Growing up in a reformed culture meant that Lent wasn’t a very common practice. I didn’t even hear about it until I was 18 and moved to the United States from South Africa where I was first introduced to the spiritual practice (and sometimes hypocrisy) of Lent. 

So, what is Lent? 

Lent is a spiritual observance of the historic Christian liturgical calendar that dates back to at least the 3rd century. It is a period of fasting for 40 days (Excluding Sundays) starting on Ash Wednesday and ending on Maundy Thursday (The day which is historically celebrated as the night of the last supper). It serves as a period of penitential practices to help us prepare to celebrate Holy Week, the week of and leading up to the crucifixion when the Church recalls the suffering and death of Jesus and celebrates His glorious resurrection from the dead.

The 40 days of Lent is also the period in which we meditate on the 40 days of Jesus in the wilderness. By observing these 40 days we enable ourselves to grasp at the revelation that in the birth of Christ, he did not merely accept human nature, but that God in Christ accepted for himself the depravity, suffering and death of what it means to be human.

Lent enables us to let go of the routine of our religion and enable ourselves to cease superficiality and start becoming attentive and reflective to the importance of the incarnation, suffering, death, and resurrection of our Lord.

It enables us to grasp the extraordinary way in which God has pursued us as His children. 

In 2018 I spent a week at Mucknell Abbey in Worcestershire, England alongside two of my brothers from the Community of St Anselm. We arrived at the beautiful Benedictine monastery and were soon greeted by Br Patrick, was shown to our rooms, given a copy of the Rule of St Benedict and a schedule for how our days would look. We were told to settle in and join for the next office of prayer. Br Tonderai, Demarius and I looked at the schedule and saw that next on the schedule was “None” and thought that since we didn’t have anything scheduled until lunch we will just hang out for a bit. It wasn’t until a very displeased Br Patrick showed up before lunch and asked why we didn’t show up for “None” that we realised “None” is pronounced “Noon” and is an office of prayer we were supposed to be at as guests of the community. We also learned that “None” is where we get our word for “Noon” (12 pm) and comes from the Lenten tradition of fasting until the 9th hour of the day (3 pm) which is the hour believed when Christ died. “None” kept being moved back until for a large part of the church “None” was celebrated at 12 pm and culturally it became the norm to call 12 pm “Noon”. With strange historic practices such as fasting all food until “None”, what are the traditional expressions of Lent? 

Lent is quite simple, it is expressed as prayer, fasting, and almsgiving.

Following lent isn’t some Neo-gnostic idea of denying the physical as something bad and picking up something spiritual which is good as is the majority of the cases with modern fasting. Rather, lent is about turning our attention to God. It is about not allowing things and preoccupations to become rivals to our communion with God and it’s about making prayer and communion with God a priority in place of what we have chosen to fast. Like prayer and fasting, almsgiving is an important part of the celebration of Lent. This almsgiving isn’t about throwing money at your favourite charity out of religious obedience, but rather it is about being intentional about mercy.

Be intentional during this season on how the Spirit is nudging your heart to show mercy, compassion and grace. 

It was when I first got exposed to lent, living on campus at a Christian university in California, that I saw the great unintentional hypocrisy with which people follow lent. I would see people give us texting friends for emailing them, ice cream for doughnuts, and TV for youtube. I would see good-hearted Christians give up carbs for lent because they felt compelled to give something up and carbs were great because that meant they were summer body ready for spring break which followed lent. I even saw while living in the monastic tradition as a member of the Community of St Anselm one of my brothers give up salt on his food and replaced it with copious amounts of cheese that were high in salt to make his food saltier. It is not about giving up something for the sake of giving up something, it is about being intentional about communion with God and that sometimes requires a sacrifice. 

Is your Lenten sacrifice enabling you to better grasp Jesus’ journey to the cross and sacrifice? No? Then you are probably doing it wrong or you are misunderstanding what it is about.

