What makes Fat Tuesday fat? And some thoughts about Lent.
Today is "Fat Tuesday," the day before Ash Wednesday, which marks the beginning of the season of Lent in the church. Fat Tuesday is also called Shrove Tuesday, or (in the UK and Australia) Pancake Day!1 In French or Catholic areas it's called Mardi Gras, which is French for "Fat Tuesday."Apparently in the ancient church, the Lenten fast involved emptying your kitchen of all animal products, which included eggs, milk, and lard. The Tuesday before Lent would be your last chance to eat up those ingredients or else throw them away, so people would make foods like pancakes or doughnuts to use up the fat in their kitchens, hence the name "Fat" Tuesday.
That other name, "Shrove Tuesday," comes from the word "shrive," which means "to make confession and receive absolution." So Mardi Gras was once a day to make confession, rather than a day to remove one's clothes for beads. Interesting.
For our anniversary, Karianne got me a great book called "Around the Year with the Trapp Family,"2 by Maria von Trapp, in which she chronicles the ways her large Catholic family celebrated the church year.
Okay, so this is Julie Andrews, not Maria von Trapp. Sue me.
In her section on Lent, she mentions that she once wondered why Christians used to fast so much more rigorously during Lent. Actually, I'll just quote from the book:
When I inquired once why the law of fast and abstinence is so much more lenient for us than it was for previous generations, I was told that modern man is much too frail to undergo the awful rigors of the ancient practice. After all, have we not experienced two world wars in our generation which have weakened our constitutions? That seemed to make perfect sense to me until just recently. I got infected by a neighbor of ours in Stowe with the popular preoccupation of which is the best diet. Together we searched through a library of books, one more interesting than the other, the sum total of all them most confusing and astounding, however. Among other things I learned that almost all the ancient and modern sages of the science of "how to live longer and look younger" (they all boast of a tradition going back into the gray dawn of time with the yogis of India) agree on several points: (1) We are all over-eating--we should eat much less. (2) We are all eating too much meat, which sours our system, and we absolutely have to abstain from meat for longer or shorter periods every year. (3) If we could adapt ourselves to a diet of raw vegetables and fruit and whole-wheat bread, that would be the ideal. (4) And now I could hardly believe my eyes when I read, not once, but in several places, that it would do simply miracles for our constitution if we only would let ourselves be persuaded to undergo a period of complete fast. (One authority suggests three days, others a week, ten days, up to thirty, forty, and even sixty days!)
I cannot help but think sadly: Woe if the Church ever had dared to make such a law or even give only a slight hint in the direction of undergoing a complete fast--for the love of God! Obviously, modern man, after all, is not too frail to undergo the awful rigors of ancient fast and abstinence. The constitution of man seems not to have changed at all, then. What has changed are the motives. While the early Christians abstained from food and drink and meat and eggs out of a great sense of sorrow for their sins, and for love of God took upon themselves these inconveniences, modern man has as motive the "body beautiful," the "girlish figure," the "how to look younger and live longer" motive.
Lent is well known as a time to give something up, but Maria von Trapp also mentions another tradition that perhaps even better calls to mind the origins of Lent: a tradition of study. In the early church, the period leading up to Easter was a time of instruction for catechumens (new church members). Since the church was an underground organization, becoming a member involved intense scrutiny, culminating in a series of examinations right before baptism at Easter. (Candidates fasted in preparation for this, hence the tradition of the Lenten fast.)3
To echo that period of instruction, von Trapp suggests a Lenten reading program, where everyone in the family reads something for the mind, something for the heart, and something for the soul. For the mind, she suggests doing some serious research (into church history, the sacraments, Christian ethics, etc.); for the soul, reading the writings of the saints (e.g., St. Augustine); and for the heart, reading a biography of a saint (canonized or not). Here's something she says about such biographies, just because I thought it was funny:
But it has to be a well-written biography, that is, a book showing a human being in the round, with all his shortcomings that had to be overcome by faithful cooperation with grace--and not the old-fashioned hagiography in sugar-candy style with its doubtful statements, carefully stressing that the saint is born a full-fledged saint by describing how the holy baby refused his mother's breast every Saturday in honor of the Blessed Mother (and, of course, the first words of these remarkable beings invariably must be a piously lisped "Jesus and Mary").
Lent is pointless if it doesn't point us to Christ. The point of a period of instruction is not to get smarter but to have a Biblical faith. The point of fasting is not to lose weight, but to focus on Christ. Without these devotional meanings, human traditions are worthless and their benefit is lost.
Well, those are just some thoughts about Lent. I'll close with a thought from Pastor Paul McCain, who considers Lent the real "40 Days of Purpose":
What is my purpose? What is yours? We could list any number of things we are doing that are part of our chosen purposes, or that we believe give our life purpose. But they are not our purpose.
A beautiful portion of Luther's Small Catechism puts it this way: "That I may be His own and live under Him in His kingdom."
And that I, and you, may be His own, our Lord took the road that led to the cross and open tomb. There on that cross was shed the blood of the sacrifice for the sins of the world, the sacrifice that makes atonenement for us. The blood was shed by the One who is my substitute, whose death is made my death, whose life is made my life.
That I may be His own, He was sent into this world of darkness as the light that brings light to all men. That I may be His own, by His Gospel, the Holy Spirit called me to faith, washing me in Holy Baptism, creating in me a new spirit. And so for all who are called according to His good purpose.
His purpose is our purpose. May God bless your forty days of purpose during Holy Lent.
1 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shrove_Tuesday
2 The complete text of "Around the Year with the Trapp Family" is available here.
3 The Christian Year, by Edward T. Horn, III. 1957 by Fortress Press.
posted by Derek | 7:22 PM, Tuesday, February 20, 2007
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