The other day I went to the local coffee shop to buy hot chocolates for my kids; it’d been a rough week at home, the cold weather had limited our activities, and with Lent around the corner I figured a little mini-mardi-gras pick-me-up was in order. As I stood waiting for six hot chocolates, the barista struck up a conversation. Ordering six of anything usually leads to a conversation. She wanted to know what the occasion was, and I explained that since Lent was coming soon, this was our last hot-chocolate-hurrah of the season. She seemed familiar with the idea of Lent and asked about what we do.
“Individually we all give up or do certain things,” I replied, “but as a family we give up dessert.” (And if you know our family, dessert is a major sacrifice. One eats dinner in order to have dessert.)
The barista’s face lit up. “What a great idea! Lose all that Christmas weight!”
I laughed awkwardly, and didn’t say much more. I figured a crowded coffee shop wasn’t the best place to go into the true purpose of Lent. But her response is not altogether unreasonable. In our culture, we give up food to lose weight. When I found out I was gluten-intolerant, I was surprised at how many people were interested in my gluten-free diet, said they were “trying it out”, like it was another diet fad. Besides the fact that a lot of gluten-free bread is made of starch and has very little fiber, it generally doesn’t taste good—why would someone willfully subject themselves to that? I had to explain that I was gluten-free, not by choice, but because gluten made me physically ill. Fasting, without the primary goal of losing weight, is non-comprehensible to many people.
This non-comprehension is something I’m definitely familiar with, and it’s related to why I don’t fast. I fast according to what the Church instructs, the small meals on meatless Fridays, and I find that doing this as a family increases its meaning as we all ponder our gratitude, or lack thereof, for having more than enough. But for the first several years I was Catholic, I tried to fast on top of that, fairly ambitious with new-convert zeal and enthusiasm, but I failed miserably. I got to the point where I dreaded Lent, associating it with failure and discouragement, with old wounds re-opened.
When I was a teenager, like many teenage girls, I struggled with self-image and a borderline eating disorder. When I started to pursue a career in acting, it only heightened. I remember a fellow actor during a lunch break look at my food and laugh, “Rabbit food again?” I’m from a line of sturdy-built farm women, so I had to nearly starve myself and exercise like a crazy person to achieve a slimmer side of curvy, but it was never slim enough. This lifestyle of mine, which had its roots in other issues, was wholly unhealthy not just for my body, but for my mind and spirit as well. That was a long time ago now, yet I still have a hard time disassociating those unhealthy dieting habits from fasting.
It took me a long time to learn that food is not the only thing one can fast from. It seemed like the most ascetic choice, maybe in my mind that meant holier. But if the point is to grow spiritually, I would have to choose a form of self-denial that would truly bear fruit.
In an interview about the Missionaries of Charity, Mother Teresa spoke about how difficult it can be for young postulants to adjust to their new life in the order. Some, she said, have “more” to give up than others. For example, one postulant had been used to ice cream every night after dinner, and later admitted to Mother Teresa that it had been very difficult to give it up, even to suffer the memory of it. In my own lack of charity, I imagine that Mother Teresa, who was daily face-to-face with poverty, hunger, and death, would have heard that and scoffed. But no, Mother Teresa, in her great charity, understood the degree of sacrifice the young woman had made, instead of focusing on the thing she sacrificed.
I’ve borne many frustrating Lents, at the end of which I feel discouraged and not at all prayerful. Maybe someday I’ll be mature enough to fast prayerfully. But for us modern Americans with shame-faced first-world problems, there are lots of fruit-bearing forms of self-denial: abstaining from television, Facebook, and frivolous googl’ing; waking up early, praying the Liturgy of the Hours, daily reading the Bible; picking up after people without complaint, bearing toddler tantrums with patience, you get the idea—these are difficult (embarrassing as that is). Lent is about self-denial, but the kind of self-denial that will bear fruit; self-denial that will allow us to decrease so that Christ may increase.