February 17, 2008

Glynn Cardy

Lent 2

The supermarkets are already selling Hot Cross buns and Easter eggs, foods that are traditionally eaten only on Good Friday and Easter Saturday. This is not surprising in a culture that finds it difficult to limit consumption of any product to just one day a year. Our culture has little interest in gastronomic constraint.

Lent, the forty days prior to Easter, is a time when the Christian Church has emphasized constraint. In Western Christianity Lent lasts from Ash Wednesday until Holy Saturday. It is a solemn, preparatory time. There are no flowers in church. The faithful are encouraged to pray, give to the needy, and give up rich foods.

Curtailing the intake of calories may have originated for practical reasons. In the Northern winter by March food that had been stored the previous autumn was running out, or had to be used up before it perished. The joys of spring were not just the flowers popping up but the arrival of fresh food.

The Lenten fast could be quite rigorous in times past. Socrates Scholasticus, writing from Constantinople in the early 4th century, reported that in some places all animal products were strictly forbidden, while others permitted fish, and others ate only bread. In some places believers abstained from food for an entire day. In most places, however, the practice was to abstain from eating until the evening when a small meal without meat or alcohol was eaten.

In the days of authoritarian church leadership abstinence like everything else was enforced. It resulted in numerous ways to circumvent culinary prohibitions. An elderly priest once told me with a twinkle in his eye that there were many and varied saints days in Lent – it being permissible to drink alcohol on such days. Of course, as the Church slowly learned, enforced piety soon ceases to be piety at all.

Enforced piety however was profitable. If the rich or unrestrained wanted to indulge then dispensations were granted – for a fee of course. It is popularly believed that such monies built several churches including the “Butter Tower” of the Rouen Cathedral – butter being one of the products prohibited in Lent.

Today, in the West, the practice of fasting is considerably relaxed. In the Roman Catholic Church it is traditional to abstain from meat every Friday for the duration of Lent. On Ash Wednesday it is customary to fast for the day, with no meat, eating only one full meal. A number of Christians, Protestants included, give up meat, alcohol, sweets and other types of food during Lent.

Anglicans generally don’t favour self-denial. We have preferred a theology that affirms the good things in life and our participation in them. Instead of abstinence Anglicans have prepared for Easter by trying to be generous towards others. This Lent, for example, the Archbishops of Canterbury and York encouraged their followers to “help to make our communities, local or global, clean and secure places of generosity.”

Yet at its best the ancient admonition to fast for Lent invites Christians to question what we need and why. There is a deep truth that the more we depend on possessions the greater the danger that we will worship them.

Many New Zealanders go camping over the summer. They take what their car and trailor can carry and head off to a beachside campground or an isolated paddock. There, if the weather is kind, they relax for a week or two.

Prior to departure campers have to ask the question about what they need and why. The young daughter who proudly fills a case with a dozen sets of clothes is gently instructed in the art of discerning between necessity and luxury.

Some campers deliberately stay away from the benefits of electrical power in order to lessen the impact of modern technology. Power is not always beneficial or conducive to good familial relationships.

Once away campers become much more attuned to the environment than is the case in their suburban existence. The ground underfoot, the weather forecast, the bugs, and the sun play a much greater role in their daily activities.

Campers too often find in the absence of work pressures and usual avenues of entertainment more time to talk with friends, go for walks, play with children, and watch sunsets.

New Zealand society I think is in danger of losing the art and discipline of self constraint. Whether it is the desire to drink to excess, eat until obeise, or spend unrestrained, time and again our values of community, family, and individual wellbeing are compromised by our appetite for more. Do we control our appetites or do they control us? As I move around Auckland it seems that parties can’t happen without alcohol, children can’t be entertained without television and computers, and adults can’t feel successful without the latest and greatest products.

Like campers we need to take time out. We need to pause and consider what we need as opposed to what we want, and the social and physical costs of both. One way to do this is by observing a self-imposed period of going without. A Lenten fast can help us differentiate between what is a necessity and what is a luxury. It can help us consider what kind of possesions and power we want in our lives, and the consequences of having more.

For those who practice self constraint there are also other benefits. Our awareness of our land and climate and our impact upon them is enhanced. Our social relationships can also benefit. Alcohol in particular often distorts and impairs relationships. Lastly, and maybe most importantly, we usually begin to feel better within ourselves, freer and happier. Self constraint does not impair, indeed it can enhance, our enjoyment and love of life. Self constraint nourishes the soul.