A Bit of Lenten Advice: Don’t Aim to Complete Lent

There are things in all our lives that need to be removed, amended, or even crushed, and we need more than Lent to do it. Lent is unique. Lent is a sacred time devoted to fasting and scarcity, a time of discipline, and our churches ask things of our time, our stomachs, and our habits that are uncommon throughout the rest of the year. That is what sets Lent apart. However, too often we separate Lent and Easter too much. We decide to be more charitable, prayerful, or disciplined, and it does not continue past the forty days. Lent, however, is not outside the normal cadence of time. It is a part of it. The ascetic pursuits and submission to self-discipline are equally as sacred as the feasting and celebration. Lent and Easter join together the cross and the Resurrection—both are necessary for salvation. Lent is on equal footing with Christian celebrations, meaning it is good as the joyful seasons, Eastertide and Christmastide, are good. My advice, then, is to find something that you can give up in Lent that continues forever.  

Let me explain. Too often, Lent is viewed in temporary terms. We choose or receive the things we should fast from, change, or devote ourselves to during Lent and then immediately lift our heads toward Easter, ready for the hard season to be over. We have one eye on our fasting and another on the anticipated feasting. As a high school student, in one of my first encounters with the season of Lent, I had two friends who ate only rice and beans for forty days. The only thing they talked about (after the novelty wore off) was how ready they were to stop their fast. Too often, although it is not verbalized, the main cry of our hearts is for the end of Lent. Christ is risen; Lent does not need to be a year-long fast. However, we will practice Lent poorly if we practice Lent impatiently, if we look up toward Easter too quickly.  

Lent is in the calendar of sacred time to remind and permanently teach us that the cross is the way of life. We live both as refugees suffering in a world full of sin and as children of God who are called out of the world. Lent is the path to resurrected life. We are to take up our cross and follow Jesus in all the liturgical seasons, even Easter. Lent, then, has something to offer the rest of sacred time. In the Lenten season, we feel the weight of fasting and asceticism, and we long to turn to a season of plenty. Christ knows that and so does His Church, but it is there for our good. As the fifth-century desert father Abba Daniel said, “The soul prospers in the measure in which the body is weakened.” This is not a principle that applies only to Lent.  

Lent’s asceticism, fasting, and charity are meant to heal us through repentance. Lent teaches us that our bodies can help us repent. It is, as Peter Leithart suggests in “40 Reasons to Observe Lent,” an article for the Theopolis Institute, “the supremely anti-Gnostic season.” Christian history is full of fruit because it is full of repentance, and Lent holds the tradition of our fathers out to us so that we too, as St. John the Baptizer proclaimed in rebuking the Pharisees, can “bear fruit in keeping with repentance.”  

So, move your phone out of your bedroom forever. Delete Instagram permanently. Never eat meat on a Friday ever again. Pray your evening prayers every day. Read your Bible each morning. Stop drinking. Stop cussing. Go to confession. Give your hobby money to your church. Lay up for yourself “treasure in heaven” that will not grow old.  

Encourage your family, your students, your faculty, your friends, and yourself toward the way of the cross. Through the way of the fathers, through the way of Christ, we come to Christ Himself. May the Lord shape our communities, our classrooms, and ourselves toward Him, the end of all things, as we begin this sacred season.