March 2024 - What’s the latest fashion to wear during the season of Lent?
The Talmud is the great Jewish library of oral law and rabbinic tradition. The Talmud teaches that everyone should wear a jacket with two pockets. In one pocket, the rabbis say, we should carry the message: “I am a worm and not even fully human.” In the other pocket should be the message: “For me, the world was made.”
For centuries, Jewish wisdom has revealed that both sentiments are true, and they are true at one and the same time. This is not meant to be a riddle, nor is it a contradiction. “I am not yet fully human, and yet, for me, this world was made.” While we have not yet become the fully human beings God created us to become, still, for us, this vast and wonderful world was created for us and given to us as a gift. Christian wisdom and tradition provide 40 days of grace each year to both embrace and internalize this message — this is the purpose of Lent.
Sorrow and joy. Repentance and forgiveness. Humility and confident hope. Fasting and feasting. These are the Lenten polarities that define our lives, give substance to our faith, and offer sacred meaning to our otherwise secular world.
I remember, as a kid, the question that always came up this time of year was: “What are you giving up for Lent?” Perhaps you’ve wondered, as I know I did, what giving up chocolate, desserts, or television really did to honor God. After all, you could pass up dessert simply because you’ve had enough to eat or are on a diet. Obviously, Lent is not about losing weight or making a second-round attempt in keeping our already broken New Year’s resolutions. Rather, Lent is about reconciling those two different, but related, messages in the two pockets of our jacket. The ancient spiritual practice of fasting provides us with one way to do that.
Yet, while Lent does challenge us to fast, it also invites us to feast because there is really no point in fasting if you don’t feast! See, we tend to think of fasting only as going without food. However, we can fast from just about anything providing that we feast on something else in its place. So, here are some suggestions: Fast from complaining, and feast on appreciation. Fast from negatives, and feast on affirmatives. Fast from judging others, and feast on forgiving others. Fast from discouragement, and feast on hope. Fast from meanness, and feast on gentleness. Fast from gossip, and feast on encouraging words. Fast from suspicion, and feast on trust. Fast from deception, and feast on Truth. Fast from worry, and feast on prayer.
The word “Lent” comes from an Old English word meaning “springtime.” So, take heart, because no matter how much the temperature dips outside, how bitterly the wind blows, or how deep the snow, we can experience a change of season in our spiritual lives through Lenten fasting and Lenten feasting, clutching both pockets of our jacket.
Father Louis Phillips is pastor of St. Anthony of Padua Parish in Westbrook.
