Giving it up for Lent
By Melania Daniel
mdanie27@uwo.ca
There was no conscription, but Rachel Taylor chose to join the battle anyway.
She volunteered to conquer her desires, convinced she had the strength to endure the six-week length of this particular fight.
But a mere five days into the struggle, Rachel fell. With the click of a mouse and the rapid-fire tapping of a keyboard, the 13-year-old conceded to temptation. Her decision to give up Facebook for Lent had ended with a status update.
“I tried for a few days, and I was good at it,” said the teen, who was standing with her mum outside St. Peter’s Cathedral in London after a Lenten Sunday mass. “Then I gave up. It was hard without it, because that’s how I mainly talk to my friends.”
Lent, the holiest season on the Christian calendar, is a time of fasting and restraint for observant Catholics. However, those under the age of 14, like Rachel, and those over 60, are exempted from the more strenuous obligations of the period, such as the need to fast on Ash Wednesday.
Ash Wednesday, which fell on March 9 this year, marks the start of the Lenten season. Lent lasts 40 days over six weeks, excluding Sundays. It culminates in Easter festivities.
Rachel began Lent by attending mass on Ash Wednesday, where, in a centuries-old tradition, a priest etched a cross in ashes on her forehead. Sometimes, when Catholics receive ashes, the priest says, “remember man you are dust, and to dust you shall return.” This year, the cleric’s admonishment to Rachel was:
“Turn away from sin and be faithful to the gospel.”
Rachel felt she had good reason to turn away from the world’s biggest social networking site. The Catechism of the Catholic Church views sin as any obstacle to a genuine love of God and concern for neighbours, which can be caused by a “perverse attachment” to things.
“I wanted to give up Facebook because I was on it a lot,” said Rachel. “I figured it would have been a big sacrifice to give it up.”
Unable to stay away from Facebook, Rachel quickly found a substitute sacrifice.
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| Photo by Melania Daniel |
| The Newman Catholic Society provided cupcakes and other treats at a Lenten meeting, but some members had given up sweets for Lent. |
“I switched to giving up desserts,” said Rachel. “But I have eaten some cookies here and there at the mall. I find it hard when I’m hanging out with my friends, and they’re having sweet things.”
Lessons in humility
Giving something up for Lent that you’re particularly attached to is an annual practice of the world’s Catholics – approximately 1.2 billion, according to the 2010 edition of the Pontifical Yearbook.
So does foregoing pleasure benefit them, considering someone as young as Rachel voluntarily took up the torment of self-denial?
Yes, said Rev. Stevan Wlusek, rector at St. Peter’s Seminary in London.
“Doing without certain foods, habits or forms of entertainment that one clung to in the past helps the person grow in self-discipline,” said Wlusek.
A person will “come to a greater realization that he or she can get along quite well without these things,” Wlusek said. As a result, people become more attentive to and reliant upon God, rather than "things," with failures like Rachel’s offering lessons in humility.
“Facing the difficulty helps the individual recognize how weak she is,” said Wlusek. “The person realizes that she is not so strong or self-sufficient as she may have believed.”
Lent has its origins in the early days of Christianity, when it was a preparatory time for adult converts before their baptism into the church at Easter. Church leaders patterned the 40 days of Lent on Biblical accounts of Jesus spending 40 days praying and fasting in the wilderness, where he was tempted repeatedly by the devil, and the 40 years the Israelites wandered in the desert searching for the Promised Land.
In Catholicism, Lenten practices centre around prayer, fasting and almsgiving to the poor, but “each Catholic is to discern the particular ways she or he will carry out these,” said Wlusek. “There is no minimum or standard observance that Catholics must comply with.”
Except, of course, for Ash Wednesday and Good Friday when Catholics have an obligation to fast, and abstain from eating meat. The rule of abstinence also applies to Fridays of Lent that are not Solemnities – feast days of major saints – but that aspect is no longer strictly adhered to.
