asceticism. Our own diocesan bishop commits to giving up his morning sausage biscuit (sorry, McDonald’s). Many I know give up their daily Starbucks habit. My sister says she’s going to give up Facebook for 40 days (yeah, good luck, sis!). Giving up chocolate also seems to be popular among the ladies.

Almsgiving

Almsgiving simply means giving to and helping others. Traditionally that means helping support the poor and the windows and the orphans, but it can also mean a lot of other things.

Over this past year we’ve ended up with a lot of meat in our freezer; part of our almsgiving is cleaning out the freezer (since we’ve abstained from meat for the entire forty days) and giving it to a family that needs it (and who’s obviously not bound themselves to the Lenten discipline, as the family we’re giving it to is Pentecostal).
Almsgiving can mean more just dropping money into the can in front of the local Walmart. It can be volunteering to help out at a shelter or migrant ministry. Think about the ways you can help out others and give somebody else a lift upward. In any event, the things that we give up in abstinence shouldn’t simply be thrown away—they should be given away to benefit others, particularly the less fortunate.

Your discipline?

So what’s your Lenten discipline? What are the things that you do during the season in one or more of the above categories to make Lent meaningful in your own spiritual journey? Talk in the comments.