Lenten Choices: Balance and Capacity

It seems like every year I'm adding something to my spiritual practice during Lent.  As a parish priest I've always been interested in using this season to provide options for the spiritual practices of my parishioners.  In most cases the hope is not only that "those things may please him which we do,"(Ash Wednesday, BCP 269) but that a forty day rehearsal of them will "stick."

We continued our practice of Night Prayers for more than two years after introducing them in Lent of 2015.  Morning Prayer, Rite 1 on Wednesdays continued after it's introduction during Lent a couple of years ago. Theolatté started during Lent.

There are other ways to categorize the practices of Lent because some of them aren't meant to "stick" such that they become permanent or dominant features.  We fast during Lent; some do on Fridays until sunset, others on Sunday mornings until they have received communion.  But we do not intend for fasting to replace eating as the norm.

Fasting only works the way it does because eating is the norm.  Fasting works because of how it contrasts with the established standard of -- even well moderated -- consumption.

To continue a practice of fasting after Lent is finished requires continuing the contrast as well.  The intent is balance and not wholesale change from one practice to another, from eating to not eating.

Regardless our Lenten practices can be meant to and in most cases should continue; saying our Morning Prayers every Wednesday now year after year or introducing and nurturing balance in our consumption is as worthy after Lent as during.

Our practices call on us to be aware of our capacities and our energies. This concern for our capacity along with the value of balance moderates that stereotypical approach to Lent that imagines great changes -- never say "never?" -- in one's behavior or life-style. 

Instead we are encouraged by the hope for balance and by a recognition of our capacities -- call it "knowing our limits" -- to use Lent for rehearsals, for practice and for growth. That way we can finish our 40 days changed and able to continue changing.