A Practical Guide to Lent ➕

or, when you want to participate but are overwhelmed by it all

The Angelus (1859), by Jean-Francois Millet #

There are a great many think pieces on the Lenten season out there, and this year I don’t feel the need to add to them. As is often the case when Easter is early on the calendar, and therefore Lent begins early — the season sneaks up on us. Before I had a book about Lent out in the world, I’d often find out it was almost Lent today, the day before Ash Wednesday. …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, and there have been years when it's been clear I need to receive the invitation of Lent and actively participate in the season — and there are seasons when it's clear that Lent should be ...more in the background for me (usually when all of life feels Lenten). This year, you may be invited to more actively participate, or, you may be invited to quietly decline and let the season have its way with you in some other manner. 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.

But before I go there, if you find yourself wanting to participate in Lent 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 last year. 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 therefore 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 is a gift of grace to us all.

3. Much of the Lenten season is about fighting your “noonday devil” — acedia is one of our most universally-felt and univerally-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. This is the theme on the podcast this month, so you might want to start Lent by listening to my short episode from last week as an introduction to acedia, then listen to the next upcoming episode where I talk to someone really smart about this topic. (Tip: subscribe, and you won't miss the episode.)

4. The season of 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. 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 (and as I mentioned earlier), participating in 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.

If the overall purpose of Lent is penance, and if the purpose of penance is to shed ourselves from what keeps 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, this is our overall purpose for all of life, which is to say: a habit of virtue is the act of becoming more fully human in the original sense of it all (you know, pre-fall).

So 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 “40-day challenge.” Lent is long, and we often take on too much at the beginning, hence the common burnout 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 leads us to things using 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 say, “Oh no, not that thing!” Yes, that thing.

Next, truly consider listening to my short episode on acedia. It’s an invitation to get into the right mindset of what it means to battle our human tendency towards apathy during Lent.

And 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.

Here are some ideas. Helpfully, they tend to have a yin-yangness of taking away and adding something in tandem. These pairs don't have to be chosen together, however; I simply choose three from my overall list, doing my best to both add and eliminate some things.

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 we'd spend on that meal and giving it to charity

Work (how we participate in creation and industry)

• Eliminate: sleeping in

• Add: using the morning hours to work on a side project that you’ve felt a nudge from God to do

• Eliminate: complaining about your job

• Add: writing your Rule of Life

• 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 take a local or online 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 said research on that topic

Hospitality (how we engage with others)

• Eliminate: one particular block of time in our week you tend to waste

• Add: using that time to serve your community (i.e., volunteering)

• 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

With these ideas, I’ve limited myself to sharing only three eliminations and three adds 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.

As for me, my personal Lenten practice for this year quite surprised me (all three are on this list here). I’d spent several weeks mulling over what God might have in store for me, and as is often the case, I was led to my practice quite out of nowhere, in the still darkness of the morning during prayer. God usually does that.

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 anyone. It’s not required, of course, but this is one of my favorite services of the year. 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.

I hope all this is helpful and not overwhelming... And if you're a subscriber, I’d love to hear from you in the comments — How do you choose your Lenten fast? What's been your overall experience with Lent?

Ora et Labora,

Tsh

1. Perhaps Bitter & Sweet?