Ash Wednesday
It’s one of the curiosities of recent times that choosing whether to fast, and what to give up, falls to the individual. “Are you giving up anything for Lent?” was a question no-one would ever have asked a few hundred years ago, when everyone gave up the same things, and it was only remarkable and noticeable if you DIDN’T join in with the fast. Traditional fasting was never private and personal, it was a public and community exercise, which in some ways made it easier to be accountable.
It’s quite impossible to return to a traditional fast, simply because of this issue of personal choice. You could follow the same dietary restrictions of a traditional fast, giving up everyday staples such as meat and fish, sugar and all animal and dairy products. It wouldn’t be impossible to do, but it would become a dire inconvenience to other people, and I have to feel that drawing attention to the fact that you’re fasting somewhat goes against the spirit of the whole thing. I think wiping the ashes off your face before you leave church has a lot to be said for it, for just the same reason.
I’m giving up two things – one comestible, one habitual, both relatively unnoticeable to everyone else. I’ve told a few friends what I’m up to so that I don’t keep Lent in isolation. And I shall break the fast on a selected feast days, including St Megingaud’s day.
7 Responses to “Ash Wednesday”
Comments
Pingbacks and Trackbacks
Reply
-
author musician theologian
Maggi has kept a blog since September 2003, writing about theology and faith, the arts and literature, and a little about life and random nonsense...
In an increasingly secularised society few people have a good working knowledge of the Bible. Yet a great deal of our culture is built on stories or ideas that come from the Bible. Literature, art, music, language and even the fabric of our society - such as our justice system - are built on Christian concepts and biblical references. The Writing on the Wall provides a fascinating introduction to the Bible's best-known, and most influential, stories. Each chapter gives some background to the text of the Bible, and shows how the stories have become enmeshed in Western culture. Adam and Eve, the ten plagues of Egypt, The Prodigal Son and Mary Magdalene all feature - along with how the Bible has influenced everyone from Shakespeare to Monty Python, and Caravaggio to Banksy. 
Giving It Up explores the Lenten idea of 'giving up', taking it beyond the traditional idea of simply abstaining from something, and suggesting instead that what we need to give up is our existing ideas about God. With a daily readings for each day of Lent, from Ash Wednesday to Easter Sunday, it follows the heroes of the Bible who had to give up their own too-small ideas about God.
This is Maggi’s bestselling book of daily readings for each day of Advent, Christmas and Epiphany. Advent is the beginning of the Church year, and marks the anticipation of the coming Messiah. These readings explore how beginnings and endings in our own lives are illuminated by the different Gospel narratives of Christ's coming.
-
Search
-
-
Was really struck in the readings today by the combination of community (in Joel) and individual (John’s account of the woman taken in adultery…) Comment got too long…blog post pending.
But glad that St Meningaud will be kept properly this year!
Dear Maggi,
and it is good to enter Lent with Ps. 103 and your comments. Je suis bien contente de trouver dans ton livre un accompagnement pour les 40 jours à venir !
I received your book just on time
Happy Lent to you all,
Anne-Catherine