Doing Something for Lent
posted on March 12th, 2011
With Lent under way you might already have given thought to what you will do to make the season fruitful — but if not here are two brief articles that might help you celebrate Lent.
- Nick Austin, SJ writes about The Virtue of Asceticism at Thinking Faith
“So what have you decided to give up for Lent? We often we hear that the important thing is not to give something up, but to do something positive. But it’s strange, isn’t it, that the feeling still sticks that Lent is really about giving up stuff? Giving up chocolate, giving up alcohol, giving up desserts, giving up cigarettes, giving up TV, giving up meat on Fridays…. For better or worse, we tend to ask ourselves not ‘What am I going to do, in a positive way, for Lent?’ but ‘What am I going to give up?’ So why are we so fixated on fasting, abstaining, giving stuff up?”
- John F. Kavanaugh, SJ presents A Personalist Lent at America
“What would Lent mean in a culture with a powerful undertow toward depersonalization? Such a culture is our own: capitalist, consumerist, individualist. Without denying its mighty achievements in productivity, medicine, science, entertainment, comfort and the rest, it should be admitted that our culture also erodes personal life.”