Happy First Sunday of Lent!
Together we cross once again the threshold into these forty days of prayer, fasting, and almsgiving. As I write this article, I’m thinking about how my experience of Lent has formed me through the years.
We were a big ice cream family growing up, and we often ate it after dinner. The rule was that you had to eat everything on your plate, and only then could you have ice cream. If we ate our ice cream too slowly, my dad would reach over while we weren’t looking and sneak a spoonful of “dad tax” out of our bowls.
But every year between Ash Wednesday and Easter Sunday, the family diet changed. We ate no ice cream, had no snacks between meals, and we had fish sticks on Fridays. It was my yearly Lenten penance, basically chosen for me by my parents.
This was a great way to teach a kid that Lent was different. The sacrifice of ice cream, snacks, and meat on Fridays helped me associate Easter with the joyful return of these goodies. That may not sound very spiritual—Easter is the celebration of the risen Jesus, after all, and the salvation of our souls, not food. But as a child, fasting from bodily delights was the type of sacrifice I could feel myself personally accomplishing. Getting ice cream back on Easter morning was an “I did it!” moment. I wouldn’t have appreciated the important concepts or deeper insights yet. But my parents were wise. They “chose” this penance for us kids each year, knowing it would teach us the value of delayed gratification. And they kept us accountable to it. In this small Lenten food habit, we learned how to endure some suffering now in order to attain some greater good down the line.
That lesson applies deeply to both our moral life and our spiritual life. In my mind, it is still the primary lesson I take into Lent as an adult. I know myself—that I am naturally insecure and self-centered. I also know (as does God) that this inward focus will hurt and destroy my life if it rules my choices. In order to rise above it, I have to starve it. And starving my self-centered nature will cause me suffering in the near term. But since the days of childhood Lenten fasts from ice cream, my own experience has proven to me how terribly good and necessary it is to take up the battle against this unhealthy inward addiction. I have a joy and hope in my life that are impossible to attain except along the path of self-surrender. To me, it’s worth the price of temporary pain.
This Lent, I know I need to continue learning humility in place of pride, patience instead of wrath, and gratitude where I still experience envy. Where do I begin these lessons? In the same place I always have: by giving up ice cream, fasting from snacks, and abstaining from meat on Fridays. It won’t be where I end my Lenten penances, but these three choices are so much a part of me now that I’m not sure how to do Lent without them.
Fr. Brian
