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Struggling with Lenten commitments? A prayer of St. Teresa on mortification

“Why O Lord, should I be preoccupied with my fears and lose courage in the face of my weakness? You give me to understand that I must fortify myself in humility, and convince myself that I can do very little alone, and that without your help I am nothing. I shall put all my confidence in your mercy, and shall distrust my own strength, convinced that my weakness is caused by my self-reliance. You teach me not to be astonished at my struggle, for when a soul wishes to give itself over to mortification, it encounters difficulties on all sides. Does it wish to give up its ease? What a hardship! To scorn a point of honor? What a torture! To endure harsh words? Intolerable suffering! In short, it becomes filled with extreme sadness, but as soon as it resolved to die to the world, every anguish is at an end.”

Saint Teresa of Avila

Can special events be celebrated during Lent?

Q: Dear Father John, I have a question… My brother’s graduation is this March during Lent and my family normally eats in a really nice restaurant for dinner after graduations. Is it okay if we aren’t able to fulfill our Lenten fast or penance on days like that? 

A: What a beautiful question! It shows that you are sincerely concerned about living Lent well. Since Lent is a season of special penance, prayer, and almsgiving (by which we prepare ourselves for the liturgy of our Lord’s Sacred Passion), you are wondering if it is possible to celebrate an important event without tarnishing the spiritual atmosphere of the season. I have three thoughts for you.

Keep Fridays Well

First, remember that we all abstain from meat on Fridays during Lent. This is a form of penance and self-denial that the entire Church engages in. We also take on personal penances and spiritual disciplines, but this is one we do as a Catholic family, united with all our brothers and sisters throughout the world, and throughout the centuries. So, if your graduation dinner were to take place on a Friday, you would actually need an official dispensation from this Lenten requirement in order to serve and eat meat.

Time for Celebration

Second, remember also that the Church has not removed all of its liturgical solemnities from the calendar during Lent. St. Joseph’s Day and the Annunciation often fall within Lent. Likewise, Sundays are still liturgical solemnities all throughout Lent (which is why Lent, which starts on Ash Wednesday and ends on Easter Eve, still has only 40 days – if you include the Sundays, it would be 46). On solemnities, the Church is able to celebrate the triumphs of our Lord without spoiling the Lenten atmosphere.

Equilibrium over Legalism

Third, if someone’s birthday or anniversary were to fall during Lent, that would be no reason to forego a celebration. I think the case you present is similar to those. The graduation is a real achievement, and ought to be celebrated. To have a special celebration in honor of the achievement is a good and just thing to do. You can celebrate wholeheartedly on that day, without giving up or compromising your Lenten disciplines of prayer and penance, and you may even be able to combine them. For instance, you could give the graduate a Lenten-esque graduation present, like a donation in his name to a Catholic orphanage or educational institution. That would show appreciation both for your brother’s achievement, and also for the spirit of self-sacrifice that Lenten almsgiving is meant to express and foster.

I hope you can see that the mind of the Church in this matter always focuses on more than simply following specific external rules. It sets aside these weeks as a time to turn up the intensity of our quest for intimacy with God, our Creator, Savior, and Lover. If we followed all the “rules” perfectly, but didn’t engage actively in that quest, we would be missing the point. Lent is a season of spiritual renewal, of spring cleaning for the soul. The specific rules and practices that the Church requires and recommends are all meant to boost us in that primary, interior, and crucial spiritual adventure.

Lent is Not Over Until It is Over – Here’s Some Humorous Help for Latecomer Resolutions

Lent is not over until it is over. Some of you have probably found yourself within the lenten season without any direction whatsoever. A brilliant priest, Fr. Shane Johnson, has created a humorous but very effective way of thinking our way through how we might yield our souls to God during Lent. If you have yet to make your commitments, use this chart and don’t be discouraged. It is never too late to give more to God.

Ash Wednesday Fasting and Church Teaching

Every year a bunch of questions come up concerning Lent and the details of the laws governing it. Sometimes these rules are misstated or not clearly stated in various places on the web, so let’s look at what the Church’s official documents say regarding the practice of fast and abstinence on Ash Wednesday.

Before we do that, though, let me offer a few notes of caution:

1) The Church’s laws regarding fast and abstinence today are very mild. As such, they are minimums. One can go beyond what they require and observe a stricter form of penitence, though one is not legally required to do so.

2) There are ways of technically staying within the letter of the law while violating its spirit—e.g., avoiding meat but having a lavish seafood feast. These should be avoided. We want to keep both the letter and the spirit of the law.

3) The Church does not mean us to hurt ourselves by observing penitential practices, and there are a number of exceptions to the law of fast in particular. Anyone who has a medical condition that would conflict with fasting is not obliged to observe it. For example, someone with diabetes, someone who has been put on a special diet by a doctor, someone with acid reflux disease who needs to keep food in the stomach to avoid acid buildup.

Now let’s look at the law.

Ash Wednesday is a day of abstinence and fast. According to Pope Paul VI’s constitution Paenitemini:

III. 1. The law of abstinence forbids the use of meat, but not of eggs, the products of milk or condiments made of animal fat.

2. The law of fasting allows only one full meal a day, but does not prohibit taking some food in the morning and evening, observing—as far as quantity and quality are concerned—approved local custom.

Something to note about the law of fast is that while it acknowledges one full meal, it does not further specify the quantity of “some food” that can be consumed in the morning and evening. You sometimes hear or read about “two smaller meals as long as they don’t add up to another full meal” but this is not what the law says. It just says “some food.” That is certainly something less than a full meal, but the Church does not intend people to scruple about precisely amounts. (Also, the “doesn’t add up to another full meal” rule is very difficult to apply since people eat meals of different sizes during the day and the “size” of a meal can be measured in more than one way; e.g., calories vs. volume.)

The law does provide that approved local custom can regulate the quantity and quality of this food, but the U.S. bishops have not established a complementary norm regulating this. Nor has any U.S. bishop bound his subjects in this respect, to my knowledge. (Your mileage may vary.)

Now: Who is bound to abstain and fast? Here the governing document is the 1983 Code of Canon Law:

Can. 1252 The law of abstinence binds those who have completed their fourteenth year. The law of fasting binds those who have attained their majority, until the beginning of their sixtieth year. Pastors of souls and parents are to ensure that even those who by reason of their age are not bound by the law of fasting and abstinence, are taught the true meaning of penance.

“Those who have completed their fourteenth year” mean those who have had their fourteenth birthday (your first year starts at birth and is completed with your first birthday). The obligation to abstain begins then and continues for the rest of one’s life.

Not so with the law of fasting. “Those who have attained their majority” refers to those who have had their eighteenth birthday, and “the beginning of their sixtieth year” occurs when one turns fifty-nine (the sixtieth year is the one preceding one’s sixtieth birthday, the same way the first year precedes the first birthday). The law of fast thus binds from one’s eighteenth birthday to one’s fifty-ninth—unless a medical condition intervenes.

What about those who are too young to be subject to these requirements? Here Paenitemini states:

As regards those of a lesser age, pastors of souls and parents should see to it with particular care that they are educated to a true sense of penitence.

As noted, these are legal minimums, and one certainly can do more.

By Jimmy Akin – To read more posts by Jimmy Akin, go to the National Catholic Register

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