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Mercredi des Cendres
This week finds its Hump 🐪 Day kicking off the season of Lent. After the joyous frivolity of Mardi ⚜️ Gras or Fastnacht 🍩 Day, Ash 🕂 Wednesday provides a pivot into a season of reflection and sacrifice…
🕂 Cross of Ash 🕂
Ash Wednesday reminds us that we are all sinners in need of God’s mercy. ~Marco Rubio
The interesting thing about Ash 🕂 Wednesday is how it fulfills an annual cycle.
The palms from last year’s Holy Week are burned into the ash that the priest or minister uses to create the sign of the cross on foreheads at church at the beginning of Lent.
The deliberate symbolism there is striking.
The exuberance of Palm Sunday contrasts sharply with the beginning of this period of preparation for this year’s instance of that exuberance and the big miracle that follows it.
Round and round it goes, but it always winds up at the same place: the empty tomb.
In the meantime, we prepare for that by following in the footsteps of Jesus as he went into the wilderness to prepare himself.
😌 Giving It Up 🙏
Why Do People Give Things Up for Lent?
I think the friar gives an interesting twist on the commonly held tradition of giving stuff up for Lent.
It references that time away in the wilderness I mentioned above, but the purpose of that was to prepare, inside and out, for the pomp of Palm Sunday, the travails of Good Friday and the victory of Easter Sunday.
I don’t do that.
I gave up giving stuff up for Lent a long time ago.
Should I?
Who knows? Given the friar’s advice to pair an outer sacrifice with an inner one, that would give it a new dimension that I hadn’t considered before.
It always seemed trite to me.
Sure, if you can give up something you feel you can’t do without for 40 days, that can be spiritually uplifting.
Even so, I don’t feel any compulsion to do that.
If I wanted to give something up, I’d give it up permanently.
It just feels performative rather than spiritually meaningful to me.
If you do, God bless. Celebrate Lent with all the solemnity it is designed to embody.
I simply can’t meet you there. It’s not how I roll.
Doing what everyone else is doing because they’re doing it is fundamentally abhorrent to me.
So, I gave up giving up things for Lent ages ago and will likely never pick it back up again.
Fishy 🐟 Fridays
Fasting was instituted by the Church in order to bridle the lusts of the flesh. ~Thomas Aquinas
I’ve also heard that the whole fish on Fridays thing was designed to bolster the medieval popes’ fishing fleets.
Either way, it seems pretty random.
It’s a communal sacrifice. Everybody giving up the same thing at the same time builds community coherence in the season of solemnity.
Cool. That could work, and it’s a reminder that you’re still “celebrating” Lent.
As with giving stuff up for Lent in general, it’s not really my thing.
Frankly, for me to engage in such a practice when it doesn’t feed me spiritually would be very much against the purpose of the exercise.
Personally, I wouldn’t mind fish on Fridays. I could even eat fish on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays.
But that’s because I like fish, not because there’s some spiritual meaning in it for me.
So, what does feed me spiritually?
Doing the things I was put in this world to do.
I like to help people when it’s in my power to do so. That is fulfilling.
I love to write. That is beyond fulfilling.
As I read back through my story so far, I’m finding that it’s exploring some interesting themes and theories that I’m hoping people will find enjoyable.
Guess we’ll see when it’s done and out in the wilderness for people to find and examine.
That’s all for today. See you back on Saturday for more chili 🌶️⛄🌬️ weather…