Today is Ash Wednesday, the yearly day of fasting and penance observed by Western Christians the world over, marking the beginning of the Lenten Season, preparing the faithful for the Easter festivities to come in just a short six weeks. Today, parishes will be fuller than they are any other day of the year, even on Christmas and Easter. Because of this, it is good to know what exactly Ash Wednesday is, what Lent is, and how to make both of them a time of spiritual growth and closeness with God and our fellow Christians.
Anyone who's ever lived in a Christian country knows what Ash Wednesday is: it's the day when Catholics and other liturgical Christians (like Lutherans and Anglicans) will go to Mass and get crosses marked on their foreheads in ash. Unfortunately, most people, including probably most of the people who get ashes on Ash Wednesday, do not know what the significance of the day is beyond this surface-level understanding.
It is important to understand that Ash Wednesday is less about the ashes and more about fasting and penance. The Lesson in the Tridentine Mass for Ash Wednesday comes from the Prophet Joel, who says "Thus saith the Lord: Be converted to me with all your heart, in fasting, and in weeping, and in mourning. And rend your hearts, and not your garments, and turn to the Lord your God: for he is gracious and merciful, patient and rich in mercy, and ready to repent of the evil." Ash Wednesday marks the beginning of Lent, which is the most penitential time in the Church's calendar: we are to fast, pray more than we normally do, perform acts of charity, and most importantly repent of our sins and turn unto God. This is to be done authentically, and not to a make show of our religion, as our Lord says the hypocrites do. We are to reflect upon our mortality, our particular judgment before God, and learn from this that our lives must be spent loving God and hating evil. We must learn that we men are but ash, and to ash we shall all return.
For this reason, it is important to stress that ashes are not a mere show. In the Tridentine Mass, the Gospel reading is Matthew 6:16-21, where Christ gives us the model for true Christian fasting. Wearing ashes as a reminder to yourself and to the world that we are all sinners condemned to die is good and holy, but only so long as you are taking this to heart and acting on it.
On Ash Wednesday, we are not obligated to assist at Mass and receive ashes, but we are obligated to fast. The bare minimum is one full meatless meal and two smaller meatless snacks that together do not equal a full meal, however, this is only the bare minimum. If you can do more, such as bread and water only, fluids only, water only, or even nothing to eat or drink at all, you should do it. Fasting reminds us of our impermanence and our dependence upon God. Lent, above all, is the time of year that we should practice fasting and practice it frequently.
This brings us to our second point: what is Lent? Lent is a preparatory period of forty days of fasting and penance before the Easter season. It is a preparatory period because Easter is fifty days long, and the greatest time of joy and celebration in the entire year. Before we can approach the joys of Christ's Resurrection and our resurrection in Christ, we must unite ourselves to His sufferings, His life of penance, and ultimately His Passion and Death. We fast for forty days because, before His ministry, Christ fasted for forty days in the desert and was tempted by the devil.
How, then, are we to have a good Lent? There are many approaches to this, but we at The Filthy Papist like to approach Lent by adhering to the "Three Pillars": prayer, fasting, and almsgiving. It is our opinion that a good and holy Lent should incorporate all three of these things into its practice.
Prayer is the essence of communion with God and the focus of the Christian life. We often say we are called to a relationship with God. If this is true, and it is, then we immediately see that we must frequently talk to God. How many friends do you have to whom you never talk? Lent is a good time not to take on temporary prayer habits that you toss out two seconds after Easter Sunday brunch, but a time to evaluate your prayer and see where you can make permanent improvements. If you desire to pray a daily Rosary, take that up during Lent. If you desire to pray the Divine Office, skip dinner and pray Vespers on Ash Wednesday. If you want to begin meditating, take 20 minutes out of your day to do so these forty days. If you want to read the Bible daily, skip breakfast and devour the Word. Resolve to do these things until Easter Sunday, and then renew your resolution to do them from Easter Sunday until Pentecost. Renew them again from Pentecost until Advent. Renew them again after Advent. Once you get to Ash Wednesday of next year, having made your resolution a habit, pick up another devotion you'd like to make a habit and do the same thing.
Fasting, as we said earlier, reminds us of our dependence upon God and of our mortality. It is how we suffer with Christ and come to love Him more. Fasting is not something that should be done year-round, however. In the Church, we have days of fasting, like Ash Wednesday, and days of feasting, like Easter Sunday. Your fasting, therefore, should be as demanding as you can handle without impeding your life of prayer and your daily functions. In the Orthodox Church, fasting becomes gradually harder during the season, to the point that they basically adopt a vegan diet halfway through Lent. If you can be vegetarian or vegan during Lent, praise God! However, if you have a protein deficiency, you shouldn't do that. If you can go without food for a day, maybe abstain from all food on Fridays. If that hunger makes it impossible to focus during the Stations of the Cross, then do bread and water. Your penance should be difficult, but not too difficult for you to handle.
