What are you giving up for Lent? That question is burnt so deep into my Catholic imagination that no matter how often I talk about this phrase being backwards and the wrong way to approach our Lenten devotion, I still go back again and again…What are you giving up for Lent?
Yet, it remains a good question. Lent is a time to take on but also to ”give up” certain things for Lent. The trick of course remains the reality that what I choose to “give up” during Lent is bringing me closer to God and transform our lives into the image of the divine. When we do the “give up” things it often ends with the binge at the end. As a child my family’s go to “give up” was chocolate. We would suffer for the 40 days of Lent and then on Easter morning gorge on the chocolate of the bunnies, eggs with the addition of the jelly beans and other sweets. The problem with this was the suffering and fasting from chocolate was only pointed towards the end product…Easter Sunday…then everything went back to the way it was on Fat Tuesday the day before Ash Wednesday as we began the long and dreaded wait for the next Ash Wednesday to begin Lenten journey and the sacrifice and “give up” chocolate again.
I am sure in some way, this practice did have a good effect on my spiritual journey but it certainly did not seem that way during my childhood. So how should we think about our Lenten discipline and what should we “give up” for Lent?
What we sacrifice (give up) for Lent should be difficult and should lead to some sort of spiritual transformation. One way of doing this is to tie the sacrifice (fasting) to our prayer life during the season. The discipline of fasting should empty us to allow the presence of God, found through our prayer, to fill us and sanctify who we are as God’s holy children.
This, of course, takes planning a daily work. Matthew Kelly’s “Resisting Happiness” which we have been reading and talking about these past two months is a good way of thinking how we can accomplish this work of love. Much like we are called to identify those moments of resistance, we may look at the list we have written or the area where we have encountered the greatest resistance and see if this is an area of fasting and sacrifice for Lent. If we are able to identify a specific goal of fasting from the particular resistance, then we can begin to bring it to daily prayer in recognizing the blessing that flow from “giving up” this resistance to happiness.
So, what am I going to “give up” for Lent? Well, I am going to be fasting from a particular computer game that I love to waste a little bit of time with each day. I often play Mahjong tiles to procrastinate from the often needed work that needs to get done. Is the worst thing in the world, no…but it does lead me away from both work and prayer times and it is wasting time…so that is what I am giving up. How will I link this to my prayer? I will use my “wasted time” to pray with two small devotionals that I am using this Lent. One which will be shared by my entire parish community “Refresh and Renew Your Life” and a second Lent and Easter with the Church Fathers”. Rather than play the game I will take time pray and be with Jesus.
Attached a brief video from Busted Halo about the meaning of Lent.
God Bless
Fr. Mark