LENT: Lengthening days. Nature awakening. New life, and of course, doing without. Our tradition invites us to enter a time of self-discipline, prayer, reflection prior to the Greatest Feast, ultimately our Only Feast, The Resurrection of Jesus in which we are baptized and find Salvation.
Feasts and Liturgical seasons fit closely with the seasons of nature, our seasons of nature.
There are those who lament the dropping of eating fish on Fridays. But was it such a sacrifice to give up meat only to have fish instead? Nice to have the option. Fish may even be more of a treat.
Keep the discipline of Lent at all and you may finish by being pretty pleased with yourself, smug even, perhaps several pounds lighter. (Who needs expensive health farms and diets if you are a good practising Catholic?) And then it’s back to life as it was.
Spare a thought for those for whom Lent is not an option. It may kick in as early as October when the level of grain in the family’s store begins to look low. The mother must plan how to stretch what’s left through to next year. Which meals should be missed and by whom? Which children should stop going to school to find a little cash for essentials?
The rains come. The planting and weeding commences. Three months later, just as the first fruits are ready for gathering from the fields, late February, early March, we enter Lent. The cattle have plenty of milk, the hens are laying nicely, there’s a choice of local vegetables, fresh maize to roast, fish from the rivers and dams. No way are they going to sit back and let these dainties go to waste! Nor do they ignore keeping the spirit of Lent. They take a collection for people poorer than themselves. This year, don’t keep Lent; think a bit, and let Lent keep you.