Category: Liturgical Year

The Law Of Fast: Beverages

A reader writes:

My question is this: Where have the US bishops defined what fasting is for American Catholics during Lent? The reason why I ask is that a friend claims that during the fast days of Ash Wednesday and Good Friday, we are not only restricted to eating 1 full meal and 2 smaller snacks, but that we must also not drink any alcohol and other "non-water" beverages.

This didn’t seem right, because what I had always remembered was that fasting was simply the meal restriction. Although I believe that the spirit of Lent will prevent me from drinking alcohol on Ash Wednesday or Good Friday, I just wanted a clarification about the law.

I’ve looked everywhere, and I can’t seem to find a definition of lenten fasting. Help! Thanks in advance.

The U.S. bishops have not created particular law for the United States regarding the form of fasting to be observed here, which means that the Church’s universal law on the subject will prevail. That law is found in the 1966 apostolic constitution Paenitemini, where Pope Paul VI provided:

The law of fasting allows only one full meal a day, but does not prohibit taking some food in the morning and evening, observing—as far as quantity and quality are concerned—approved local custom (norm III:2).

That’s it.

Beyond that, we have to fall back on the common and constant opinion of learned persons as to what it means.

When we do that, it is immediately clear that in interpreting the Church’s laws regarding fasting the terms "meal" and "food" are understood as being food rather than beverages. If you go look in old moral theologies, they invariably talk about the fact that you can drink things–including things other than water–on days of fasting.

Some moralists have considered alcoholic beverages contrary to the spirit of the day, but they don’t consider beverages other than water to be contrary to the spirit. Examples they commonly cite of beverages that are okay to have on fasting days are milk and fruit juices and coffee with cream, all of which contain calories.

Beverages just are not included under the law of fasting.

This means that, if I wanted, I could drink can after can of low-carb protein shakes on Ash Wednesday and Good Friday and consume 3500 calories of them and still be within the letter of the law.

I would not, however, be within the spirit of the law, which is to encourage moderate hunger as a form of spiritual discipline. If I use calorie-laden beverages (or hunger suppressants) to get around that then I am violating the spirit though not the letter of the law.

As a result, to comply with the spirit of the law, on days of fast I drink whatever I normally would drink but I  don’t start chugging extra calories in fluid form. I keep my beverage consumption (mainly zero-calorie Diet 7-Up, since it’s made with Splenda rather than Aspartame) the same and lower the amount of food I eat.

MORE On When To Wipe The Ashes Off

A reader writes:

Tonight my family and I went to Ash Wednesday Mass. We came home and immediately prepared ourselves for bedtime since it was already way past kids’ bedtime, and I wondered what to do with the ashes on our faces.  If Ash Wednesday Mass is in the morning, then typically the ashes gradually fade over the course of the day, and so I don’t feel bad to wash the residual ash off my face– the ashes served their purpose most throughout the day. But this evening when I arrived home it seemed disrespectful to immediately remove the ashes that had only been on for 30 minutes and unseen by anyone outside church. 

My wife stuck to her extensive face-washing routine, and I (hey, I’m a guy) left my face ‘as is’, with the exception of some gentle and reverent blotting to clean off excess ash that might soil the bed linens.

Does the Church teach specifics how to treat the ashes once applied to the forehead?  For example, how long should we wear the cross on our forehead?  And in what manner should we wash-off?

The Church does not require us to get ashes on our heads in the first place. It’s a custom, but the individual members of the congregation are not bound to go forward to receive them.

Neither is there a mandate about how long they should say on. If they stay on for a long time and others see them then that is a side benefit, but their real purpose is to remind you of your mortality (hence what the priest says when he puts them on you) and your need to repent.

Once that goal is accomplished, you can wash them off at any time–especially to avoid things like getting them on bedsheets–though if you can leave them on longer then it is a good public testimony to one’s faith.

I would definitely not have them on the day after Ash Wednesday. Then you’d look like a nut and the good of a public witness would be undone.

There also is no specific manner mandated for washing them off. Just don’t be deliberately respectful as you do so.

