I grew up in a very Catholic family with the usual emphasis on some form of self-denial in the weeks leading up to Easter. Generally, as kids, we gave up candy, only to gorge ourselves when we got our baskets of chocolate on Easter morning. Heck of a lesson there.
While I understand the idea of self-denial and sacrifice, there never seemed to be a corresponding good deed to our personal “giving up” act. It was never mentioned and honestly, till I was thinking about it today, it never occurred to me. Wouldn’t there have been more value to the act if, for example, we’d been encouraged to take the money we didn’t spend on candy and donate it to a food pantry for the poor?
What were your Lenten experiences as a child and beyond?
As far as beyond for me - I’m so lapsed, I found out it was Lent when FB friends posted pics of ashed foreheads. The “giving up” part is meaningless.
I didn’t have an allowance or anything, so I had no money to spend on anything (we had to ask if we needed money for anything), so I couldn’t have been encouraged to donate it. But thinking back, I don’t remember us doing anything really. It’s weird how very Catholic my parents were and how little they engaged us about Lent. We had fish on Fridays (I still love tuna casserole! I LOVE IT!) and Ash Wednesday, and it always felt like we had to go to mass about 150 times (my hatred of coming home and having my dad say “get ready for church. It’s _____ a holy day of obligation” was intense). And we did rosaries sometimes. But we never had any sort of family conversation about giving up anything for Lent. I was always surprised when people would say they were doing it and serious about it, since we just didn’t do it at all.
Not catholic, but lots of catholic friends. They were supposed to give up something to make tehm understand sacrifice.
Personally, I would rather see someone instead of giving something up instead volunteering somewhere at least one day a week [food bank, soup kitchen, shelter] to see how it is not having all the advantages that they do have. If they also want to give up meat or chocolate or whatever, fine … but I think something more interactive with others without advantages would be more in keeping with the season.
What’s your understanding of what the season of Lent commemorates?
I ask because the Lent lasts 40 days. This figure is derived from the time Jesus spent alone, wandering in the desert.
I don’t disagree at all with your idea that being more interactive with others without advantages is a good thing, but I don’t think I would have said it’s the first thing one thinks of to commemorate a solitary 40 day sojourn (broken up by a visit from Satan with a great real estate deal to offer).
We were taught by our parents to give something up.
It’s been a very long time, but I think I was taught in school that if you want to do it, it’s nice, but the Church does not require it. You do not have to give it up on Sundays or solemnities, because those are not days of Lent. Sundays are feast days, and we don’t fast on feast days. If I want to, of course, I can, but if I give up pizza, I can have as much pizza as I feel like on Sunday because it’s not a day of Lent. I think the same goes for solemnities (St. Joseph, the Annunciation) that occur in the middle of Lent, but I’m not quite as sure.
I was never really successful at giving things up as a child because I had no self-discipline. I still don’t have as much as I wish I did.
We had the cardboard boxes, where we had to donate extra if we ‘slipped’ and gave in to whatever temptation we’d vowed to give up. We also did the family-wide ‘no meat on Fridays’ thing. Sacrificing something important was definitely a thing pushed on us by the parents; it’s how I was finally ‘encouraged’ to give up my pacifier habit.
The concept, as I understand it, is that you give up a regular favorite thing and then, when you are tempted to have it, use the opportunity to reflect on your faith and why you are abstaining. Works of charity are something you should be doing anyway so that’s not part of the idea.
Oh my goodness, I haven’t thought about those in years! I went all through Catholic school, elementary and high school. I recall in grade school we would raise money and sponsor “pagan” babies. To this day, I have no idea what that means, where the babies were or where the money actually went .
FCM, you make a great point about doing something to actually help someone or there being a reason for the action/sacrifice like donating the candy money to the poor. I remember when I was little it seemed so important to give something up. I think mostly because I was scared if I didn’t God wouldn’t be too happy with me. That’s what a lot of Catholic schooling can do to a little mind. Now, I think more in terms of who cares if it’s Lent, doing kindnesses and making sacrifices sometimes are a part of life and I do it because I feel it’s the right thing to do not because I’m pissing God off.
She was right. Sunday’s in Lent are not considered fast days. Sunday is always a feast day.
I’m over 60 so I don’t have to abstain from meat. I still make some sacrifices, and eat no meat on Friday. I’ve taken some gentle ribbing from fellow practicing Catholics about not having to abstain.
They still have the little boxes for the poor, plus the Bishop’s Lenten Appeal. If you make a generous donation to the Lenten Appeal you get invited to to meet the Bishop at a get together with the other generous donors (plus according to my priest, some random selectees).
I was raised in one of the very Orthodox (but non-Papal) branches of the “Russian” church ----- what I was taught was that it had to be something significant to our lives/pleasure; something we were truly doing without. I know some RCs and some of my Protestant friends now who do not consider all 46 days between Ash Wednesday and Easter Sunday to be in play but for us the fast/giving up was for each and every day in-between the two events.
Just because Jesus wandered 40 days does not mean that the concept of meditation in Lent needs to be solitary, or giving something luxurious up, it can be meditation in the form of service [Which saint did the whole meditation through work thing? I am not Catholic and don’t really do saints.]
But that is what the concept of Lent is about. It’s not about generally doing something nice or good, it’s about a specific style of action to reflect upon a specific event. But nothing about it prevents you from also working the soup kitchens or homeless shelters or giving all your coats to charity if that’s something you want to do – those just aren’t Lenten actions.
All those things are supposed to be part of your daily life as a Christian. Giving up a select pleasure to reflect upon Jesus’ fast and your faith is a particular event. Just as helping the unfortunate was a daily part of Jesus’ life but his trip to the desert was a singular event.
I think we were supposed to sacrifice something, so that we could gain a greater understanding of Jesus’s sacrifice. I think it was usually some kind of sweets, but I don’t remember exactly.
My parents would give up stuff for Lent, and then decide that they didn’t really need it anyway. They both gave up smoking this way, and my mother gave up milk and sugar in her tea. So for me it also has connotations of simplifying your life, and learning you can be happy with less (like a kind of anti-materialism) but I don’t think that is part of the regular meaning for most people.
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