Why do we put some things away during Lent? Why do we give things up? What counts?

There’s an old term that an early generation of monks were fond of: askēsis. It’s where we get our own word, asceticism, which usually makes us think of practices of self-denial. Maybe we think of those later monks who dressed in brown robes, accepted no property of their own. They took a vow of self-denial. But really the word means something like training or practice—a cluster of images that float around athletic activity, or the disciplined labor over a particular skill. When I practice trumpet, I’m engaged in askēsis with my various drills—practicing scales, interval jumps, playing staccato or fluid. I’m working at this one thing in hopes that it’ll blend together with all the other things I’m working on throughout the week, and over time, I’ll get better.

We’re usually accustomed to thinking of Lent in terms of its exercises, its drills. The Christian life (so Lent tells us) is a contemplative life, a life of sobriety, a life of moderation, charity, nothing ostentatious or gaudy or extravagant. But I think this is where we run out of steam. The question, So what? undercuts our efforts at exercising the faith because we’re focused on the askēsis itself, on the exercises and not what they give us. Our Lenten practices might fail because we feel that we are trying to “do Lent.” But Lent itself isn’t often a thing we feel very compelled to take up on its own. Few of us enjoy the effort practice requires of us.

Let me keep at this trumpet metaphor. Another thing is true: playing and practice are in a reciprocal relationship. Why would I practice so much if I never took time to play? The point isn’t to master the exercises, the point is to play. If never pick up my instrument, then all my practice planning and goal mapping are a waste of time. But exercises, askēsis, discipline, are all for the joy of playing, not for the labor of mastery.

Maybe you see where this is going. Think of Easter as the chance to play and Lent as a season of rehearsal. Something of the Christian life depends on this kind of askēsis, this disciplined engagement with certain practices that allow us to love, to pray, to serve with ease because we have practiced these things before. That’s part of what Lent is particularly interested in—taking an aspect of the Christian life, and spending some time really laboring over it, practicing it, so that when the period of rehearsal is over, we’ve got it down pat.

So, what would you like to practice? What would you like to play? If you would like to practice prayer, then find a day of the week and let it be the day that you sit down in prayer (try p. 137 of the Book of Common Prayer). If you would like to practice love, think of some regular ways to give—maybe you make a habit of having cash on hand. If you would like to practice reading the Bible, pick a book of the New Testament and read a little bit of it every week (slowly).

If you would like to ‘give something up,’ think about what relationship that thing has to your overall spiritual life. Remember, the point isn’t the exercise; you don’t have to give it up just because you love it (coffee). Some things can be put down for a time so that we feel their absence and then receive them back to handle more carefully (I often do this with alcohol during Lent), but some things can be put down for good (I did this with Twitter one year). In all of these things, we’re practicing the kind of Christian that we will slowly become. Don’t worry if some days are easier than others. Practice what you would like to play and slowly, you’ll play it.

In that sense, Lent is a short window into the arc of our lives in God. All of this is a rehearsal for the Resurrection. There we will have a chance to love the way we have tried to love our whole life, where our prayers will come a little more naturally, and our hard work will show itself in something that can hardly be said to be a performance at all—living a redeemed life!

Learn more about other important updates in the latest church newsletter: The Epistle – February 15, 2024