Not Just For Fun

After less than one week, I decided my little Lenten blog experiment was not working anywhere near the way I had hoped, or even really working out at all. I now return to entirely normal programming (at least as normal as it gets around here). The first part of that "normal" is a discussion about Lent. Go figure.

This past Sunday our priest gave a homily about Lenten sacrifices. He used the story of a man who drank a lot, and gave up drinking for Lent, only to return to it by drinking a ton on Easter. The point of the story was that if it doesn't change you, what good is it anyway? The man didn't stop his bad habit of drinking a lot. My first impression of the homily was an immediate "but, that's not the point!" The man in the story was giving up a bad habit just like a new years resolution, with the difference that it lasted over a month until he reverted again. The focus was not on God; it was on giving up drinking. Now, this might have been a faulty first reaction (and how do I know he wasn't giving up drinking for God, anyway, and not because it was a bad habit), and I've since heard both reactions similar to mine and others who thought it made a lot of sense, that, if you're just going to go right back to it come Easter, what's the point? How has anything changed?

The second opinion does make sense, especially given the way so many people treat the idea of giving something up for Lent. There was a bit in last Sunday's reading that stated that Jesus fasted for forty days and, at the end of those days, he was hungry. It was followed by the fact that the devil tempted Jesus by asking him to make bread - of course, if he was hungry, he's going to want to eat. We know that there was a reason for Jesus' time spent in the desert fasting and that he accomplished more than simply starving himself. But too often we give up something for Lent and because our focus is only on giving that thing up, all we accomplish is to make ourselves hungry. Instead of using the time during Lent to focus more on God, we count down the days until we can gorge ourselves on bread again - and on sweets, movies, music, beer, or whatever other things people choose to give up. If that's all that we're doing, then I agree; what's the point? We're hungry, but not any holier (phrasing partially stolen). And probably better off not giving up anything at all.

I found myself in a discussion about this topic within the past week, and had the exact same initial reaction; that's not the point. There's something more to it. We're not giving up something bad in order to, in that way, better ourselves during Lent. We're giving up something good as.. and I stopped there, because, as so often happens, my powers of conversation failed me and my thoughts froze. As what? An offering, a sacrifice, a penance, simply a means of reminding us where our focus should be whenever we think about what we're missing? I didn't end up actually entering the conversation, because I couldn't easily explain it, though a good portion of that IS due to the common and frequent brain freeze that leads most people who know me to wonder if I'm mute.

So what I actually want to do - and will, but I'm putting this thought on a "to-be-continued" status and running away for the weekend - is make use of a method where I rarely have brain freeze problems, and write down my actual thoughts on the matter. But that brilliance will have to wait until I'm home again.