Today is Ash Wednesday. I’m not sure how many of my readers are Catholic but for those who are not – and those that are in theory but not in practice – let me explain.
Ash Wednesday marks the beginning of Lent. Traditionally this is a time for preparation and prayer. And I can tell you dear reader if ever there was a time I’d like to escape to a monastery without any form of communication without the outside world, surely that time is now.
Hardly anyone does the whole retreat/prayer thing anymore. Instead, Lent is the season where weak Catholics like myself pretend to ‘give something up.’ In the old days, this meant making a sacrifice. Children might give up sweets, chocolates, all confectionery and such like. Adults, at the very least, gave up alcohol. This isn’t very much if you ask me, but in truth hardly any of us can even manage this.
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Over the years I have experienced the following cheats: I’ll give up wine, but not beer. I’ll give up sweets, but still eat chocolate and cakes. And I will also hoard any sweets I was given and gorge myself on them on Easter Sunday along with all the Easter eggs I’ve been given.
I’ll give up cheese and onion crisps, but only cheese and onion crisps, the other flavours, (salt and vinegar, the weird beef ones, prawn cocktail, what have you) I can still indulge in. In fact, I’ll give up only cheese and onion Tayto crisps, which means I am free to eat Walkers cheese and onion crisps and Pringles cheese and onion crisps and Monster Munch. You are not getting my Monster Munch – ever. You’d have to pry them from my cold dead hands.
This is the kind of nonsense us Catholics pull these days while also telling anyone who will listen how much of a hardship it all is. Also, other Lent cheats include that the rules don’t apply on Sundays. So if you have saved up your sweets for Easter Sunday gorging but can’t make it that far, you only have to last until Sunday. In addition, St Patrick’s day is also a day off – so you can go mad on that day also. (I can sense any Jewish readers asking, what kind of jokers are these people? We are Irish Catholic jokers, that’s who we are.)
What’s more these days many of us do not even bother to give anything up – even with the cheats. Instead, we continue to drink all our alcohol, eat all the confectionery, munch on the Monster Munch, as most parish priests have been pushing the idea that it is fine to simply take something up.
So year-round gluttony okey–dokey, you will not be judged for this as long as you say a few extra Hail Marys every night. Do you think they ever get said? Nope. Some aim high and say they will take up saying the entire Rosary every night. Look, fair enough, I might try this myself. I just also think I could give something up in addition – say Sour Cream Pringles. Surely I can manage that?
Ash Wednesday and Good Friday are also fast days. When I say fast, I don’t mean a proper fast like the Muslims abide by during Ramadan – no eating between sunrise and sunset. Or the many fast days Jews observe which I was familiar with, but have since forgotten. This is a fast day according to us Catholics which means no meat and you can have one full meal and two other meals as long as those two small meals combined do not add up to one full meal.
In other words you can have a full dinner (no meat), breakfast and a light lunch. If this doesn’t sound like a fast to you, that’s because it isn’t.
I, however, will try to go full hardcore: I hardly ever eat breakfast, but once 1pm hits I’ll have to have lunch. Maybe a salad. The only question is can I get through the rest of the day without eating? Probably not. Or if I do, I will end the day by shouting at my nearest and dearest (committing the sin of wrath) and heading to the garage to eat some contra- band (gluttony.)
I’ll comfort myself with the thought that I’ll still say that full Rosary that night. Or at least a decade of the Rosary. Or failing that, an extra Hail Mary. No doubt I’ll be so weak by then I won’t even manage that.
Whatever way it goes I intend to make everyone know that I AM FASTING, that I am making a huge sacrifice and that I can fast all you suckers under the table (the sin of pride). It will be downhill from there.
In Matthew 6:16, Jesus said, “Whenever you fast, don’t be gloomy like the hypocrites. For they disfigure their faces so that their fasting is obvious to people. Truly I tell you, they have their reward.”
I’ll be properly gloomy I can tell you. And I’ve made my fast so obvious that I’ve described it here for readers to tell me how great I am in the comments section. I want my reward now.
Listen, I never said I was a saint.