By Father Casey
Christians didn’t always observe Lent.
Back in the earliest days of the Church, in the first century or two after Jesus, there was no such thing as Lent. At that time, there were fasts and holy observances, for sure, most notably during the week leading to Easter Day, but the custom of spending 40 days in prayer and self-denial…that didn’t begin until several centuries later. Which makes sense, when you think about it. There wasn’t really a need for Lent, since the earliest Christians were a pretty intense bunch all the time. When you believe that Jesus is going to show back up any moment, your faith remains permanently fixed at the center of your life.
But eventually, the intensity of those early Christians waned, and it wasn’t long before many in the Church had allowed the faith to be little more than assent to a bunch of ideas about Jesus instead a firm commitment to follow the way of Jesus. Not coincidentally, that was around the time it got harder to pick Christians out in a crowd. Whereas before, Christians had stood out from society because of our humility and selflessness, our devotion to the poor, and our radical commitment to peace, at some point we decided that all we needed to do was be nice and blend in.
Around that same time, some of our ancestors decided it might be helpful to set aside a time each year to restart our discipleship: to reset our routines, refocus on the way of Christ, and renew our commitment to our faith. So the Church developed this season we now call Lent – Lent coming from the old English word Lenten, meaning spring, which referred, of course, to the season in nature that coincided with it, but also referred to the hope that it would be a springtime for our souls. Forty days to take a hard look at ourselves and how we’re living our commitment to Christ. Forty days to consider how we’ve erred and strayed like lost sheep. Forty days to ponder how we’ve made our faith too small and convenient.
Sadly, even Lent became diluted over time and gradually stopped having the same power that it once did. Just as the earliest Christians eventually blended in with everyone else, in most settings it’s hard today to pick a Christian out from a crowd, even in Lent. The discipline of fasting became a few weeks without Diet Coke. The disciplines of meditation and prayer became a quick prayer before drifting off to sleep. The discipline of almsgiving and solidarity with the poor became a box with a few coins in it. And the discipline of radical simplicity became trying not to check Facebook quite so obsessively.
For Lent to do what the ancients intended – namely, draw us back to the way, the truth, and the life of Jesus – we would do well to return to the disciplines they passed down to us. Our faith cannot be just another thing we squeeze into our life when it’s reasonably convenient. For Lent to do what the ancients intended, we need to sacrifice some of our cherished comfort and contentment, and actually challenge our habits and patterns. Because the point of Lent isn’t actually to see whether or not we can stop drinking or eating chocolate for six weeks. The point of Lent is to change our lives in ways that bring us closer to Christ.
Which is why I love my friend and fellow priest John Ohmer’s suggestion that we should choose a fast for Lent that we are pretty sure we can’t possibly keep. He says that most of us set the bar far too low, because we have forgotten that the goal of this season is not to get to the end without tripping up. The goal of the season is transformation and change and letting go.
I wonder what you would choose for your Lenten discipline if you weren’t worried about perfectly keeping it? What could you give up that might actually change you for the better? What discipline should you take on that would have the power to deepen your life with God? Maybe we should aim to make it to the end Lent having failed once or twice (or even more), because we had chosen something significant and important – something with the potential to be the foundation of a more mature faith.
Fr. Casey