Catholics tend to invest great energy into Lent but don't do so well focusing on the season of Easter. Why do you think that is? Is something missing from our understanding or practice?
Dan:
We talked about this as a community of writers. There is so much blather out there about Lent, so many places are offering special reflection series and extra events and specific devotions. It's great to put a bright spotlight on a solemn season of repentance, but then after we do the Triduum and Easter, it's like we're back in Ordinary Time.
Easter has a decidedly different feel at Mass: the Gloria is back; the Sprinkling Rite gets your clothes damp at the beginning of Mass; parishes with robust music ministry are bringing the joyful noise. I, for one, LOVE IT. There’s nothing like singing Out of Darkness at the Basilica at Notre Dame with the special verses for Easter. But the Easter Season doesn't have the cultural/social milestones to hang your hat on like Lent does.
Nothing brings out the faithful like ashes—God forbid you be seen without them on that day (not even a Holy Day of Obligation)! And nothing gets the conversation going like "giving something up for Lent" (though it's supposed to be just one of three things we focus on). Easter, meant to be a time for feasting after all that fasting, doesn't have that cultural/social piece to highlight our celebration.
Rob:
I love Easter so much, but I’m definitely guilty of this—by about Tuesday of the First Week of Easter, I’ve moved on. I wonder if it has something to do with an overemphasis on productivity and a misguided sense of piety: paradoxically, Lent is easy because it is simple.
It’s like this: I am a sinner, and this is not a hard thing for me to acknowledge—as Niebuhr wrote, sin is the only empirically verifiable doctrine of Christianity. If I am a sinner, then I should do something to try to fix that problem, and so I fast so I can be less sinful. (This is, of course, a dangerous misunderstanding of the practice of liturgical fasting, but it seems to be the predominant way people think about it.) The practices that go with Lent feel like they’re making me more holy, because I have this sense that being holy should be hard work and require a lot of sacrifice and basically be not fun.
And then Easter rolls around, and it’s party time! But if I’m thinking about holiness (and ultimately salvation) as something that I have to work toward, then celebration seems wrong. There’s dissonance: I still feel like a sinner, and I am probably mostly the same as I was two weeks ago, and I certainly haven’t done anything to deserve a celebration, and feasting doesn’t seem like hard work so it probably won’t make me more holy, and so on.
Dave:
Broadly speaking, I blame the technocracy of materialistic individualism. It's hard to understand oneself as belonging (potentially) to a communion of saints, a collection of individuals throughout human history who have participated in the story of creation's salvation, if one is constantly glued to a tiny glowing computer, broadcasting a false reality of self into the abyss of social media. Culture lies to us as we grow older, predicating our personal value upon the way we appear, or what we are able to produce. I gradually come to accept these falsehoods, and attempt to assert my worthiness unto the world through both the conformity of appearance and my accumulated assets, or what I might potentially be able to sell.
This is why Lent is so valuable. Ascetic mortification, charity, and prayer restore our dignities in a quite marked way, speaking to us: "No, creature of dust, your value is not conditioned by how you look (for your body moves toward death with each moment) or what you make (for all that you produce will vanish in a momentary glimpse)." And so while the penitential season aids in our recollection of such truths, I think we have trouble holding onto them. The meaning of Lent, throughout which we have humbly moved toward the Cross and the Resurrection -- both of which reveal who God is in disturbingly different, though equally valid, ways -- dissipates rather quickly, within the first few days of Easter.
Heaven breaks into earth for the fifty days of the Easter Feast, leading up to Pentecost in a wacky way: there's a divine body leaving footprints on the ground. Flowers burst forth from the earth wherever the glorified sole trods (or so I think I heard from some Eastern theologian years ago). We re-enter the blaring idiocy of American individualism, which hammers all of our senses into a relative numbness. In a way, we return to a zombified state, our hearts once again calloused to the vivid life that the Resurrection makes known.
Sorry for being a downer. I teach 102 students whose identities lay firmly embedded in Snapchat, and this experience no doubt colors my perspective. I've decided that if God so wills that I ever have children, they won't have iWhatevers for the first 18 years of their lives.
Also, I like to think I'm the only Georgetown alumnus to have celebrated Easter by closing down the Backer after Vigil Mass at the Basilica.
Jenny:
I think it stems from a misunderstanding (and mistrust) of what feast is. In a culture that prizes productivity, self-improvement, and general busyness, the concept of feast feels foreign — like we're cheating or even being lazy. In some weird way, Lent, with its uncomfortability, can actually feel more comfortable and familiar to us.
