Cuaresma, or Lent

We are currently three weeks into the holy season of Cuaresma, or Lent. Growing up in a predominantly Catholic community centered on the local parochial school, Lent (and Advent, leading up to Christmas) was a period of significant, noticeable change. The colors of the priest’s vestments and the altar cloth changed to penitential purple from everyday green. Fasts hit on Ash Wednesday, when Catholics (and Episcopalians among others) carried a visible reminder in ashes in the form of a cross on the forehead, and Good Friday, which was also the only day all-year that no masses were celebrated. The absence of meat on Friday was a year-long thing back then, so there was nothing new about it during Lent.

Time marches on, or to paraphrase the Beatles In My Life, some things “have changed, some forever not for better.” The Roman Catholic Church decided to modernize some of its practices after the Second Vatican Council, in a bow to the modern world. Unfortunately, the world didn’t respond in kind. There was no great increase in devotion, no increase in charitable activity, no increase in vocations to the priestly or religious life. Rather, most took the changes as signs that such things didn’t really matter: if the Catholic Church doesn’t even require such things, obviously they won’t matter to the faithful.

Some Catholics struggled with abstaining from meat on Fridays, which remained a requirement only during Lent. Children didn’t like fish, and some were allergic to it. Business people had dinner engagements where avoiding meat was a hardship. The Church compromised by indicating Catholics should substitute some personal form of denial in place of abstaining from meat. What the faithful heard was “we only have to give up meat on Fridays during Lent.” Ask a Catholic friend (or yourself) what you give up weekly during the year in lieu of abstaining from meat, and you’ll get an excuse (“Oh, that’s only during Lent) or a puzzled stare. Not what was intended, but what was effected.

It’s not like it was a great hardship. I’ve caught myself eating fine Salmon hierbas on Fridays in Lent and thought, “well, I’m technically in compliance, but is this really penitential?” Where I grew up in northern Indiana (last millennium), fish was fresh as perch from Lake Michigan (where fish could be used as thermometers due to their high mercury content), or frozen and expensive, or frozen and cheap in the form of “fish sticks,” which mainly consisted of batter around unidentifiable fish-meal that served as a means to carry enormous slabs of “tartar sauce” into one’s mouth, since eating “tartar sauce” by itself would be uncivilized. Heck, even McDonald’s catered to Catholic tastes, inventing the filet-o-fish when burger sales plummeted on Fridays.

Nothing reminds me of life as it was back then like being in an overwhelmingly Catholic country here in Mexico. Restaurants and shops advertise their comida de Cuaresma, special menus or meals that comply with the liturgical restrictions. When I still worked, the guards at my office building routinely stopped me to say “Sir, you have something on your forehead” every Ash Wednesday; I responded, “why, yes, yes I do.” That would never happen here. Holy Week, Easter Week, and the days between Christmas and Three Kings Day are vacation days, either in fact or in practice. The Mexican federal government and the Catholic Church have been at odds (or even at war) over the centuries, but the practices and habits remain unchanged.

I saw a phony FaceBook meme quoting Pope Francis as saying ‘to be kind to strangers, to help the homeless, rather than giving up things’ this Lent. I knew without researching it that it was false, as it makes a fundamental theological error. That is, it equates an everyday necessity (give to the poor, clothe the naked, etc.) with a penitential practice. The former all Christians are called to do ALL the time as in Luke 17:10, “we are unworthy servants, we have done only what we are required to do.” The latter is something we do special. But why?

Penitential acts are not for self-improvement. Long before Dry January became a thing, I started giving up all alcohol during Lent. No red wine with my pasta. No afternoons with a margarita on my terraza. No beer (green or otherwise) on St. Patrick’s Day (On this, I am still lobbying the Church in Mexico to offer a dispensation, as my Bishop back in Indiana did; no luck so far). While my Irish liver enjoys the respite, that is a secondary benefit. I give up something I enjoy as a penance: in a small way, I mirror Christ’s period of fasting in the desert before He began His earthly ministry. And I deny myself something that I want in order to submit my desires to God’s. If God wants me to drink Guinness on St. Paddy’s Day, He’ll arrange that dispensation; otherwise, my next tipple will be at Easter brunch.

That is also why I avoid some of the Pharisaical or Jesuitical practices (big words we could easily translate into modern language with “lawyerly”). For example, some friends offer to not drink in front of me; I insist they go right ahead and enjoy themselves, which is all part of my penance. Others recommend a non-alcoholic beer or a Mocktail which is promised to be just as good as the real thing; I decline, since the point isn’t the alcohol. And perhaps you’ve heard of Lent as a period of forty days, but if you count on the calendar from Ash Wednesday to Easter Sunday, there are forty-six days. Seems that forty total excludes Sundays, which are technically Catholic “feast” days when fasting and penance are inapplicable. Sorry, but that turns a long-run commitment into a series of one-week stands, which doesn’t sound theologically appropriate to me. Likewise, the fasting and abstinence rules apply only until age fifty-nine, but since God gave me more years than that, and I’m still healthy, I think I owe something in return.

Penance is a discipline, and it turns the mind from things we want or crave to higher things. I also gave up added sugar this year. Sugar is terrible for you, but I gave it up because I like it, and it’s so terribly addictive that I kept adding more just to make my coffee stay just as sweet. Every day starts with a reminder that while I would prefer adding sugar to my coffee, I said no. I don’t like my coffee better now, but it’s proving a solid exercise in self-denial.

Marriage, faith, or career all require hard work. It is rare to find a married couple who just always-and-forever get along. See one and ask them, they’ll tell you the relationship is either strengthening or weakening. You’re working on it or else. You won’t find a successful professional who is simply a natural. Even freakishly-talented sports superstars readily admit to thousands of hours practicing. And faith is the same. The more time and effort you spend on it, the better you are at it. Which is not to say it makes you a relatively “better” person. Just ask my wife, who readily admits I can be a just a subtle shade of irritable for some reason during Lent. I don’t know what the heck she’s talking about. Perhaps her penance is dealing with me during Lent!

No, giving up alcohol or sugar doesn’t make the world a better place. It may not even make me a more faithful person. But it’s an attempt at denying one’s self, and if there’s anything today’s world is sorely lacking in, it’s that type of self denial.