Let’s be honest, giving up chocolate or cutting out carbs is a diet, let’s not pretend we are doing it for Jesus. There are however exceptions to this if dessert is an idol in your life and hinders a deeper connection with God then give it up, if not let’s not turn a 40-day dietary restriction into lent. If you end your lent season and find your spiritual life is in the same place then that’s a good indication that you gave up the wrong thing. 

Lent should be reflective of Jesus’ 40 days in the wilderness. He spent that time in solitude, prayer and reflection. It was only at the end of his 40 days that the devil came and tempted him. Jesus is recorded to have left the wilderness in the power of the Holy Spirit. Likewise, our lenten practices should enable us to leave our lent seasons in the power of the Holy Spirit.

I’m not saying you need to go sit in the wilderness in isolation somewhere for 40 days to be faithful to a lenten experience, you just simply need to give up the right thing.

In chapter 49 of the Rule of St Benedict that I was given at Mucknell Abbey, St Benedict says this:

“During these days, therefore, we shall add to the usual measure of our service something by way of private prayer and abstinence from food and drink, so that each of us will have something over and above our normal obligations to offer to God of our own will “with the Joy of the Holy Spirit” (1 Thes 1:6)… and look forward to the Holy Feast of Easter with the joy of spiritual longing”

“Add to the usual” and “Abstinence”, this 5th-century wisdom from a distant saint gives us good instruction on what to do.

Give up what distracts you from God. Lent mirrors Jesus’ sacrifice and time of prayer. Did removing whatever you fasted make it easier for you to connect to God?

Despite Chocolate being the 3rd most popular thing Christians gave up in 2019 after social media and alcohol (according to openbible.info), it doesn’t fit the description for Lent. 

The most popular, social media, is a very good thing to give up; it takes a lot of our time and can be such a temptation to envy the lives of other people that we forget about all the wonderful things God does in our own life. Giving this up and rather focusing on God in your life will surely bring you closer.

Lent should enable you to experience the anguish of the Crucifixion, the mystery of Holy Saturday and the glory of Christ’s resurrection whose life now flows in us. 

You don’t even have to give up something to be able to be strengthened spiritually, or maybe you need to add something, maybe you need to spend extra time in the morning actually praying or reading a chapter in the bible. One of the practices I have found helpful during lent is waking up and spending time praying the “Our Father” because it reflects Jesus’ temptation.

Jesus was tempted with his identity (Sonship), food (bodily desires), and glory + power. The “Our Father” takes our eyes off ourselves and places them on God:

• “Our Father”: it turns our attention. away from ourselves and onto God as our father (Identity).

• “hallowed be your name”: our names don’t deserve glory, only God’s does.

• “your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as in heaven”: God is king, all power is his and I desire not my own will, but only God’s will.

• “give us this day our daily bread”: I am dependent on God, I do not desire anything of the flesh, but I desire God who I can trust to fulfil all my needs.

• “forgive us our debts”: Without God’s mercy, we are nothing.

• “lead us not into temptation”: lead me not into that which will take my eyes off God.

• “but deliver us from evil”: God is my deliverer and will deliver me from those same distractions.

The important thing about this spiritual practice is to turn our self-centredness into God-centredness. Let’s keep it about God this lent and try not to make it about ourselves. How about we try and not (as seems to become a norm in the evangelical) post a selfie this lent with #MakeHisNameFamous because let’s be honest, you taking a selfie to brag about what you are up to, where you are and what you are wearing is not “Making his name famous”, neither is the numbers of likes you get. 

Perhaps the best lenten practice you can follow is to simply take time to pray the “Our Father”, but don’t just say it religiously, pray it, meditate on the words and allow it to become a revelation to you.

James 4:8 “Draw near to God, and He will draw near to you”

Israel Fouché 

A son, friend and lover of grace, Israel is a graduate from Bethel church in Redding, California and former residential member of the Community of St Anselm under the Archbishop of Canterbury. He is passionate about teaching people about the healing power of God and demonstrating the love of the father through it. He has taken a message of Good hope to various nations and is now based in South Africa where he is the site pastor for a new church plant called Father’s House Cape Town.

follow him on Instagram @israelfouche