Lent 2023: Prayer and Prepping For Easter

This post should be online just after midnight, on the morning of Ash Wednesday.

Meanwhile, New Orleans will have almost six hours of their Mardi Gras left.

There’s a reason for that, and it’s not that New Orleans Mardi Gras folks are ignoring Lent.

A Catholic Citizen in America is on UTC time, Greenwich Mean Time’s successor. Midnight, UTC, is 6:00 p.m. in New Orleans, Louisiana.¹

• Mardi Gras, Fat Tuesday: Meat, Cheese and New Orleans
• Lent: Pointing Myself Towards God
  • Original Sin: Living With Consequences
    • Wounded, But Still Basically Good
  • The Bible, Very Briefly
  • Goals: Short- and Long-Term
    • Simple, Yes; Easy, No
• Looking Back at Lent 2022

---

Mardi Gras, Fat Tuesday: Meat, Cheese and New Orleans

Someday I may talk about the City of New Orleans’ Brobdingnagian block party, but not today.

But I will talk a little about mardi gras.

Mardi gras is “fat Tuesday” in French.

It’s the Tuesday before Ash Wednesday, when folks would eat the household’s “fat”. Not raw, of course. Back in the day, Lent was a time for not eating rich, fatty foods — like meat, eggs, milk and cheese.

Somewhere along the line, the common-sense custom of not letting perishable food go to waste turned into a massive bash.

I’ve gathered that the New Orleans Mardi Gras has — ah — indecorous elements. I figure that’s probably true. But verifying the assertions and putting them in context is more work than I think it’d be worth.

Besides, I’ve little to no interest in joining folks waving their moral outrage flags. In large part because I’ve gotten tired of natural disasters being blamed on a dyspeptic deity.²

So today I’ll take a quick look at Lent and what I’ll be doing for the next month and a half.

What I plan on doing, at any rate.

---

Lent: Pointing Myself Towards God

Lent is the Church calendar’s season when we get ready to celebrate the Resurrection, Easter: when our Lord stopped being dead. It’s a season of prayer, fasting and almsgiving.

Coming at it from another direction, it’s an exercise in self-discipline. I put a link and an excerpt near the end of this post.³

Lent is also a season of penance. (Catechism of the Catholic Church, 1438)

Penance is part of the conversion-penance-satisfaction process we need when we mess up our relationship with God. It’s a good idea. (Catechism, 1431-1470)

Doing stuff others can see might be useful, or not. What matters is what happens inside me, turning my thoughts and desires away from offenses against truth and reason. And toward God. (Catechism, 1430-1432)

I’m not doing all the ‘conversion’ work myself, happily. Part of the trick is cooperating with God. (Catechism, 1425-1439)

Today’s American culture doesn’t encourage self-denial. Not as an allegedly-pious practice, at any rate.

So why should I bother? And, for that matter, why should I think my relationship with God is messed up?

Original Sin: Living With Consequences

I don’t live in a perfect world. And I’m not a perfect person. Although I haven’t done anything impressively bad, my track record isn’t flawless.

My problem, and humanity’s, is original sin. Which is not the notion that humanity is rotten to the core.

But we did get off to a bad start. The first of us decided that ‘what I want’ outvotes what God wants.

Then Adam firmly plants both feet in his mouth with this gem:

“The man replied, ‘The woman whom you put here with me – she gave me fruit from the tree, so I ate it.’”
(Genesis 3:12)

They were already in big trouble, so what does Adam do? Tries blaming his wife and God. That interview did not end well.

Making sense of Adam, Eve, Genesis, and my erratic success with doing what’s right, means backing up a little. A lot, actually.

