Plans for Lent 2024

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. It occurred to me to give up beer for Lent, which is an uncomfortable idea, so I am doing it. I will still have a glass of wine with dinner but no alcohol afterwards.

The other traditional practices in Lent (in addition to fasting) are prayer and almsgiving. For prayer, I am going back to the rosary. I am in a men's group at my parish. The deacon challenged us to say the rosary for a month to discern whether we should apply to be deacons, not whether we should be deacons. That was back in the summer. I did one week of praying before we went on our Europe vacation, which tanked the effort. I feel called to renew that project this Lent, which is a bit scary, and not just for me.

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. I will give the beer money to a good cause.

For spiritual reading, I will read again The Power of the Cross, a series of sermons by Cardinal Cantalamessa given on Good Fridays to the Pope. I read it last Lent and was so impressed, I want to re-experience it. It provides enough sermons (he started them in the 1980s) to cover the whole season. I also want to re-read Benedict XVI's Jesus of Nazareth: Holy Week. I teach religious education at our parish and I just covered Lectio Divina, a style of prayer that includes reading and reflection. I want to try it out. The sermons might be too long for that, I may start with the Psalms, which I am studying anyway because our pastor has an on-going YouTube series going through the Psalms one at a time.