Incidentally. lightly blotting the ashes would have never worked for me yesterday. So as to be a better public witness, at Mass at Catholic Answers, Fr. Serpa put BIG BOLD BLACK CROSSES on everyone’s foreheads, not the customary small grey smudges you get most places. We had ashes falling on our clothes all day, and the ashes were so dense that there would have been plenty left to get on my pillowcase if I hadn’t washed them off first.

Lenten Protestants

Ashcross

More and more Protestants are beginning to see Lent as less and less of a "papist" barnacle on the barque of the Christian Church and instead something to which they feel called to observe.

"So, how did Catholic Lenten traditions spread across the border [to Protestantism]? For one thing, the boundaries between traditions are not what they used to be. Crossing them is a steady traffic of believers and seekers. Want to meet someone who was raised Catholic? Try an evangelical megachurch, or the local United Church of Christ. About one-third of believers change churches at least once, according to commonly cited studies. Inevitably, all this changing of churches ends up changing the churches, as people bring bits of their worship traditions with them. Catholic liturgy has appropriated pop music and hand-holding in evangelical style. So, maybe it’s not that surprising that more Protestants are now dipping into the well of Catholic ritual and devotions. In that sense, Lent may be part of a trend: Check out the Ecumenical Miracle Rosary, which recasts Catholic devotional beads for Protestant use by eliminating those troublesome Hail Marys.

"Observing Lent is also part of a Protestant move in the last generation toward more classical forms of spiritual discipline. The hugely influential 1978 book Celebration of Discipline, by Quaker theologian Richard J. Foster, encouraged churchgoers to rediscover fasting and meditation in ‘answer to a hollow world’ and as a way to turn toward God. Some questing Protestants started making like monks, practicing silence and solitude. All this was made more palatable by the improved relations between Catholics and Protestants that followed the Second Vatican Council reforms of the 1960s.

"Perhaps it’s the things that made Lent hard to take as a Catholic kid — the solemnity, the self-denial, the disappearance of hot dogs from the lunchroom — that account most for the season’s broadening appeal. I was schooled to see Lent as a time apart, a respite from the daily pursuit of self-gratification. That apartness seems not unlike the ‘inward and spiritual reality’ that Foster suggested could be found in the ancient disciplines. Catholics have for so long thought of themselves as the defenders of ritual — the masters of incense, genuflection, and splendor — that it still seems strange to be sharing ash-wearing with Presbyterians and Methodists. But our shared affection of late for some of the old ways of worship represents a small victory for mystery, ritual, and awe. Now if we could just come to ecumenical agreement about the evils of frozen fish sticks."

GET THE STORY.

Perhaps the main reason why Lent is migrating again is because the human heart sees in it a helpful spiritual discipline in which the Christian believer may draw near to Christ. That human longing for asceticism as a spiritual discipline may be stifled but cannot be smothered. The renewal of Lent in Protestant circles goes to show that when a wheel is useful enough, it will be reinvented.

Hungry, Yesterday?

Good. It was Ash Wednesday. You were supposed to be.

Ash Wednesday is one of two days of mandatory fast under current Church law. (The other is Good Friday.) Neither day of fasting is severe. In fact, the reduction in food required by law is quite mild.

This is not how it has always been, though. There used to be many more days of customary fasting in Lent. In fact, you basically had to fast for the whole of Lent under universal law.

Sometimes fasting has also been much more severe than it is now.

And that’s okay. There is no one right way to do fasting, and the same amount is not always suitable for everybody in every time and every place, which makes it a good thing that Christ didn’t mandate a particular amount of manner of fasting for his followers. He simply said

And when you fast, do not look dismal, like the hypocrites, for they disfigure their faces that their fasting may be seen by men. Truly, I say to you, they have received their reward. But when you fast, anoint your head and wash your face, that your fasting may not be seen by men but by your Father who is in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you [Matt. 6:16-18].

The general manner in which Jesus addressed fasting allowed his Church to adjust the requirements of fasting to meet the changing needs of society.

It’d be really hard–in a developed society today–to mandate a whole month of severe fasting for the entire populace.

For example, if you required people to fast all day and only eat at night then people would get up (or stay up) to eat before it was light and then be tired during they day, perform their job duties sluggishly from lack of sleep and food, and then drive home at 90 miles an hour in a hunger-induced panic to get their evening meal, causing bunches of traffic accidents.

