Lenten customs

My friend J. has "given up sweets for Lent." That phrase took me back a few decades---to childhood exchanges of secrets following Ash Wednesday services, where we got the black stuff smeared on our foreheads by Monsieur le Curé's anointed thumb. We put off washing our faces as long as possible, proudly parading our piety like preening peacocks.

J. isn't proud. Nor does she share my Catholic background (hers is a Jewish heritage). She explained that her life is so busy these days that she wanted a way to stop and pray to God throughout the day. Refraining from chocolate is her chosen means: In this 40-day season leading up to Good Friday and Easter, the self-bereavement of a Hershey bar functions as a visceral trigger to send up prayers of praise as often as she is tempted to reach out for a lesser comforter.

Surely I had thrown out the baby with the bathwater when I changed church affiliation years ago. J. makes me realize that there was a worthy impulse behind the ancient Lenten custom of elective denial of pleasures. David and his men gave up the pleasures of women before doing the Lord's business (1 Samuel 21:4-5), and there is no hint of a divine censure. Jesus himself refers to fasting as a natural thing to do when the Lord's physical presence is not with us (Matthew 9:15).

OK, the tradition got corrupted (as all tradition is wont to do) over time, to twittering parochial school kids wearing soot on their faces and righteousness on their sleeves, their hearts being far from God (Matthew 15:8-9). But where the heart has true fellowship with the Lord, it is still the case that "the one who eats, eats in honor of the Lord . . . while the one who abstains, abstains in honor of the Lord and gives thanks to God" (Romans 14:6).

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