I hate Lent. Or at least I hate the culture of Lent. After all, it really is a silly season, isn’t it? What is all the talk among Catholics these days? What did you give up for Lent? And of course the answer is many things like, smoking, or candy, or using foul language. For forty days and nights (not counting Sundays) these sacrificial victims will make their lives and the lives around them miserable with their constant grousing and complaining about their heroic work for Jesus. Then, on the Day of Resurrection all of the smoking and candy bar eating and foul language will crank up again and it will be business as usual. A few years ago a movie came out called Forty Days and Forty Nights in which a young man gave up pre-marital sex for Lent. How do you work that out? Lent can be a silly season. What is it anyway? Is it a sacrifice for the sake of sacrifice kind of time? I hope not, that business is called Jansenism and we (at least officially) gave up on that ages ago. Is it a season of tokenism, symbolic engagement? I don’t think we have room for much more tokenism in the Church today, many of the faithful are already resolute minimalists. Can Lent be more? I hope so. Jesus went into the desert to fast and pray for forty days and nights in preparation for his public ministry. He went in and came out a changed man. The catechumens of the early Church used the season of Lent as a time or preparation for becoming new persons at Easter. Can Lent not be the same for us? The Holy Rule says that Lent should be a time for sweeping away the negligence of other times. Good enough! Perhaps the season of Lent should be a season of resolution and change. What we give up for Lent we might as well give up for life. In Lent we can become new persons in Christ and rise on Easter in newness of life. It’s not for Lent, it’s for life! In that way maybe Lent could become less a silly season and more a serious season of true conversion. If we add up the Lents of our lives, we may come out with something like discipleship. The Holy Rule also says that the monk’s life (the disciple’s life?) should be a perpetual Lent. Life should be a perpetual season of change and conversion, but if not every day, how about forty days and forty nights?
Orignally posted: http://substancehopedfor.blogspot.com/2009/03/i-hate-lent.html
Fr. Denis Robinson, OSB
President-rector of Saint Meinrad School of Theology
St. Meinrad, IN.