Wounded, But Still Basically Good

The universe is basically good. So are we — basically. (Genesis 1:26–27, 31; Catechism of the Catholic Church, 299, 364, 369, 374)

Humanity was made “in the divine image.” We still are. (Genesis 1:27; Catechism, 31, 355-361)

Each of us is a rational creature with free will. I can decide what I do or don’t do. I am also responsible for the consequences of my decisions. (Catechism, 1730-1742)

The first of us listened to Satan, ignoring what God had said. (Genesis 3:5–13)

We’ve been living with consequences of their decision ever since. (Catechism, 396-412)

That was a very, very long time ago.

The trouble started when an angel decided that God ‘wasn’t the boss of me’. A takeaway from the fall of the angels is that Satan is bad news. On the other hand, Satan is just a creature: powerful, but finite. (Catechism, 391-395)

And that’s another topic.

The account of our fall in Genesis 3 is figurative, “…but affirms a primeval event, a deed that took place at the beginning of the history of man….” (Catechism 390)

Ever since that really bad choice, we’ve seen God through fear-tinted glasses. (Catechism, 399)

Loving ourselves, others, and God, became a struggle. That’s because the harmony we had with ourselves and with the universe was broken. So was our friendship with God. (Catechism, 374-379, 397-406)

I’m not personally responsible for humanity’s bad start. But I am affected by consequences of that choice. (Catechism 388-412)

That’s the bad news.

The good news is that human nature is wounded: but not corrupted. We “…all need salvation and that salvation is offered to all through Christ….” (Catechism, 389, 405, 407-412, 1701-1707, 1949, 1811)

Since I’m a Catholic, I see the mess we’re in as consequences of an original sin. Here’s how the Catechism’s Glossary describes it:

“ORIGINAL SIN: The sin by which the first human beings disobeyed the commandment of God, choosing to follow their own will rather than God’s will. As a consequence they lost the grace of original holiness, and became subject to the law of death; sin became universally present in the world. Besides the personal sin of Adam and Eve, original sin describes the fallen state of human nature which affects every person born into the world, and from which Christ, the ‘new Adam,’ came to redeem us (396-412).”
(Catechism, Glossary)

The Bible, Very Briefly

A point or two before moving on, about Genesis 3 being figurative and the Bible in general.

I’m a Catholic, so reading and understanding Sacred Scripture is vital. So is remembering that it’s poetry, history, prophecy and other literary forms. (Catechism, 101-133)

None of which were written by a literalist American.

Goals: Short- and Long-Term

A short-term Lenten goal is adding the rosary to my daily prayer routine.⁴ I’ve tried doing this before, and hope this time I’ll make it stick.

My long-term goal during Lent and every season should be seeking, knowing and loving God; and spending eternity with our Lord. (Catechism, 1, 540, 1023-1029, 1095)

Meanwhile, it’s like Philippians says. I’m ‘working out my salvation.’ Not that I could work or pray my way into Heaven:

“So then, my beloved, obedient as you have always been, not only when I am present but all the more now when I am absent, work out your salvation with fear and trembling.
“For God is the one who, for his good purpose, works in you both to desire and to work.”
(Philippians 2:12–13)

Simple, Yes; Easy, No

Praying matters.

So does what I do when I’m not praying. The rules are simple.

I should love God and my neighbors, and see everyone as my neighbor. Everyone. No exceptions. (Matthew 5:43–44, 7:12, 22:36–40, Mark 12:28–31; 10:25–27, 29–37; Catechism, 1789)

It’s simple. And very, very hard to do.

---

Looking Back at Lent 2022

It’s been about 11 months since I decided to give up my weekly time at Sauk Centre’s Eucharistic Adoration Chapel.

I’d gotten sick in late January, probably with COVID-19, and over a month later was still running a fever. Bowing out made sense at the time, and still does.

Good news, I’m no longer running a fever; not-so-good news, I haven’t gotten back into a weekly routine at the chapel. I’m pretty much de-fogged, but still really up to par. Which, at my age, arguably isn’t surprising.

But I’m still researching and writing my weekly posts, and have a back burner project that’s nearly ready for getting moved toward the front. And that’s yet another topic.

