Lent and Self Punishment

This article was published in The Sydney Morning Herald 22 March 2010

It’s now Lent going into Easter and the time for embracing austerity and abstemiousness is upon us.

For Lent is the 40 days of asceticism before Easter.

Believers are supposed to prepare themselves for Easter week by prayer, penitence and self denial through fasting and other acts of self deprivation. Traditional Lent is not at all Gen X and Y. In fact Lent is very confronting to all of our modern hedonistic senses.

Constraint and abstinence seem so last millennium. I know that I was lost to Judaism when I discovered that feasting on lobster was out.

It is the abandonment of our modern self-gratification that must confront those Priests and Ministers trying to sell Lent to the faithful and not so faithful. The concept is that we need a time of abstinence to prepare ourselves for the solemnity of Easter.