Blessed Ash Wednesday. Today we start Lent. And remember the verse “Dust though art, to dust thou shalt return.”
The pre-Vatican II, pre-1960s Lenten penance is a simple fast and partial abstinence on all Mondays, Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays. And a simple fast and complete abstinence each Friday.
No meat except one meal outside of Friday, no snacks between meals. Excluding Sundays, which are a “little Easter” celebrating the Resurrection, it is a 40 day period of penance.
There is a painting from the Middle Ages that depicts Christ against hedonism. He is chopping down a tree at the top of which is a group of people sitting at a table eating like gluttons.
There is also a skeleton figure likewise chopping away at the tree, which represents the dead lamenting their past worldliness and inordinate attachment to pleasures, before death.
Living for this world leads to hell, or at best the sorrow and regret the poor souls endure as a purification before entering heaven, a place, state, and temporary transition from death to eternal life what we Catholics call “purgatory.” To purge is to get rid of all inclination towards evil.
This flies in the face of our hedonistic culture, constantly eating out and indulging daily in every pleasure, without moderation or for that matter self-denial.
Even Christians professing faith in Christ on Sundays, with cross on their wall, typically live for this world. Most here in Oklahoma wil tell you adamantly they are a Christian, that they are saved. Apart from the question of justification (faith alone, vs by faith and good works), are we not called by Christ Himself to perfection? To redemption?
On a natural and human level, the ancient philosophers, like the Stoics as a prime example, saw happiness as the development of wisdom and virtue. To develop the soul, not simply to satisfy all the desires of the body.
I therefore invite every reader reading this to join me and my household in observing Lent, in the traditional manner, by following the traditional Lenten fast and abstinence, as described above, which is actually easier than was done during the Middle Ages and first centuries of Christendom.
You can still have one full, hearty meal daily with meat, except Fridays, and feast on Sundays if you choose. Then after Lent we feast for 40 days celebrating the completion of Christ’s act of salvation after the crucifixion, the Resurrection itself being the completion of the Redemption.