As a spectator of the children’s carnival in my neighborhood, it caught my attention that the musical entertainer, making a reference to Lent to the children, made them look strange, since it didn’t sound familiar to them. In the same neighborhood, until last year, the bakery displayed a large sign that said “Lent fritters”, now not even that. To further emphasize the same, the supermarket these days, at the start of Lent, the fishmonger’s section is no more crowded than usual. Needless to say, the impact in the media. It can be said that Lent, like Christians, becomes invisible.
Although we are a minority, as the Pope tells us, we should be a significant minority. And Lent is the platform that could allow us to be more visible.
Perhaps for a long time we ourselves have given bad propaganda to Lent, presenting it as a set of prohibitions with no other objective than tto fulfill tiempo because it is necessary.
We have not experienced it as a positive proposition. I realized this the day when I was in line at the Hospital’s work restaurant, talking to a fellow nurse, faced with her choices of meatless dishes, I asked her if she couldn’t eat meat, to which she, without flinching, told me that yes she could. With my surprise, I pointed out that she had looked for dishes that did not contain meat, to which she replied that she could, but she didn’t want to. It became clear to me that it was not a prohibition, but an option. The conversation leaned towards the vegetarian philosophy, in such a way that her conviction and the reasons she gave encouraged leaving the animals in their habitat. Not eating meat, for the nurse, was neither a sacrifice, nor a militant issue, much less a prohibition, it was the way to escape destruction and live a life more in line with nature.
How we live Christian asceticism and especially Lent, as a time of prohibitions or as a stage of renewal and strengthening. Pope Francis tells us “The Lenten ascetic path, like the synodal path, has as its goal a personal and ecclesial transfiguration. A transformation that, in both cases, finds its model in that of Jesus and is carried out through the grace of his paschal mystery.”
Lent in its beginnings was a time of hope, both for the catechumens who desired baptism, and for the penitents who longed to join the community again. They were not days of prohibitions, but of intensely living the preparation to be a Christian fully.
It would be good to live Lent as a positive proposition of renewal and not as a set of prohibitions that in themselves and without an objective become obscurantist and sterile practices.
And although the objectives of Lenten fasting are different from therapeutic fasting, so fashionable every day, in our case, abstinence and fasting as Lenten practices, as we pray in the preface, help us moderate our desire for sufficiency and result in goods for the poor, that is, it makes us more humble and consequently more human.
The personal transfiguration that the Pope tells us about is not only corporal, but spiritual. It would be nice if, living in this time, we too would be asked about our fasting, not so much because of the sad face that Jesus criticizes so much but because of the joy that comes with freeing ourselves from enslaving hooks and attachments.
On the spiritual level, the new spiritualities without God also challenge us, when they talk about meditation and coexistence retreats. With what a positive, self-affirming mood, they display their practices as something vital. What a difference with the church in the times that we propose, within what is lent, training talks, meditations and retreats, how it is not very successful, considering it something superfluous.
The day someone tells us that they see us as more friendly and in good spirits and asks us if we go to a psychologist or something similar, and we answer that we are simply in Lent, a time to experience the desert, to find ourselves more and better and keep asking us how we do it, and we can answer that we do meditation and prayer, that the rosary, the Stations of the Cross and the Eucharist in this time allow us to work on ourselves, that day we will have awakened curiosity in others. With a happy face, we spread. It is Jesus’ proposal for the way of fasting and praying.
Almsgiving. The other pillar of Lent, along with abstinence and prayer, also has pejorative connotations that are not helpful. Sorrow, pity, place us above others. But also the fact of helping them becomes a charitable effort, a sacrifice. In his message for this year, the Pope tells us about the synodal path, about that journey together. “In addition to speaking to us in the Scriptures, the Lord does so through our brothers and sisters, especially in the faces and stories of those who need help. But I would also like to add another aspect, very important in the synodal process: listening to Christ also involves listening to our brothers and sisters in the Church; that reciprocal listening that in some phases is the main objective, and which, in any case, is always indispensable in the method and style of a synodal Church.”
Lent thus becomes a positive proposition of physical and spiritual renewal, an oasis of meditation and prayer, and a proposal to walk together sharing life.
