Today is the last Sunday before Lent. In many countries these last few days are celebrated through a festive carnival, also called Mardi Gras. The word carnival comes from the Latin carne levare, or to remove the meat, from the ascetic practice that used to be the norm. Traditional societies used to “give up” something for Lent. So, we ask, in our postmodern world, what should we give up for Lent?
Let’s start with the hate-filled rhetoric we hear against immigrants, LGBT+ people, and others that have been the targets of venomous speech. Then we can consider moving onto the greed that corporations exhibit in their treatment of the environment as they spew out pollutants that poison the earth and people.
We can also give up our own preoccupation with the materialism we have in our consumer economy. Really, now, how much stuff can we actually have and own? If you look at this Presidents’ sales weekend, a lot. It’s sort of our form of carnival before the austerity of Lent. Moving into Lent let’s consider how we can make the Easter that follows a reality for the marginalized in our world.
Prayer for the Day
Pausing, we step out the door and see our breath in the cold,
And struggle to feel your warmth around us, O God;
On this late winter morning we still shiver in our coats,
And search for signs of life beneath the frozen landscape.
But you break into our lives, O Lord, with the sight of a hawk
Reminding us that even now life is all around us.
In the name of the One who calls us to life,
Even Christ Jesus our Lord, Amen.
Thoughts for the Day
Lent is a time of going very deeply into ourselves… What is it that stands between us and God? Between us and our brothers and sisters? Between us and life, the life of the Spirit? Whatever it is, let us relentlessly tear it out, without a moment’s hesitation.
Catherine Doherty, Russian born Canadian writer, humanitarian (1897-1985)
The church does not exist to make the world run more smoothly, but to be a truthful sign of what the world is meant to be.
Stanley Hauerwas, contemporary American Theologian
No one can serve two masters; for a slave will either hate the one and love the other, or be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and wealth.
Jesus in Matthew 6: 24