5. April 2011 04:58
I have forsworn sweet things for Lent. Janet is in the office buttering up the hot cross buns and I sit here salivating. Am I resentful? Just a tad. Am I self–righteous? Ever so slightly. Do I feel more in relationship with her as God intended? I’m not sure. So what is it all about, this “Sacred Blight of Lent”, as Patrick Kavanagh called it? What is happening to me as I sit here in the midst of an observance that reminds me of the worst religious excesses of my childhood, subscribing to a tradition adhered to by fundamentalists who scare the bejeepers out of me and, in my current state of mind, that seems to separate me from others and therefore from the God I supposedly seek with all my heart and all my soul?
Last Saturday I went walking in Kent with some friends. I so wanted chocolate. One of them laughed at me and asked me if I thought God would love me more if I didn’t eat sweets. I know where he was coming from. I resent the idea of rules and regulations. I have looked at Muslims during Ramadan and thanked God that I live under grace and not law - if only I could learn to show some grace. I embrace the notion that my salvation is not because of me but because of Christ – but I am still sitting here denying myself a hot cross bun on the grounds that it will somehow make me holier. I wonder. So where does the patience, humility and increased awareness of God come from in all this?
I am sure this issue of fasting is many faceted and, for different people, it means different things. When the heroin addict plunges the needle in his arm, he feels the pleasure of instant gratification. Ask him to explain why he does it and he will confabulate, create a wonderfully plausible story of pain and deprivation that excuses him responsibility for his action. But in that moment of injecting, all he feels is the ecstasy of gratification. And when that hit wears off, the pain and deprivation are still there. So his temporary avoidance of pain has not improved the situation. If anything it has worsened it. Scott Peck attributes this tendency to avoid pain and suffering as the primary base of all mental illness. So perhaps what God is saying to me in his exhortations to fast that I do not need to avoid pain. I need to trust that if Christ lives in me - as I claim regularly - then I have the resources to live with pain, and that by fasting, I can explore and expand this reliance on him rather than on the world.
So that’s the theory. The practice is slightly more difficult. By now the hot cross buns have been eaten and the temptation is removed. I now feel less resentful of Janet, a little less self-righteous and more connected to God. Perhaps the fasting by itself is worthless without prayer and reflection – prayer for the grace to accept pain and suffering and reflection on the meaning of Christ’s death on the cross. Ironically that is just what a hot cross bun is meant to symbolise.
Declan Flynn