It’s Time to Give Up

Lent begins a week on Wednesday.  The time of preparation for Lent, is rapidly slipping away.  Shrovetide is one of the shortest seasons of the Church’s year, and we don’t have much time left to get ready for Ash Wednesday and the forty days of penance that follow.  Have you given any thought yet to what you’ll be “giving up” for Lent?

It became a trend in the 1970s to disparage this practice of giving things up.  We were discouraged by young, fashionable priests from the negative custom of doing without things we like.  Instead, they encouraged us to do “positive” things.  These ranged from the reasonable, like giving money to the homeless, to the now familiar follies of political activism, protests against climate change, greater involvement (interference) in the administration of church affairs, and so on.  But the idea of doing without sugar in our coffee for six weeks was scorned. 

Let’s not be so quick to give up “giving up” things!  Rather, let’s think about what it means to “give up.”  Literally, we “give” “up.”  It is a gift that we offer “up” to God, a very small sacrifice, to be sure, but nevertheless, something that we want to have, but out of love for God, go without having.  What a beautiful thing it is when a little child gives his mother a tiny flower.  But how that mother treasures this little gift because it shows that her child loves her.

So make your list this week.  You can give up so many things if you think hard.  It doesn’t have to be a certain type of food like chocolate or soda or alcohol.  It can be anything.  The internet is a good place to find lists of things that we could abstain from for a few short weeks. Here are a few good ones I found for you to think about…

• Give up a little time by saying an extra rosary
• Give up complaining
• Give up using bad language
• Give up or cut down on TV time
• Give up checking the news
• Give up watching sports
• Give up internet surfing
• Give up texting
• Give up gossiping
• Give up video games
• Give up putting yourself first
• Give up clutter

It doesn’t have to be forever—just 40 days.  So many opportunities to give God a little present on a more frequent basis!  Let’s make it a good Lent and prepare now by making our list and then, most importantly, by persevering throughout each of the forty days.  Only then will the joys of Easter finally dispel our mood of penitence and replace it with the blissful glory that will be the final reward of those who have so willingly sacrificed a few of life’s dispensable pleasures.