3.30.14

So it's a feast day again, and I may surprise you by saying that I don't particularly like the fact that there are feast days.

Why, you ask? It took me a while to come around to the answer, because at face value it makes sense that when you choose to deprive yourself of something and you find out that on every seventh day you get a break from the deprivation, you would thoroughly enjoy the seventh day. And, well, that's the point of the Sabbath anyway - like I wrote a few years ago, every Sunday is a day of remembrance of that day on which the sinless man who had been beaten, humiliated, and murdered was raised from the dead. It's kind of a big deal, and definitely a reason for celebration and feasting.

I must conclude that the problem isn't with the the principle of feasting, it's in my approach to fasting.

I have a fascination with doing difficult things - a complicated word problem, dragging myself out of bed at dawn for a day of hard labor, stress hikes, the all-night study session - because of the personal satisfaction I feel at the end of it. Additionally, I have a strange enjoyment of the deprivation itself, the experience of "mind over matter" as I flex my muscles of self-denial. Put those things together and you have a temperament always up for a challenge and willing to make sacrifices to accomplish something. Put that way, I sound like a pretty great person, don't I? So what's wrong with the picture?

I find that I resent the upcoming weekly breaks in the fast because they remind me that fast isn't about me at all, nor about how much I can handle or how good a person I'll be when I have "gone without" for a few weeks. In fact, I anticipate that each Sunday will feel like resetting of all of the endurance I have built up over the previous six days and Monday begins just a little more miserable than Saturday. Ultimately the posture of fasting shouldn't be about facing down a challenge or proving one's will-power, it should be a posture of mourning over one's weakness, submission to God, and soberly rejoicing in his grace.

I can say that, but I don't completely understand it. Mourning, submission, and sobriety are not popular postures and they appear rarely in my life. I can only hope that the contrast of fasting with feasting will teach me to comprehend them better.

3.9.14

I knew that Lent was "forty days not including Sundays," but I never stopped to consider what that meant. You won't be surprised at my joy when I learned, from a RA who ought to know, that in Catholic practice the fast does not include the Lord's Day. So on Sunday I can do (or rather, eat) what I want*. So this is my first feast day and it couldn't come at a better time - it's Spring Break here at USF, and my sister is here to visit for the week. It's providential that we are both participating in this fast, because otherwise it would be a miserable week for one of us.

This first feast day has been full of small blessings, some of which were in disguise. I got up at an obscene hour this morning to drive to Waterloo only to discover that my sister's train was delayed by an hour... but as I sat there for an hour and a half waiting for her to arrive, I got to watch a beautiful sunrise. We got breakfast at a cute little diner, and let me tell you pancakes and bacon have never tasted so good. I went to church alone while my sister napped to make up for the sleep lost on the train, and then we went out to dinner and found the best pizza ever at Toscani Pizzeria. Again, pizza and Sam Adam's have never tasted so good. There was ice cream, later, and a movie, and general happiness. It was a good Sabbath.

It kind of sounds like my day was driven by food, doesn't it? And perhaps it was, and perhaps that's okay. Instead of paying attention to a list of rules, I was able to experience the God's lavish generosity of flavor and human creativity. That's kind of a big deal.

But the blessing I was most grateful for on this feast day was being able to eat with someone I care about.

*Incidentally, this is probably why it's best not to use Lent to overcome a bad habit or vice; 28 days may break a habit, but taking every seventh day off probably won't help much. :)