This is perhaps because of a misconception about what the ascetic practices of Lent are really about. I think many people view them as a self-improvement project — kind of New Year's Resolutions 2.0, when in reality, prayer, fasting, and almsgiving should ultimately lead us to the realization of our powerlessness and need for a savior. As those practices break down our pride and reorder our love toward God, it should lead us to recognize our own smallness and God’s greatness.
We talked about this as a community of writers. There is so much blather out there about Lent, so many places are offering special reflection series and extra events and specific devotions. It's great to put a bright spotlight on a solemn season of repentance, but then after we do the Triduum and Easter, it's like we're back in Ordinary Time.
Easter has a decidedly different feel at Mass: the Gloria is back; the Sprinkling Rite gets your clothes damp at the beginning of Mass; parishes with robust music ministry are bringing the joyful noise. I, for one, LOVE IT. There’s nothing like singing Out of Darkness at the Basilica at Notre Dame with the special verses for Easter. But the Easter Season doesn't have the cultural/social milestones to hang your hat on like Lent does.
Nothing brings out the faithful like ashes—God forbid you be seen without them on that day (not even a Holy Day of Obligation)! And nothing gets the conversation going like "giving something up for Lent" (though it's supposed to be just one of three things we focus on). Easter, meant to be a time for feasting after all that fasting, doesn't have that cultural/social piece to highlight our celebration.
Rob:
I love Easter so much, but I’m definitely guilty of this—by about Tuesday of the First Week of Easter, I’ve moved on. I wonder if it has something to do with an overemphasis on productivity and a misguided sense of piety: paradoxically, Lent is easy because it is simple.
It’s like this: I am a sinner, and this is not a hard thing for me to acknowledge—as Niebuhr wrote, sin is the only empirically verifiable doctrine of Christianity. If I am a sinner, then I should do something to try to fix that problem, and so I fast so I can be less sinful. (This is, of course, a dangerous misunderstanding of the practice of liturgical fasting, but it seems to be the predominant way people think about it.) The practices that go with Lent feel like they’re making me more holy, because I have this sense that being holy should be hard work and require a lot of sacrifice and basically be not fun.
And then Easter rolls around, and it’s party time! But if I’m thinking about holiness (and ultimately salvation) as something that I have to work toward, then celebration seems wrong. There’s dissonance: I still feel like a sinner, and I am probably mostly the same as I was two weeks ago, and I certainly haven’t done anything to deserve a celebration, and feasting doesn’t seem like hard work so it probably won’t make me more holy, and so on.
Dave:
Broadly speaking, I blame the technocracy of materialistic individualism. It's hard to understand oneself as belonging (potentially) to a communion of saints, a collection of individuals throughout human history who have participated in the story of creation's salvation, if one is constantly glued to a tiny glowing computer, broadcasting a false reality of self into the abyss of social media. Culture lies to us as we grow older, predicating our personal value upon the way we appear, or what we are able to produce. I gradually come to accept these falsehoods, and attempt to assert my worthiness unto the world through both the conformity of appearance and my accumulated assets, or what I might potentially be able to sell.
This is why Lent is so valuable. Ascetic mortification, charity, and prayer restore our dignities in a quite marked way, speaking to us: "No, creature of dust, your value is not conditioned by how you look (for your body moves toward death with each moment) or what you make (for all that you produce will vanish in a momentary glimpse)." And so while the penitential season aids in our recollection of such truths, I think we have trouble holding onto them. The meaning of Lent, throughout which we have humbly moved toward the Cross and the Resurrection -- both of which reveal who God is in disturbingly different, though equally valid, ways -- dissipates rather quickly, within the first few days of Easter.
Heaven breaks into earth for the fifty days of the Easter Feast, leading up to Pentecost in a wacky way: there's a divine body leaving footprints on the ground. Flowers burst forth from the earth wherever the glorified sole trods (or so I think I heard from some Eastern theologian years ago). We re-enter the blaring idiocy of American individualism, which hammers all of our senses into a relative numbness. In a way, we return to a zombified state, our hearts once again calloused to the vivid life that the Resurrection makes known.
Sorry for being a downer. I teach 102 students whose identities lay firmly embedded in Snapchat, and this experience no doubt colors my perspective. I've decided that if God so wills that I ever have children, they won't have iWhatevers for the first 18 years of their lives.