If the only fasting requirement was that you not eat during the day then people would gorge themselves at night, actually gain weight during the month of fasting, and make each night a sleepless Mardi Gras, figuring they’d sleep on the weekends.

How do I know this?

BECAUSE IT’S WHAT HAPPENS IN SAUDI ARABIA EVERY RAMADAN.

Unfortunately, the specificity with which Muhammad is held to have mandated the Ramadan fast makes it difficult or impossible to adapt the institution to the needs of a modern society.

It’s easy for us today to look at the Ash Wednesday and Good Friday fasts as not very much to ask–perhaps even too little to ask–but more severe fasting for long periods of time causes its own problems. It’s one thing to keep a strict fast when the pace of life is slow and you’re in a pre-industrial society and don’t have to get behind the wheel of a car while you’re ravening with hunger.

But those kinds of long, more severe, society-wide fasts are not suited to the living conditions we find ourselves in today in much of the world.

Whether or not the Church always adapts its laws on these matters wisely, I’m so glad that the Church has the Christ-given freedom to adapt them.

Annual Lent Fight!

Oyez! Oyez! Step right up, ladies and gentlemen, for that annual powerhouse of pugilism, that feast of fisticuffs, and that mother-of-all-liturgical-battles,

THE ANNUAL LENT FIGHT!

Yes, indeed. It’s time once again to hash through all those vexing questions about Lent that are caused when Catholic folk tradition smacks into the Church’s official documents, with all their ambiguities, complexities, and lacunae!

Countless illusions and popular rumors about Lent will be dashed! Disputes will be started! Friendships will be ended! Ashes will be smeared! Hamburgers will be skipped!

Yes, the annual Lentomachy has it all!

To prepare yourself for the Annual Lent Fight, please check out the following links:

GENERAL

DURATION

PENANCE IN GENERAL

ABSTINENCE

ASH WEDNESDAY

HOLY THURSDAY

GOOD FRIDAY

FRIDAY PENANCE OUTSIDE OF LENT

St. Valentine’s Day

Today is St. Valentine’s day–a celebration that is among the top five holidays which have had their Christian meaning forgotten in contemporary culture (along with Easter, Christmas, Fat Tuesday [Mardi Gras], and Halloween).

But it’s still popular, and certainly if you have a special someone, you need to do your part and get or do something nice for them.

In some ways, St. Valentine’s day is the hardest one of the Forgotten Five to articulate is Christian meaning. I mean, Easter is about the Resurrection, and Christmas is about the Nativity. Fat Tuesday is about the last chance to enjoy things we will give up for Lent, and Halloween is the preparation for the day celebrating all of the saints in heaven.

But what is St. Valentine’s day about? Obviously, about St. Valentine–but he lived so long ago that we don’t really know very much about him (other than that there was one and he was a martyr). The facts of his life have become enmeshed with Christian legend, and it’s hard to know much about him for sure.

Many of those legends connect him with helping out lovers in various ways, which explains why all the married men (among others) have got to get flowers and candy on the way home from work today (don’t forget!).

Still, it would help us better appreciate the day if we knew what there is to know about St. Valentine, which is why you should also

GET THE STORY.

Happy St. Valentine’s Day, y’all!

Christmas Wars Episode I: The Puritan Menace

Slate has an interesting piece on the history of Christmas and the war conducted against it by Puritans et al. in of all places (are you ready?) Massachusetts.

EXCERPT:

Between 1659 and 1681, Christmas celebrations were outlawed in the colony, and the law declared that anyone caught "observing, by abstinence from labor, feasting or any other way any such days as Christmas day, shall pay for every such offense five shillings." Finding no biblical authority for celebrating Jesus’ birth on Dec. 25, the theocrats who ran Massachusetts regarded the holiday as a mere human invention, a remnant of a heathen past. They also disapproved of the rowdy celebrations that went along with it. "How few there are comparatively that spend those holidays … after an holy manner," the Rev. Increase Mather lamented in 1687. "But they are consumed in Compotations, in Interludes, in playing at Cards, in Revellings, in excess of Wine, in Mad Mirth."

