Don't Hurry Through Lent // Dust No. 5

“Lent reminds us that there is no Easter Sunday without Good Friday.” No one wants to suffer. So why do Christians go through several weeks of forced deprivation before we finally get to eat all the chocolate cake we want once again on Easter Sunday? By the end of the first week of Lent, those questions of “why am I giving this stuff up anyway?” start to hit pretty hard! UC Irvine psychiatrist Aaron Kheriaty offers us some thoughtful reasons to consider not hurrying through Lent.

The Table: What is Lent for? 

Aaron: Lent is a time of growing closer to our Lord Jesus through prayer, fasting and related disciplines, and almsgiving. It reflects Christ’s forty days in the wilderness prior to beginning his public ministry. The observance of Lent helps prepare us interiorly to celebrate more fully his Passion, Death, and Resurrection during Holy Week and Easter.

The Table: How can the celebration of Lent change us? What is it about ritual and/or Christian liturgical life that transforms people?

Aaron: Any real interior change happens through grace, so Lent and the Christian liturgical life are simply a means for God’s grace to reach us and transform us. In the rhythm of liturgical seasons and feasts we walk with Christ through the various stages of his Incarnation, birth, life, death, and Resurrection. The liturgy helps us to recall, indeed, to enter into, each of these aspects of his life. We may, for example, be tempted to gloss over his suffering in a sort of rush to get to the joy of Easter. But we cannot hurry there and the liturgy helps us to move at God’s pace. Lent helps us to recall and give thanks that Christ was willing to be tempted in the desert, to suffer and die in order to atone for our sins. Lent reminds us that there is no Easter Sunday without Good Friday.

The Table: How do penance, fasting, and other Lenten disciplines conduce to psychological and spiritual well-being?

Aaron: The first thing to remember about these spiritual disciplines is that they are not aimed primarily at psychological well-being, but rather, at conforming us to Christ. Lenten disciplines are a way of being more united to Christ in his self-sacrificial love, and to enter—even if only in a tiny way—into his suffering and his Passion. Fasting, small mortifications like giving up something we enjoy, almsgiving, or other Lenten disciplines are not primarily therapeutic in their aim; rather, they can only really be understood in reference to Christ, and in reference to his grace. With that acknowledged, it turns out that what is good for us on the spiritual level also happens to be good for us on the psychological level. So through these disciplines we can grow in the natural virtues, like the cardinal virtue of temperance, which helps regulate our appetites for food, drink, and so on. We might even shed a few pounds in the process of fasting, as a sort of happy “side-effect” of the more important spiritual aim. Interestingly, medical research shows that fasting, so long as it is done in moderation, is good for one’s physical health: several recent studies suggest that people who fast routinely end up living longer and enjoying better health in old age. So there is both psychological, physiological, and spiritual wisdom in these traditions of the Church.