Lent Plans 2021

It's Ash Wednesday again, a day "of fasting and abstinence," as described in the Catechism of the Catholic Church, paragraph 2043.  Fasting is eating much less food than you normally would; abstinence in this context is not eating meat. The point of this penance is not to punish yourself. It's to "acquire mastery over our instincts and freedom of heart." Rather than being led around by our appetites, we practice saying "no" to them so that we are free to focus on other, more important things. Eating food is important but not the most important thing in our lives. Ash Wednesday and Good Friday are the two prescribed days for fast and abstinence in America, with the Fridays in Lent only requiring abstinence from meat. So the obligation is not so great. Often, people add other days for themselves or make other sacrifices, the classical "giving up something for Lent." My plan for this year is my tradition giving up of graphic novel reading, though I do have quite a backlog so it probably won't be obvious to blog readers. I'm also going to give up my evening alcoholic drink. Usually I have a beer or something else after the kids go to bed.

The other traditional practices in Lent (in addition to fasting) are prayer and almsgiving. For prayer, I am using the daily meditation book called A Year with the Angels. We will start up morning devotion at home with the children. We take five minutes in the morning to sing a hymn, read a little meditation or passage from the Bible. Maybe we'll light a candle too, since that's fun for the kids.

For almsgiving, we will continue to buy something extra for the local food pantry when we shop for groceries. And the money I save on alcohol will go to charity, too.

For spiritual reading, I am going to read To Know Christ Jesus by Frank Sheed and The Resurrection of the Shroud: New Scientific, Medical and Archeological Evidence by Mark Antonacci. Also, our church is sponsoring a challenge to read the whole New Testament in Lent, calling it the Saint Jerome Challenge. 

We don't have any really big family plans this year for Lent other than morning devotion.