RBWords - Volume 19 - Number 2: February 2006
Something to Think About
This year the last day of February falls on Mardi Gras day! Although much of our world goes on without a glance, the world of carnival is alive and well in Latin cultures. In the United States, the New Orleans version is the one most people think of. This year’s observance is bound to be influenced by the devastation and difficult recovery from Hurricane Katrina. Yet, for all the celebration, the liturgical calendar doesn’t recognize Mardi Gras at all! It’s the 8th Tuesday in Ordinary Time! That contrast has always given me pause.
Mardi Gras is based on a Catholic liturgical practice! Non-Catholics are under no obligation to observe Lent or Ash Wednesday for that matter (although some Protestant churches are now doing so). Yet, Mardi Gras is determined by the first day of Lent, which is Ash Wednesday, a Catholic observance. Ash Wednesday itself may be the one day a year that has the largest church attendance, even though no one is obliged to receive ashes. The demand is not necessarily matched by liturgical observance, however. To counter this, there are liturgical laws that forbid imposition of ashes outside a service (except for the sick}. Those laws mean nothing to a population that wouldn’t dream of NOT getting ashes on Ash Wednesday. People show up at all hours of the day (or night) on Ash Wednesday. Liturgical requirements disappear in the face of some primordial relationship with the earth or just plain superstition.
Perhaps it’s all a psychological and theological mystery that defies any rational explanation. But that still leaves us all with the challenge to understand the contrast between fiesta (or liturgical “ordinary time”} one day and penitence the very next. Thinking about it might help us start our Lenten observance on an intentional and thoughtful note instead of the habitual inconvenience of “giving up” something that we’ll go back to in 40 days. If your parish has Operation Rice Bowl, participation in that might help one’s thinking about world hunger. Doing something beyond the habitual inconvenience could result in a renewal of faith and spirit. IT’S SOMETHING TO THINK ABOUT
It Has Been Said
The Holiness of God is something more and other than moral perfection: His claim upon us is something more and other than the claim of moral duty. I do not deny it: but this conception, like that of corporate guilt, is very easily used as an evasion of the real issue. God may be more than moral goodness: He is not less. The road to the promised land runs past Sinai. The moral law may exist to be transcended: but there is no transcending it for those who have not first admitted its claims upon them, and then tried with all their strength to meet that claim, and fairly and squarely faced the fact of their failure.
From THE PROBLEM OF PAIN by C. S. Lewis