Lent: shockingly different from Ordinary Time

In an email last week Caroline asked me what I’m giving up for Lent. Caroline is eight years old in third grade at Holy Comforter Episcopal School Tallahassee and so knows about Lent and giving-up-for-Lent as most public school children do not know. I told her I’m giving up “time.” Personal time that I’d rather use for myself, for Lent devoted to others.

Lent is for a discipline of sacrifice: what are you giving up for Lent? 

The Church gives up sights and sounds. We give up “alleluias” and the Gloria in excelsis for Lent. And bright colors: the ancient liturgical color for Lent was black -- far more appropriate if Lent is meant truly penitential than the gorgeous purple vestments and hangings in most churches. Some churches hang the Lenten array of unbleached linen -- also good -- likely though originally a marketing gimmick of church supply houses -- but still good, noticeably colorless.

Taking sights and sounds very seriously my preference and practice was burlap, sack cloth hangings Linda made. Barring that, no hangings at all, simple and plain: bare wood, a chance to see the beautiful wooden Altar for a season. No brass or silver in sight wood crosses pottery Communion dishes. Twenty or twenty five years ago on a trip to Sewanee for EfM mentor training we stopped in a pottery shop on The Mountain and bought a pottery chalice and paten, perhaps still in use in Apalachicola.

What are you giving up for Lent? Ancient rule and practice was no meat no fat no sweets, strictly enforced in medieval Christendom. What you give up should be a personal sacrifice. Even something to which for health or other reasons you should not return, should not resume when Lent is over. 

Lent: what is seen and heard and done -- a shocking change from Ordinary Time.

Let it be so.

TW+