(Bob Roller / OSV News)
View from the pew
There once was a motto that a Catholic kid would hear in the days leading up Christmas: “Remember the reason for the season.” The point was it’s not meant to be a time of greed and gluttony, of fixation on shopping sprees and making a list for Santa of things you want to receive. The season is about the great gift God gave us when Jesus was born.
Celebrating that awesome event down through the centuries, human did what humans do: They made it party time with caroling, feasting, decorating, gift-giving and adapting traditions from pre-Christians like decorated trees and mistletoe.
Food is the focus of festive celebration. My fond memory is of a food tradition that we spent hours on — making Christmas cookies in all the symbolic Christmas shapes, slathering the stars, angels, trees and camels with colored frosting and sprinkles, our holiday gift to lots of people. I was so grateful not to have grown up in the tradition of plum pudding instead!
Now we are on the path to the ultimate glorious celebration of Christianity. But before our annual cycle of spiritual life brings us to Easter, we are led by the church to “remember the reason for the season” of Lent.
“While appealing for greater development of the understanding of the Lenten liturgy … we hope that the observance of Lent as the principal season of penance in the Christian year will be intensified,” said the U.S. bishops in a pastoral letter decades ago.
As we listen to the daily Mass liturgy, we are hearing the same Scriptural readings chosen as food for thought for Catholics throughout the world. A small step to intensify your own Lenten devotion would be to re-read those texts later in a quiet time and space on your own.
Parishes offer other chances to focus on penance with retreats, special speakers and congregational Stations of the Cross — and that’s another possibility for a do-it-yourself prayerful journey to Calvary. Alas, we have no Catholic bookstore anymore, but there are numerous Lenten reflections and prayer guides available online.
I admit — and I imagine I have a lot of company — that making your way through Lent has you somewhat fixated on food. What’ll it be for dinner Friday, another round of Catholic pasta, aka macaroni and cheese? With our Wisconsin roots, cheese is always an option in any form, as were eggs until the current shortage.
I still fall back on small-kid days and try to give up candy, but not cookies and muffins, so where’s the sacrifice?
We hardly suffer since we are only expected to abstain from meat on seven Fridays during Lent and to actually fast only two days. But there’s the devil whispering how hungry you are for bacon or a burger!
Long-held traditions
Meatless Fridays all year long was the rule for most of the Christian world from the sixth century. Some Protestants spun off from the ancient practices after the Protestant Reformation. After the Second Vatican Council, in 1966, Pope Paul VI reduced the frequency of mandatory fasting and abstinence.
That’s when the U.S. bishops issued the pastoral letter mentioned earlier, affirming that fasting and abstaining from meat, “an obligation observed under a more strict formality by our fathers in the faith, still binds on Ash Wednesday and Good Friday. No Catholic Christian will lightly excuse himself from so hallowed an obligation on Ash Wednesday which solemnity opens the Lenten season and on that Friday called ‘Good’ because on that day Christ suffered in the flesh and died for our sins.”
Where did this idea of starving as a penitential, prayerful ritual come from anyway?
The foundation of the liturgical season of Lent is in several Bible stories. Exodus tells of Moses going into the mountains for 40 days and 40 nights to pray “without eating bread or drinking water” before receiving the 10 commandments from God.
In the First Book of Kings, the prophet Elijah went into the mountains for 40 days and nights to fast and pray “until he reached Horeb, the mountain of God” where “the word of the Lord came to him.”
And the Gospels of Matthew and Luke tell of Jesus going into the desert to fast and pray for 40 days and 40 nights, during which he rejected Satan’s attempts to tempt him.
Although fasting and abstaining are penitential practices with an ancient history, canon law does not require it. So if you falter or choose to skip it, you needn’t confess it as a sin. But I do have to look myself in the eye and ask: How much do I understand about “the reason for this season?” how mature and authentic am I in living my faith?
Memories of pre-Vatican II time are part of the conversation for older generations. We were reminded by the nuns in school of the belief that Jesus died on a Friday, so what a small sacrifice we are asked to make each Friday.
Growing up in the landlocked middle of the country, fish was likely to be from a tin or a jar in the middle of winter. There were some penance points in that.
Living in the midst of the ocean, fresh fish is definitely not a penance to eat; in these times, the penance comes in the price. How righteous can you feel if you order the grilled ahi or mahi from the top of the menu?
The traditional rule of abstaining from meat was not applied by the first Catholic missionaries to Hawaii in the 1800s. For the first Catholic converts, fish would have been common fare and meat rarely available. Hawaiians would often eat in communal meals provided by chiefs and leaders they worked for.
Imagine what it was like to live in medieval times, when the strictest of rules were applied. According to the Britannica website, Ash Wednesday and Good Friday were “black fasts.” That means no food at all. On all other days of Lent, it was no food until after 3 p.m., the hour of Christ’s death on the cross, or until sunset. Water was allowed, as well as watered-down beer and wine.
(Interestingly, abstaining from drinking alcohol has never been a Catholic thing.)
Many faiths do it, too
Orthodox Christians still observe fasting and abstinence practices they’ve followed for centuries. Members abstain from meat, dairy products, eggs, fish (except for shellfish) and olive oil Mondays through Fridays during Great Lent.
This year, Orthodox Christians will join other Christians in observing Easter on April 20. It hasn’t happened since 2017 and won’t happen again until 2028.
The difference is that Western Christianity calculates the Easter date as the first Sunday after the first full moon after the spring equinox. The Orthodox Church also requires that Easter happens after the Jewish holy day of Passover, a movable feast which is determined by the Hebrew lunar calendar.
According to Scripture, Jesus’ last supper with his apostles, which we celebrate on Holy Thursday, was a celebration of Passover.
This is a year of serendipity of celebrations by people of the three Abrahamic faiths who believe in the one God: Jewish people will celebrate Passover April 12-20 as determined by the Hebrew lunar calendar. Like us, food is a focus as they celebrate the time when God directed Moses to lead the Israelites out of captivity in Egypt. According to tradition, that was in 1300 B.C.
If you read the story in the Old Testament book Exodus, you will find out why the menu for the Passover Seder meal includes lamb, bitter herbs and unleavened bread. The only fasting involved in this holy time is to clear the house of bread, cakes — anything containing grain that has risen. Thanksgiving rather than penitence is the theme of the holiday which marks God’s liberating his chosen people from slavery.
Almighty God is also being honored this month by believers who know him as Allah.
Adult Muslims around the world will complete their Ramadan observance on March 29. The monthlong period of fasting is devoted to spiritual purification and charitable deeds of sharing food with needy people. Observant Muslims go from dawn to sunset with nothing to eat or drink, even a sip of water.
Ramadan marks the time when Islam’s scriptures, the Quran, were revealed to their prophet Muhammad before 622 A.D. This year, it will end on March 30 with a holy day, Eid al-Fitr, which is celebrated with communal feasts.
Like Judaism, Islam uses a lunar calendar cycle so our religious celebrations honoring our Creator will diverge next year. Ramadan will be from Feb. 17-March 19, Passover occurs April 1-9, and Easter lands on April 5 for Western Christianity and on April 12 for Orthodox Christianity.
