Plans for Lent 2022

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. In fact, I am giving up written fiction in general, so no novels. I may still listen to audiobooks and short stories from the various podcasts in my subscriptions but I won't just substitute audiobooks for written books. I do read the Sunday comics (Brewster Rockit is my current favorite) but Sundays are exceptions to the penitential times.

The other traditional practices in Lent (in addition to fasting) are prayer and almsgiving. For prayer, I will be reading Praying in the Presence of Our Lord with St. Thomas Aquinas by Mike Aquilina. He's taken five poems by St. Thomas and presented them in Latin (the original language) with an English translation. Then Aquilina has written seven meditations or reflections for each poem. My plan is to read the poem and one meditation a day. With forty days of Lent, I'll come up five short, so I may restart or find something else (maybe Benedict XVI's Jesus of Nazareth: Holy Week).

For almsgiving, we will continue to buy something extra for the local food pantry when we shop for groceries. That's become such a regular habit now, I should probably take it off the list of things for Lent, since it's become a thing for all year. My wife and I have been talking about focusing on one charity for extra giving (beyond our parish, since charity begins at home). We'll do some research and get that sorted this Lent.

For spiritual reading, I am working my way through The Word On Fire Bible: The Gospels. I will also read Things Worth Dying For by Charles Chaput, retired archbishop of Philadelphia, and some other volumes as time and inspiration allows.