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Lent helps us enter the deepest and most important mysteries of what it truly means to be human—spirit and flesh fused together. Ash Wednesday is the beginning of Lent. Ashes remind us of our mortality. The ashes which are blessed and traced in the form of a cross on our forehead come from the palms of a previous Palm Sunday, also reminding us that the very praises of Hosanna which we sang turn to dust when we deny Our Lord through sin. Lent is a time of self denial. As traditional Anglicans we need to understand three things about Lent: fasting, abstinence, and discipline. Fasting Fasting is not refraining from all food. Fasting is eating no more than a light breakfast, one full meal (no dessert, of course), and one half meal. Abstinence Simply put, abstinence is abstaining from flesh meat. “Flesh meat” here does include chicken, by the way. In other words, Lent may not be the best of times to start the Atkins diet! When and How? Well, the Book of Common Prayer requires fasting with abstinence for all forty days of Lent and every Friday of the year outside Christmastide! (Surprised? see page li of the 1928 US BCP.) The modern Roman Catholic rule, on the other hand, is to fast and abstain only on Fridays during Lent, a very light requirement indeed! A healthy balance between the two would be to fast the forty days and fast with abstinence on Fridays—or one might want to abstain the forty days and fast with abstinence on Fridays. But pick one and stick with it. A rule that changes with our appetites is merely appetite dressed up to look like a rule. Sundays, by the way, are not part of Lent: every Sunday, even purple Sundays, are feasts and never fasts. (See, there is good news!)Over-fasting to the point of endangering your heath defeats the purpose of the spiritual exercise. The very young, the very old, and the infirm are customarily not expected to fast. When in doubt one should always consult one’s priest. Discipline We often hear about “giving something up” for Lent. Giving up something is not the sole extent of Lenten discipline, however. Our discipline ought to be a fine-tuning of our individual Rules of Life: our personal prayer, corporate prayer, devotion, spiritual reading and study, and the corporal acts of mercy. That doesn’t mean that “giving up” is bad; on the contrary, we probably ought to give up much more than we do! Skeptics and modernists love to talk about “taking something on” instead of giving up something. As I’ve said from the pulpit, that is the voice of the devil! He doesn’t want us to give up anything! In reality, one ought to do both--both give up something and then fill the gap of giving up with prayer, studying, visiting the sick, giving to the poor, shopping for or driving a shut-in. Take something on for Christ this Lent. I'm sure if you look around your parish church you’ll find excellent ways to work on building up your spiritual muscles: Stations of the Cross on Fridays, extra weekday Masses, and so on. Conclusion The rules we set for ourselves for Lent should help make us better Christians. Lent should bring us closer to God, each other, and His creation. Let us all focus on the real work of the Church. On Ash Wednesday let us all vow to offer prayers, as well as to reach out to our community that we may become Christ to a hurting world. Our baptism has made us members of his Body. We are his ears to listen to the dejected and hopeless; we are his voice which speaks words of kindness. It is time to take up our cross and “offer our selves, our souls and bodies to be a reasonable, holy, and living sacrifice.” Let us journey together, through the cross, to the light.
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Section Blog 
Society of St Michael, the priestly fraternity for Anglo-Catholic clergy and seminarians