Also, I like to think I'm the only Georgetown alumnus to have celebrated Easter by closing down the Backer after Vigil Mass at the Basilica.
Jenny:
I think it stems from a misunderstanding (and mistrust) of what feast is. In a culture that prizes productivity, self-improvement, and general busyness, the concept of feast feels foreign — like we're cheating or even being lazy. In some weird way, Lent, with its uncomfortability, can actually feel more comfortable and familiar to us.
This is perhaps because of a misconception about what the ascetic practices of Lent are really about. I think many people view them as a self-improvement project — kind of New Year's Resolutions 2.0, when in reality, prayer, fasting, and almsgiving should ultimately lead us to the realization of our powerlessness and need for a savior. As those practices break down our pride and reorder our love toward God, it should lead us to recognize our own smallness and God’s greatness.
When we play into the individualistic, pelagian tendencies of our culture, it's no wonder that we don't feel at home in feasting because we either (a) have been extremely successful in our fasting and it has become a source of spiritual pride which makes us ill-disposed to receive the feast as a gift, or (b) have failed in our Lenten observance and feel that we haven't "earned" the feast.
Alexander Schmemann writes really beautifully about the significance of feast in his work For the Life of the World: "Feast means joy. Yet, if there is something that we—the serious, adult and frustrated Christians of the twentieth century— look at with suspicion, it is certainly joy. [...] Christians have accepted the whole ethos of our joyless and business-minded culture. [...] The modern world has relegated joy to the category of 'fun' and 'relaxation.' It is justified and permissible on our 'time off'; that is a concession, a compromise. [...] For the man of the past a feast was not something accidental and 'additional': it was his way of putting meaning into his life, of liberating it from the animal rhythm of work and rest. A feast was not a simple 'break' in the otherwise meaningless and hard life of work, but a justification of that work, its fruit, its--so to speak--sacramental transformation into joy and, therefore, into freedom."
Dave:
On this note, I'm a huge fan of not abstaining on Sundays during Lent. There are, after all, more than forty days between Ash Wednesday and Easter, specifically because there are Sundays beyond the forty days of Lent. Sundays throughout the year are a miniature Easter, and in order to feast properly that we might enter into that joy (and anticipate it during Lent), abstention might not be the most spiritually healthy option. Likewise, the Catechism encourages able Catholics to abstain on all Fridays throughout the year, not just those that fall during Lent.
This is one of those ways I think Catholicism might renew its appreciation for the Jewish religious imagination. One of my friends, when I asked how his weekend went, remarked, "Well, I had a good day of rest. You know… for getting the rest of my work done for the week." It was funnier in person, I swear.
God built the Sabbath into the very act of creation; as Abraham Heschel reminds us, the Creator does not detach this final day from the entire process of speaking order into chaos. And thus, for Jews who take the Sabbath seriously, it becomes a ritual reminder of our Origin and Destination, a figurative -- though in some ways literal -- heartbeat embedded within the quotidien passage of time.
And so we find ourselves celebrating little feasts throughout Lent, because penance without feasting grows distorted. It's a lovely thing, moving toward the Feast of all feasts, with these little sacramental heartbeats punctuating a penitential season.
Dan:
So, then, is there a way to improve our spiritual practice of Lent, either individually, communally, or both? Are there things we can or should do with our Lent and/or Easter?
It sounds like maybe viewing Lenten Sundays as the little Easters they actually are could be a way of engaging differently with Lenten sacrifice and keeping an eye toward the cross and empty tomb?I think there's also something to the impact that social media has on our activity. We become so thoroughly able to curate the content we receive and so able to control the image we create of ourselves. I think people could stand to include more faith-based voices in their feeds, and invite the voice of the Church, of theologians, and of people of overt faith into their social media scrolling. Maybe that would help reinforce a fuller sense of the Church’s richness in liturgy, feasts and seasons, and traditions. I also think that when people "fast" from social media for Lent, it should be less about avoiding it for 40 days and resuming right where you left off, and more about returning to it with an eye to revising the frequency and attitude you bring to social media and your consumption of it.
And beyond the cultural, secular version of Easter and its implications, we need a kick in the butt on the celebration and joy of Easter feasting at full length. I think as a largely immigrant church, we are far more comfortable with the austere restrictions of Lent than we are with an extended prolonged party. We need to remember the instructions of Jesus that we need to party while the bridegroom is in the house, because in forty days, he’s headed up, and it’s us, the Eucharist, and the Holy Spirit putting the noses of the Church’s faithful back to the spiritual grindstone.
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