Are You Hungry?

There is this popular motto going around these days regarding how to approach Lent: Don't give up chocolate for Lent.  Now that statement is meant to be provocative.  Hence I feel perfectly justified in responding with a similarly provocative statement: that is absolute hogwash.

Now of course if you give up chocolate (or any other little pleasure) for Lent and that is all you do, you may be missing the point.  If giving up that chocolate leads you to an awareness of God and of how you are seeking Him elsewhere, then it is certainly worthwhile.  However, if it merely causes you to substitute something else to fill that hole in your life, it has utterly failed.

Still, the reason I criticize the above statement is primarily because it could lead to a justification for continuing to overindulge simply because you are doing something else for Lent.  Asceticism is a necessary part of Lent, whether that means fasting on bread and water or giving up something like chocolate.

If it makes us hungry, that is a good thing.  For it is hunger that leads us to God.

Here is a young Franciscan, Brother Casey, meditating on the practical fruit of our hunger with an example from the Scriptures (his longer blog post on the same subject is here):

Our society has turned its back on asceticism in favor of a pleasure-driven search that results in momentary happiness, but no spiritual fruit.  Take that influence along with our fallen human nature and we enter a repetitive search for God in all the wrong places, trying to fill our persistent hunger with what will never satisfy.

Yet in the end, as Saint Augustine said: Our hearts are restless, until they rest in Thee.