Today I’ve got two sets of ‘more stuff’ —

Mostly Lent:

• “A Goal for Lent“
  (March 2, 2019)
• “Lent: Not Doing Too Much“
  (February 18, 2018)
• “Skydiving and Lent“
  (February 11, 2018)
• “Living With Consequences“
  (March 5, 2017)
• “Oatmeal For Lent“
  (February 26, 2017)

What I was doing last year:

• “Norbert Nerdly Rides Again: Keyboard Concerns“
  (April 2, 2022)
• “Brain Defogging, Technical Issues, and Me“
  (March 22, 2022)
• “COVID-19 and My Adoration Chapel Routine“
  (March 9, 2022)
• “Experiencing COVID-19: It Could Have Been Worse“
  (February 19, 2022)
• “Feverish, Weak; But Other Than That, a Pretty Good Week“
  (February 5, 2022)

---

¹ Time and time zones:

• Wikipedia
  • Coordinated Universal Time
• UTC: clocks, time zones, English, French and a compromise that probably didn’t suit any side
  • “Tides and Our Moon’s Origin” (December 9, 2016)
    • Footnote 6

² Fat Tuesday and a whacking great party:

• Wikipedia
  • Block party
  • Brobdingnag
  • Mardi Gras
  • Mardi Gras in New Orleans
• Mardi Gras New Orleans
  MardiGrasNewOrleans.com
• “What Does Mardi Gras Mean?“
  Diane Whitbey, City Clerk and Treasurer; North Little Rock e-Newsletter (March 2019)
• Message from that prolific correspondent, Anonymous
  • “Katrina: God’s Judgment on America“
    Anonymous, Restore America, via beliefnet (2005)

³ Looking at Lent:

• Lent, Liturgical Year, Prayer and Worship, USCCB
  (United States Conference of Catholic Bishops)
  • What Is Lent?; Wednesday, February 22, 2023 — Thursday, April 6, 2023
  • Almsgiving (Charity)
  • Fasting and Abstinence
    • A Reflection on Lenten Fasting, Rev. Daniel Merz (drawn in part from the writings of Alexander Schmemann, “Notes in Liturgical Theology,” St. Vladimir’s Seminary Quarterly, Vol. 3, No. 1, Winter 1959, pp. 2-9. Rev. Daniel Merz is a former Associate Director of the USCCB Divine Worship office)
  • 2023 Daily Lent Calendar — Bilingual

What Is Lent?
Wednesday, February 22, 2023 — Thursday, April 6, 2023
Liturgical Year, Prayer and Worship, USCCB (United States Conference of Catholic Bishops)

“Lent is a 40 day season of prayer, fasting, and almsgiving that begins on Ash Wednesday and ends at sundown on Holy Thursday. It’s a period of preparation to celebrate the Lord’s Resurrection at Easter. During Lent, we seek the Lord in prayer by reading Sacred Scripture; we serve by giving alms; and we practice self-control through fasting. We are called not only to abstain from luxuries during Lent, but to a true inner conversion of heart as we seek to follow Christ’s will more faithfully. We recall the waters of baptism in which we were also baptized into Christ’s death, died to sin and evil, and began new life in Christ.

“Many know of the tradition of abstaining from meat on Fridays during Lent, but we are also called to practice self-discipline and fast in other ways throughout the season…”

⁴ Getting started with the Rosary:

• USCCB (United States Conference of Catholic Bishops)
  • How to Pray the Rosary (Includes Joyful, Sorrowful, Glorious and Luminous Mysteries
  • Prayers of the Rosary
  • Rosaries
    • A Reflection on Lenten Fasting, Rev. Daniel Merz (drawn in part from the writings of Alexander Schmemann, “Notes in Liturgical Theology,” St. Vladimir’s Seminary Quarterly, Vol. 3, No. 1, Winter 1959, pp. 2-9. Rev. Daniel Merz is a former Associate Director of the USCCB Divine Worship office)