A SONG from about 1300 begins “Lenten ys include like to toune”: the spring season, the season of animals and birds mating, the enjoyment of growth and fertility in all places, forcing itself on you. As Tennyson puts it,
“In the Spring a fuller crimson comes upon the robin’s breast;
In the Spring the wanton lapwing gets himself one other crest;
In the Spring a livelier iris changes on the burnish’d dove;
In the Spring a young man’s fancy flippantly turns to thoughts of affection.”
Look at me! Join in! Join the dance!
The Old English word lencten (“lengthen, draw out”) got here to mean the season itself, when, every day, the sun climbs higher, and living things wake from winter sleep. Yet, not so way back, this was the very time once you had little alternative but to tighten your belt, and to go without. You may need some eggs from the hens coming into lay, and milk from newly calved cows. Some salted meat or bacon is likely to be left. But your over-wintered stores can be low, and it still wanted months to reap.
After weeks of dried peas or beans (also running low), you (and your body) can be very grateful for any fresh greens you may get. Certainly, you may have a little bit of a blowout on Quinquagesima (Shrove Sunday) weekend, and finish any last meat and eggs on Collop Monday (you then used the dripping from the meat to make Shrove Tuesday pancakes).
You might even seriously let your hair down — in some places, like Venice, or parts of Germany today, masks helped you do this — on Mardi Gras or Karnival or Fasching or Shrove Tuesday, when the world was briefly the other way up, and behind their masks you may tell neither prince from pauper, nor Colonel’s Lady from Judy O’Grady.
IN THIS hungry time, the Church for hundreds of years has kept the long fast of Lent, and encouraged self-denial and examination of conscience. It has also seen the weeks leading as much as Lent as a time for reflection and preparation. How should we — will we — prepare for Lent? Cranmer’s BCP collects for Septuagesima, Sexagesima, and Quinquagesima emphasise, respectively, our need for discipline, humility, and love, and ask for grace to assist find them. And then, having thought on and (perhaps) learned something about this stuff, we start the 40 days of Lent. And it’s not all about food, or giving up chocolate or alcohol.
Lent follows Carnival (carnem vale: “farewell to flesh”): the one by the opposite. They are Bakhtinian complementaries — however the Church understood long before any Russian theorist the intimate and obligatory relation of every to the opposite. Just so, Plato yokes two horses, flesh and spirit, to the chariot of the soul; and Aristotle defines humankind as a rational animal, nether all reason and spirit, nor all appetite and matter, but an interactive, paradoxical combination of all.
When we “give things up for Lent”, after we attempt to discipline our wills to refuse ourselves things and pleasures which might be in themselves innocent, we’re getting ourselves morally in higher fettle to withstand pleasures, actions, and indulgences after they are dangerous.
But Lenten fasting is a mere shadow of true ascesis: that’s, deliberately to enter training like an athlete, training body and mind to work together; for (it was anciently held), on the Fall, the body/mind harmony was fatally dislocated, and appetite began its despotic rule. Excess of food — far beyond what was needed for survival — fed the unruly desires and uncontrollable impulses of the body to sex, anger, covetousness, and sloth. Relinquishing every little thing not absolutely obligatory sought to revive spirit’s rule over body and body’s desires. So, fasting and watching, discipline and silence, far, indeed, from being life-denying, sought a fullness of spirit ready for the enjoyment beyond the partitions of this world which all desire, perhaps without knowing it.
TO BE hungry voluntarily might teach us compassion for those in real, constant hunger — and even perhaps to do something about their suffering. But no one could pretend that fasting or self-denial, in whatever measure, is simple. Perversely, desire for something increases as soon as you forbid it. The great saints and ascetics may manage it, but most of us trip on our journey. The Church — no mere authority structure, but all of us who seek to follow the Lord — has, since its starting, properly allowed for that weakness of our flesh against the ambitions of our spirit.
In mid-Advent and mid-Lent fall the refreshments of Gaudete (“Rejoice”) Sunday (Advent 3) and Laetare (“Be joyful”) Sunday (Lent 4), when things can calm down a bit, like getting a second wind if you find yourself doing a run. So, you have got fallen down in your journey? Recognise why you tripped; ask for forgiveness; pick yourself up; have one other go.
IN SACRAMENTAL confession — being shriven (hence “Shrovetide”, the name for the period from Septuagesima to Lent) — which a surprising number of individuals seek as a preliminary to the spiritual workout of Lent, the Church properly offers the prospect of a fresh start: a probability to just accept, live with, the consequences of your life; to feel at peace, even knowing that the implications of past actions can never be escaped. But that self-knowledge and acceptance rely upon what Cranmer’s collects properly pinpointed: discipline — being systematic; humility — a clear-eyed acknowledgement (even when it hurts) of responsibility for the mess that we’ve made, and saying heartily sorry; and love — of ourselves in addition to others. “Love your neighbour as yourself”: for those who cannot love yourself, what price the love that you have got for others?
Christ said to the lady guilty of adultery who had been delivered to him for judgement (she will need to have been terrified): “Neither do I condemn thee. Go, and sin no more.” But to just accept the forgiveness freely offered to the penitent signifies that you have got to forgive yourself, which is considered one of the toughest things of all to do; for then you have got to place away all self-importance, all pride, and acknowledge that you simply are because the dust of the earth, and to dust you’ll return. But only of that dust are saints moulded.
Dr Charles Moseley is a Life Fellow of Hughes Hall, Cambridge.