London historian Dan Brock, 70, co-author of Gather up the Fragments: A History of the Diocese of London, remembers a time when Lenten discipline was not so optional. Brock is of Polish descent and his wife is Maltese; his faith has the influence of two fervently Catholic nations.
Brock, who spent two years from 1958 to1960 studying for the priesthood at St. Peter’s Seminary, recalled the days of his youth when the discipline of fasting and giving up things in Lent was more severe.
“During Lent, abstinence was complete. Fasting was also observed on every day of Lent,” Brock said, reading from his 1954 copy of the Clergy Directory of the Diocese of London, Canada.
Anyone above age seven had to observe complete abstinence on the designated days, which meant no meat, or soup or gravy made from meat. All Catholics ate fish instead of meat every Friday, he said. Now, many Catholics consume meat on Lenten Fridays, while giving up something else or performing a charitable act as a substitute.
“There was a lot less emphasis on individuals deciding what they would do,” said Brock, who feels allowing individuals “to pick and choose things we do for Lent on our own” can thwart even the strongest-willed. In his childhood, “everybody was doing something, and often the same thing, at the same time,” and that “made you feel you had to do something too.
“It’s difficult enough living in isolation,” said Brock. “There was more community pressure. You were outside of the group if you were not doing what everybody else was doing.”
Brock remembers “giving up candy as a child, and that went pretty well. If someone gave you candy, you saved it in a bag till Easter.”
Brock was exempted from fasting until 21, but even then fasting meant a disciplined diet, not a total withdrawal from food. Only “one full meal was allowed; you could have two other light meals, sufficient to maintain your strength. These two light meals were to be meatless, and put together, were not to equal one regular full meal. No eating between meals was allowed,” said Brock.
Fasting from attitudes
Even though the definition has not changed significantly, fasting has since been reinterpreted.
“Traditionally, when we think of fasting, we think only of food,” said Sister Susan Glaab, who has been a nun for 34 years and is campus minister at the University of Western Ontario’s King’s College. In the past, “people would have given up some luxury,” like meat. “Today, I don’t know meat is a luxury for people.”
Glaab said it is now permissible to “fast from attitudes,” and “ways of behaving that may not be Christian.” Catholics can even choose to fast from “negative thoughts” like giving “someone a smile and still hate their guts.”
The habit of giving up something tangible changed Glaab in a lasting way though.
“I once gave up sugar in my coffee during Lent and never went back,” she said.
Sugar and candy were items of choice to give up in bygone Lents, but today’s sacrifices have evolved with modern technology. Rachel tried unsuccessfully to curb her time on Facebook. Lorne Plooard “gave up the Internet at home, completely.”
Plooard, 24, is studying full-time for a master’s in divinity at St. Peter’s Seminary, and is also a full-time pastoral minister at St. Michael’s Church. He is an active member of the Newman Catholic Society, a student club at the University of Western Ontario, where he studied for a degree in music education.
Plooard said he struggled for the first five days, but after that life offline became easy.
“I enjoy looking at the spoilers for movies on the net, and I watch all my television programs online,” said Plooard of his regular routine.
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| Photo by Melania Daniel |
| During Lent, Carolyn and Tom Lahay are abstaining from having arguments. |
Without the internet, he read and studied 15 books of scripture in the first three weeks of Lent and since then has been “systematically reading” the entire Bible.
For Carolyn Lahay, 31, and her husband Tom Lahay, 36, happiness in their marriage may well depend on their decision to give up an attitude together.
“As a couple, we have a habit of getting into silly
arguments,” Carolyn said. “We decided to try to not give in to bickering. I think Tom has really stepped up to the plate.”
This is not the first time Lent has changed Tom, a former Baptist who converted and was baptized into the Catholic Church at Easter 2005. He gave up meat completely for Lent 12 years ago and has remained a vegetarian.
The purpose of giving up something for Lent “is to find something in yourself you would like to work on,” and act on it, said Tom.
“As you refine yourself like this, it provides a great social service. As a person improves with God’s grace, it helps improve society.”
