Transcripts

SUBJECT: The season of Lent goes actually back to the early fourth century, when Christians were to practice a period of penitence that involved prayer, fasting, and almsgiving in preparation for Easter and baptism. And apart from baptism, it is seen as a time when Christians renew themselves in their baptismal commitment.

INTERVIEWER: The practice of getting ashes on Ash Wednesday, of course, is well known. What's the point of that?

SUBJECT: Well, that's a practice that actually goes back 1,000 years in Christianity. And it's a sign of penitence that Christians, by their self-denial, the suffering that they might voluntarily undertake during the season of Lent, is part of the suffering that Jesus himself endured in his passion and death on the cross for our salvation.

INTERVIEWER: Do many people still observe Lent?

SUBJECT: I would say that an awful lot of Christians observe Ash Wednesday by getting ashes, who don't necessarily practice religiously during the year. I would say that the practice of Lent in its traditional sense of selecting for oneself additional prayers and works of penitence involving fasting and almsgiving is probably practiced by a small minority of Christians.

INTERVIEWER: Why do you suppose that is? What's changed?

SUBJECT: Well, in the Catholic Church, anyway, what's changed is that the external authority has removed all of the specific directives for the observance of Lent. So when I was growing up, for example, all of those who were over 21 had to fast during the whole of the season of Lent. And that meant no eating between meals, meaning eating meat once a day and having two smaller meals that did not equal in size of the third meal of the day. When those were removed, the laws governing that were removed, I think that very few people continue to observe that. And of course, for Catholics, we used to abstain from meat on Fridays. And we don't do that during the year anymore, only during the season of Lent.

INTERVIEWER: Is suffering or sacrifice still seen as a good thing in the church?

SUBJECT: Well, the sacrifice is not something that one selects because one likes to suffer. I mean, the Christian church isn't engaged in creating a congregation of masochists. The suffering that one might voluntarily undertake is meant to free one for other kinds of works.

So for example, one might fast from a meal and contribute the cost of that to feeding the hungry. It's what we do here at the seminary, for example. One might give up watching television in order to spend time reading a Christian classic. One might donate one's time to a charitable work-- so working in the hospital or meals on wheels or some other charitable enterprise. So the penance undertaken, which might involve suffering, is meant really to free one for charitable works.

INTERVIEWER: You say that observation of Lent has declined somewhat, in part because the removal of these external controls, if you will. Where do you see this going in the future? Do you think that the observance of Lent is going to become less prominent? Or do you think at some point we're going to turn around and people are going to say, gee, we really like the rituals and the traditions and the rules and we should go back in whistle that direction?

SUBJECT: Well, certainly, people find it easier when there are rather specific external directives, when they realize that there is a command that they have to break. For Catholics, it would been under pain of sin at one time. I don't know that that's as effective as it once would have been, let us say, in the '50s, when there were all kinds of external controls from all kinds of sources besides the church from government and business and those kinds of things. And I don't see us going back to a period like that. I know in my own preaching to congregations on Sundays during Lent, I indicate the completely voluntary nature of the practices they might undertake. And I'm going to suspect that the fewer and fewer people will undertake voluntarily these kinds of penitential practices.