Some people will use Lent as a time to break bad habits. For example, people who want to quit smoking cigarettes may give up smoking for Lent. This is not bad, especially if smoking impedes your devout life in Christ, but it is not the purpose of Lent. Lent is not about giving up bad habits, but about giving up sin and becoming closer to God. Don't use it as an excuse to try and lose weight or to get back on your New Year's resolutions unless you intend to improve your devotion by doing so. Lent is about God, not you.
Fasting not only consists of depriving yourself of food but also depriving yourself of other pleasures and taking on ascetic practices. If you enjoy social media, delete your apps for Lent. If you enjoy being a couch potato, work out during Lent. If you enjoy long, hot showers at night, take cold, short showers in the morning. All of these things, when offered to God and united with Christ's sufferings, serve to strengthen your life as a son of God and member of Christ's Mystical Body.
Almsgiving is one of the most overlooked aspects of Lent. Almsgiving is giving money and other necessities to the poor and to organizations that benefit the poor. While it may seem like a little thing, it has a great spiritual benefit. As Christians, we are called to be poor in spirit: to live out the spirit of poverty which Christ showed us, regardless of our financial station in life. Almsgiving helps us to do that because it reminds us to care about the needs of others before we care about our own wants and because it makes us poorer than we normally are. If we spent the next few weeks not spending money on the normal frivolous purchases we make and spending our excess on tithing to the Church and buying food for the poor, then we will come to a deeper understanding of our call to love others and of our deep reliance upon God.
When making your Lenten resolutions, you need to be specific, you need to be realistic, and you need to be consistent. Doing these are key to keeping your resolutions and actually bearing fruit this Lent.
You need to be specific because specificity tells you what exactly you're setting out to do. If you just say, "I'm going to pray more, fast more, and give more to charity!" you have some really good sentiments, but they're just sentiments because you don't know how you're going to accomplish these things. For example, during my first Lent as a catechumen preparing to enter the Church, I resolved to pray a daily Rosary and to drink only water except for on Sundays. This is the kind of specificity you should be aiming for. If you want to pray more, ask yourself how much more you want to pray and what you want to pray. If you want to fast or do penance, ask yourself what you're giving up and how often you're going to abstain from it. If you want to practice the corporal works of mercy more, ask which one you're going to practice. Specificity is the first step to making resolutions because if your resolutions are non-specific, they're non-existent.
Being realistic informs you while you're making your resolutions. As we said earlier, your Lenten fasting should be as demanding as possible without impeding daily functions. The same is true of the other disciplines. Let's say you want to go all out and read the entire Bible during Lent. This is great, but only if you're able to read about 30 chapters a day. We need not even be that extreme: even a more modest goal of praying Lauds, Vespers, and Compline might be too much if you don't already have a habit of praying the Liturgy of the Hours. Likewise, you may want to start tithing 10% of your income to the Church. That's a great resolution, but if tithing that much gives you an unreasonably hard time providing for yourself or for your family, you may want to resolve to tithe 7% or even 5% instead. God loves it when we sacrifice for Him, but He doesn't want us to take on more than we can handle. Figure out what you are capable of offering to God, and be humble enough to acknowledge that you might not be able to do as much as you'd like this year.
Consistency is key to actually acting out your resolutions. Habits are formed by frequent repetition, and if you're not attempting to make those frequent repetitions, you're not going to form habits, either for Lent or for the rest of the year. Now, how consistent is going to depend on what is realistic for you, so if you've never prayed a Rosary, praying one daily may or may not be too much. However, just picking it up whenever is not sufficient. Remember to be specific not just with the what, but also with the how often, and make an effort to keep these resolutions.
Lent is one of the holiest times of the year. It is a time when we, the entire Church, take time to reflect on our sins and shortcomings, and through deeds of penance and contrition unite ourselves to the sufferings of Christ and grow in His graces and mercies. In order to have a fruitful Lent, it is key that we take the time to grow in a deeper understanding and appreciation of the season and to take strides to actually make and fulfill our resolutions. As we begin this season, let us leave you with the Preface of Lent taken from the 1962 Roman Missal: "It is truly meet and just, right and availing unto salvation that we should at all time and in all places give thanks unto Thee, O holy Lord, Father almighty and everlasting God. Who by the fasting of the body dost curb our vices, elevate our minds and bestow virtue and reward; through Christ our Lord."
Let us go forth this season and suffer for Him who suffered for us.
コメント