After the English Restoration government reclaimed control of Massachusetts from the Puritans in the 1680s, one of the first acts of the newly appointed royal governor of the colony was to sponsor and attend Christmas religious services. Perhaps fearing a militant Puritan backlash, for the 1686 services he was flanked by redcoats. The Puritan disdain for the holiday endured: As late as 1869, public-school kids in Boston could be expelled for skipping class on Christmas Day.

GET THE STORY.

Christmas Eve Homilies

Last night I went to Mass at a local Catholic Church other than my usual parish. It’s a good parish, where a friend of mine who is a priest often says Mass. This priest is an excellent homilist, and I was delighted when he came out to do the homily last night.

Unfortunately, I basically heard none of his homily. The priest himself was heroically battling with the sound system, which was misbehaving, but that wasn’t the major problem.

The major problem was that there was a father with a young baby walking up and down in the world-class echo chamber that serves as a vestibule for this parish, and the baby was exercizing the full capacity of its lungs.

It was also crying so loudly that it occasionally threatened to set off rounds of sympathetic crying among other babies in the congregation.

I was sitting in the back, and the baby positively destroyed my ability to hear anything that the priest was saying. I suspect he did so for much of the congregation–perhaps all of it.

Now, I don’t mind a little bit of baby tearfulness in the congregation, because it signifies two good things: (1) there are babies in the congregation and (2) their parents are religiously active. Those are two wonderful things, and I normally smile and remind myself of them when I hear a baby sounding off during church services.

But when a baby is totally out of control, his parents need to do something, because they do have some responsibility not to allow their child to ruin everybody else’s ability to hear.

Taking the wailing infant into a large, tiled echo chamber is not among the most responsible things I can think of to do in such a situation.

The ushers were quite useless in this situation. Indeed, though they were standing right in front of the doors of the nave, they didn’t even close the doors to the echo chamber for several minutes, lest the young father feel excluded, which made it impossible for the congregation (or much of it) to hear the priest’s Christmas Eve homily. Finally, they did close the doors–which are quite thin and so provided next to no relief from the sound.

"Perhaps the person minding the baby would like to know that there is a cry room," I suggested to one of the ushers.

"I think he knows," the usher replied, indicating that he would do nothing to alleviate the situation. "It’s too cold to go outside."

"Oh yeah," I thought to myself. "This is Southern California. It’s in the 50s outside and there is a think blanket of Christmas FOG in the parking lot. I didn’t even have to turn on the heater in my truck on the way over. That baby will really get sick and die if the father takes it outside for twenty seconds so that he can take the face-saving route to the cry room instead of having to walk in front of part of the congregation."

The ushers having determined to be useless and the baby continuing to destroy everyone’s ability to hear the homily, I *almost* took matters into my own hands to kindly and politely and warmly and helpfully inform in the young father that there was a cry room on the premises, but the homily ended (meaning that we were now in a part of the Mass where the congregation could at least roughly follow what was going on by memory) and the child seemed to settle down anyway.

I admired the priest for being able to soldier on with his homily under these conditions, beset as he was on two fronts (the baby in the echo chamber and the sound system’s refusal to behave). I was a little surprised that he didn’t pause the homily to gently invite the use of the cry room to help with one of these, but he soldiered on anyway. (And, yes, I know the reasons he might not want to.)

Yet I was disappointed that I didn’t get to hear the Christmas Eve homily of a particularly good homilist.

But I was able to read one!

This morning I discovered that the folks who do the Vatican web site have (mirabile dictu) put THE POPE’S Christmas Eve homily online–and he’s a good homilist, too!

HERE’S THE LINK.

I was interested to compare what the pope actually said with the highly political reading given to his homily in THIS REPORTAGE (which is better than most you get). The pope’s homily wasn’t just about stopping war and abortion. It was much more focused on Christ and the spiritual meaning of Christmas than the political stuff the press is interested in.

Which is as it should be.

So all seems right in the world: There are good homilies out there for Christmas Eve. There are babies with excellent lung capacity. There are echo chambers for those who need them. And there is a surplus of cry room space for those who wish to use it.

YEE-HAW!