How Do We Live Lent?

            Most of what is done and learned in Lent is true for the rest of the year, too, but with a different feel. Most people couldn't even dream of keeping their intense focus all year on what Jesus did and what we're to do with that. Forty days is long enough not to be short-term, but too short to be thought of as a substitute for year-round Christian living. A short burst, such as the forty days of Lent, can go a long way. But only for those who make some hard decisions.

Giving Something Up For Lent

In Lent, it's traditional to give up (or 'fast from') something(s) that we do a lot of and that we find pleasure in. This giving up or fasting is done:

• as a discipline for learning self-control, to free our minds from the chase after material things, to tell ourselves 'no' and make it stick;
• to identify with Christ's sufferings, and remember what the true pleasures are for followers of Christ;
• as an act of sorrow over our wrongdoings and our state of sin.

It may at times be about forensic guilt (as in TV's CSI or Law and Order, the 'I did it' kind of guilt), but it's not about the psychological kind of guilt (where God is pictured like a nagging mother, saying just the right word to make you feel sorry for yourself). In fact, it prepares you for Easter, in which a risen Christ leaves you no cause (or even room) for such guilt or shame.
Sometimes we don't notice how certain things we do have gained power over us and dictate our actions. In Lent fasts, we discover these things and give them up so that God can be in charge. Franciscans use the term 'detachment': the less that 'stuff' preoccupies your life, the more room there is for God, as well as for yourself and for other people.
Christian parents sometimes use the season to teach their children more about taking responsibility in God's presence for their actions.