Happy Fat Tuesday! Tonight's menu - steak and beer. Okay, not creative, but solid none the less. Maybe we'll pick up some shrimp as a stand-in for crawfish... a nod to Cajun Country.
The coming Lenten season seemed a good time for me to pick up The Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius, as well as digging out my old copy of C.S. Lewis' The Screwtape Letters.
I first read Screwtape decades ago, and in my memory, I held it to be one of Lewis's fluffier works, notable mainly for the cleverness of the it's imaginative conceit; that it was supposed to be composed of letters written from a demon to one of the "junior tempters" in his charge.
What I had failed to recall sufficiently - and what makes the book profitable reading for any Christian - were Lewis's spiritual insights. His depth of understanding and self-knowledge are what give the book its teeth. Somehow I had forgotten that (before I considered becoming a Catholic) Lewis's observations in large part helped give name and form to experiences I had, to that point, hardly been aware I was having... I refer to all the varied modes of selfishness, excuse-making and spiritual neglect in which we humans operate, even without Satan's help.
I was struck yesterday by one particular passage, being that I have hammered on "Puritanism" now and again;
In modern Christian writings, though I see much (indeed more than I like) about Mammon, I see few of the old warnings about Worldly Vanities, the Choice of Friends, and the Value of Time. All that, your patient would probably classify as "Puritanism"—and may I remark in passing that the value we have given to that word is one of the really solid triumphs of the last hundred years? By it we rescue annually thousands of humans from temperance, chastity, and sobriety of life.
Godly moderation is difficult, and for some it is never attained. One can't condemn too harshly the desperate Puritan impulse to simply place every sort of worldly pleasure at arms length. G.K. Chesterton called Puritanism "...an honourable mood; it was a noble fad. In other words, it was a highly creditable mistake." (from Orthodoxy).
But it was a mistake, as the current pejorative use of the word "Puritan" partly attests. As the season of Lent teaches us, asceticism is of real spiritual benefit only when it is voluntary. What the Puritans did was to set up a code forbidding everyone else doing anything they thought too worldly or spiritually dangerous. It seems rooted in despair "Moderation is impossible... so better to be rid of all temptations."
Labeling anyone a "Puritan" is a common way for thoroughly worldly people to condemn as stuffy and intolerant anyone whose moral practices they find too restrictive for their tastes. So, for instance, if you refuse to go to a bachelor party (complete with strippers), you're being Puritanical. If you disapprove of some co-worker's fornication or drug use, you're a Puritan.
Hurrah for Lent! It marks out the narrow route between the Scylla and Charybdis of Puritanism and Profligacy.
Lent is that 40 day classroom wherein we learn every year the true extent to which we are all habit-ridden and weak. It is also a celebration of the spiritual power of voluntary sacrifice. In addition, it helps us to develop proper gratitude for the sheer, mind-pummeling volume of good things that we enjoy every day.
I very narrowly escaped giving up beer this year (here you may picture me shakily wiping my brow with a handkerchief). That or coffee. Fortunately, though, my wife came up with this idea of us both going on some protein shake diet during Lent, so I gratefully accepted this last minute rescue.
As Barb Nicolosi once said, though, "If you enjoy Lent, you're not doing it right."
I will leave you with a Lenten poem, composed by the incomparable Kevin O'Brien, and which he posted on Facebook yesterday;
Have mercy on me, Lord, a sinner,
My Lenten vows I'm not observing.
I say this grace tonight at dinner,
“Have mercy on me, Lord, a sinner!"
I break my fast and grow no thinner
For I have had a second serving.
Have mercy on me, Lord, a sinner,
My Lenten vows I'm not observing.
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