A Simple Guide to Lent ➕
or, when you want to participate but aren’t sure where to start
.jpg){kind=link}
A few years ago I wrote a practical guide to Lent, and as I sat down to write some Lenten thoughts this year, I realized I’d basically say the same thing again. So, I’m dusting off the following from my archives and tweaking it just a bit. I hope it’s encouraging and helpful! -t
Heads up, in case you weren’t aware: Ash Wednesday is tomorrow, February 18, which marks the beginning of the Lenten season on the Church calendar. There are a great many think pieces on this season out on the internet, and there’s no need for me to add to them. Yet Lent often sneaks up on us—before I had a book about Lent, I’d often find out it was almost Lent this week, or even on Ash Wednesday itself. …Perhaps this is you right now. If so, welcome!
I’ve found this long season in the liturgical calendar to be both deeply formative and practically challenging. There have been years when it’s been clear I need to receive the invitation of Lent to actively participate in the season—and there are years when it’s clear that Lent should be …humming as theme music in the background (usually when all of life feels Lenten). This year, you may be invited to more actively participate, or, you may be invited to quietly let the season have its way with you in a posture of receiving. Ultimately, Lent is just that: an invitation, and should be treated as such.
Lent is very old—one of the oldest-known traditions in the Church (we have documents referencing Lent from the second century)—which means it's a time-weathered tradition and practice in the Christian life. It means, practically, that Lent is an invitation for everyone.
Most people connect Lent to the act of fasting, and that’s true; it’s a literal season of penance. But to many modern minds, fasting is simply not eating food in some way: skipping a meal, eliminating a type of food (caffeine, sugar), or otherwise a more spiritual form of intermittent fasting. These are valid forms of fasting, but fasting is much broader than food, and fasting can mean more than eliminating something—it can also mean adding something.
BIf you want to participate in Lent for one of the first times but aren’t sure where to begin, it’s good to understand some foundational ideas:
1. Lent isn’t about doing some sort of personal quest. It’s not “Mark Wahlberg’s 40-Day Challenge,” as some journalists put it a few years ago. The point isn’t to better yourself by way of personal grit and effort.
2. You will screw up. In some ways, this is the point—not to watch yourself fail spectacularly and have an excuse to beat yourself up, but to have tangible evidence of your human finiteness. You can’t do hard things on your own, out of sheer effort. You need the grace of Christ to do hard things. To do anything. This long Lenten reminder is a gift of grace to us all.
“Nothing great is ever achieved without much enduring.”
-St. Catherine of Siena
3. Much of the Lenten season is about fighting your “noonday devil.” Acedia is one of our most universally felt and universally unspoken-of enemies in our modern era. It’s spiritual apathy, or as my favorite shorthand definition puts it: it’s a sadness that good things are hard. A few years ago on my podcast I unpacked the vice of sloth, so perhaps it’s helpful to listen to my short introduction to acedia, then listen to the next episode where I unpack with Dcn. Harrison Garlick the noonday devil and how to fight it.
4. Lent is a three-legged stool, with each leg representing the three traditional practices of fasting, prayer, and almsgiving. They’re best done in tandem with each other: take one away, and you’ll have to use more of your human effort to not fall over on the wobbly stool. Practice all three in some way (even in a very small way), and it’s easier to rest all your weight on the seasonal purpose of penance.
Within this trifecta, Lent can involve eliminating something in your life—something you sense has a hold on you that shouldn’t—yet it can also involve adding something to your life—something you don’t yet do but sense could bring you to further unity with Christ.
“Lent is a time of grace, a time for conversion, a time to come home to God.”
-St. Maximilian Kolbe
If the overall purpose of Lent is penance, and if the purpose of penance is to shed attachments that keep us from being more of who we’re meant to be—a saint—then our ultimate goal when we participate in Lent is virtue. After all, a habit of virtue is the act of becoming more fully human in the original sense of it all (you know, pre-fall).
If the goal of Lent is a cultivation of our virtue by way of penance, and if there’s a trifecta tradition of fasting, prayer, and almsgiving, each of which could involve either eliminating or adding something… That’s a lot to take in. No wonder Lent feels overwhelming and some of us just don’t bother at all.
