Lenten Sacrifices

It is time to consider Lent and what to take on or give up to observe the season.  I try very hard to understand this year after year, but I'm still not sure I get it.  It isn't because I don't understand that I should be conscious of the sacrifice of Christ.  I am.  But it somehow seems a bit artificial to give up chocolate when you live in America and can still have vanilla and caramel.  So what if we give up a meal?  I mean, this is the richest country in the world.  Compared to the rest of the world we live in paradise (even without our chocolate or three squares).  What have we really sacrificed; what have we learned?  Isn't this a bit of artificial piety?

Maybe the problem is food isn't important enough to make me get it.  What if I had to give up painting with blue during Lent?  Or wearing jeans or turquoise rings?  Imagine 40 days without wearing anything from Talbots, taking a photograph, visiting ebay, watching "Law & Order" or e-mailing my buddies?  Now THAT would be a sacrifice, even a bit of hell, but would it take my faith to a deeper place?  I don't know because I don't plan to try.

I do study Mary Magdelene every Lent.  I wear my MM medal and feel particularly close to her.  I pray that I will learn to have her loyalty, courage and love.  I want to see Christ like she did - the one who saved her from demons and showed her the meaning of life.  I want to feel the loss of that light on Good Friday and imagine a world where Christ is gone so that I can appreciate his presence.  Unlike MM I know he will rise on Easter.  She did not know that.  What joy she must have felt.  I cannot imagine.  If giving up chocolate for 40 days and reclaiming it on Easter could give me the joy MM felt when Christ rose from the dead, maybe I'd give it a try.

So as Lent looms and threatens to descend upon us with ashes and loss of chocolate, I will consider all of this yet again and see if there is some way to desire giving up anything besides church.  I'm not a complete barbarian; I do get observing Lent.  I just don't know that temporay abstinance makes as much sense as taking on contemplation.  To that end I will probably participate in stations of the cross on Friday nights during Lent, something I have always wanted to do.  So maybe I have found something to give up after all...Friday nights.  If it ends early enough I can run to the mall and get home in time to eat my caramels and watch "Law & Order".   No artificial piety here.