Let’s get practical, then. If you’re like me, you can think of all sorts of ways in which you could cultivate more virtue in your life, yet you know this isn’t a personal “40-day challenge.” Lent is long, and we often take on too much at the beginning and burn out by week three. It’s good to start small.
First: Start with prayer. Any Lenten practice you take on should be led by God and not made up on a personal whim. God often uses our own inklings, practical circumstances, and wisdom from other people, so don’t write those off. In my experience, I typically discover what I should do for Lent in the quiet hours of contemplation; it’s often the thing that initially makes me think, “Oh no, not that thing!” Yes, that thing.
Next: Listen to my short episode on acedia. Get into the right mindset of what it means to battle our human tendency towards apathy during Lent.
Then: I find it helpful to break down all my options practically into lists, noticing what stands out to me. As per my Benedictine Rule of Life process, I think through the five habit practices of worship, work, study, hospitality, and renewal, continually keeping the end goal of Lent in mind: deeper union with Christ through the cultivation of virtue.
“The purpose of Lent is not to force on us a few formal obligations, but to soften our heart so that it may open itself to the realities of the spirit, to experience the hidden thirst for communion with God.”
-Pope St. John Paul II
Here are a few ideas. They tend to have a yin-yangness of taking away and adding something in tandem, but these pairs don’t have to be chosen together; this is simply a helpful way to think through penances.
Worship (what it is we love) 🙏
Eliminate: sleeping in
Add: a set time of morning prayer
Eliminate: a show that we know isn’t great for us
Add: a particular book1, podcast, or show that is
Eliminate: one meal per day or week
Add: taking the money you’d spend on that meal and giving it to charity
Work (how we participate in creation) 🔨
Eliminate: sleeping in
Add: using the morning hours to work on a side project you’ve wanted to do
Eliminate: complaining about your job
Eliminate: excess spending in a particular category (clothing, eating out, etc.)
Add: anonymously doing one extra (not-loved) work task each week
Study (what it is we learn or think about) 📚
Eliminate: scrolling social media
Add: using that time to read a book or take a class
Eliminate: watching a particular (not great) YouTube channel
Add: watching a particular (better for you) YouTube channel
Eliminate: endless “research” about a particular topic
Add: implementing the knowledge gained from the research on that topic
Hospitality (how we love our neighbors) 🏘️
Eliminate: one particular block of time in our week you tend to waste
Add: using that time to serve your community in some way
Eliminate: listening to podcasts on your long commute or daily walks
Add: calling a friend to catch up with them on this long commute or daily walk (and then praying for them)
Eliminate: excess items in your home (perhaps decluttering one item per day or one box per week)
Add: inviting one family or friend over for dinner each week
Renewal (how we care for ourselves) 🚶
Eliminate: excess food in some way (a meal, a category like sugar, caffeine, alcohol, etc.)
Add: a simpler menu plan (the same breakfast or lunch, or the same weekly dinner plan throughout Lent)
Eliminate: evening TV time
Add: an evening walk
Eliminate: a creature comfort (your pillow, warm showers, etc.)
Add: cultivating a new hobby, or perhaps a house or community project
I’ve limited myself to sharing only three eliminations and three add-ons from each of these five categories to curtail the simple response many of us feel at the start of Lent: overwhelm. Remember, the point isn’t to do as much as possible, or to make it as hard as possible. The goal of Lent is union with Christ, so let him lead you to a specific form of participation. Consider your participation an act of worship.
If you can, go to an Ash Wednesday service tomorrow; they tend to be all over town at many hours of the day, and they’re open to everyone. It’s not required, of course, but there’s nothing quite like another finite human being smudging ashes on your body and reminding you that life is short and that you, too, will one day die. Remembering our mortality is the right way to begin a season of penance and renewal.
May we all have a rich, blessed start to our Lents this week! Lean on all the grace poured out for you. No white-knuckling here.
“Nothing, how little so ever it be, if it is suffered for God’s sake, can pass without merit in the sight of God.”
-Thomas a Kempis
Bitter & Sweet is always an idea.