SOUL FOOD:The fast of Lent nourishes the soul

Give me Easter over Christmas any day and with it dour Lent. Not that one can really have Easter without the birth of Jesus.

No Incarnation, no Resurrection. That I know.

But I’m not talking about the birth of Jesus. What I have in mind is a religious season that runs from shortly after Halloween until the New Year’s holiday sales peter out.

The over-the-top, deck-the-halls (and yards and malls). The buy-a-thons.

Sure, Easter has its plush bunnies and chocolate eggs and Peeps. In recent years, Easter wreaths and trees have even broke onto the scene.

Our kids and our pets can now have their photos taken with the Easter Bunny, too. Though as far as I know, he’s not yet taking gift requests, making lists and checking them twice.

The Easter business still doesn’t hold an egg-shaped candle to the commerce of Christmas.

Lent, the Christian overture to Easter, begins in just a few days (three if your faith is anchored in Eastern traditions; six if it follows the customs of the West). And in the malls and stores, I haven’t yet heard so much as a measure of Easter Muzak.

If Peter Cottontail’s hitting the bunny trail, he’s doing it on the quiet. What a mercy.

Yes, there are Mardi Gras and Carnevale and Fasching, the preludes to Lent renowned for their decadence. But when Lent arrives they don’t wait for a bouncer to throw them out.

On the heels of their din, the hush of Lent is all the more audible. Like the first daffodil bloom in my garden, it resonates with anticipation’s fulfillment.

Easter is about being full. Fuller than we can imagine. As full as we can get. We make room for it during Lent by emptying out the junk we’ve stored up in our hearts and our minds and our souls.

Unlike Christmas, Easter is a movable feast. It does not fall on the same day each year.

Eastern and Western Christians determine its date by various methods, using different calendars (Gregorian in the West and Julian in the East). Which means they most often celebrate the holiest day of the Christian year (Easter to the West, Pascha to the East) on separate dates.

This, I suspect, must grieve the early fathers of the church who agreed at the Fourth-century Council of Nicea that all Christians should celebrate Easter on the same Sunday.

(A fairly straightforward explanation of the dating of Easter, written by Lewis J. Patsavos, Professor of Canon Law at Holy Cross Greek Orthodox School of Theology, is available on the Web site of the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese in America, www.goarch.org/ en/ourfaith/articles/ article7050.asp.)

In a rare exception, both the East and the West will commemorate Easter on April 8 this year. So Cheesefare Sunday and Clean Monday (Feb. 18 and 19) that mark the beginning of Lent in Eastern Orthodox churches and Shrove Tuesday and Ash Wednesday (Feb. 20 and 21) that mark the start of Lent in the West fall closely together.

Given its movable nature, I’m surprised each year when I scarcely need a calendar to alert me to when Lent is at hand. It’s as though I smell it in the air, like the scent of impending rain.

Lent holds that same refreshing promise.

A lengthy, penitential season, it’s chiefly known for its rigors of restraint and abstinence. But beneath its austere surface, Lent’s sweet surprises wait.

It’s not so dour after all. Yet how that transpires can be hard to grasp. As I enter Lent, I’ve come to look to Frederica Mathewes-Green for that.

Author, speaker and wife of Antiochian Orthodox priest Gregory Mathewes-Green, she first struck a chord with me in her book “Facing East.” In a chapter called “Forgiveness Vespers,” after the prayers said on Cheesefare Sunday, she describes Lent’s onset as “something like the first lurching ascent of a roller coaster. No turning back now.”

That nails it.

In articles ranging from “Journey into Orthodox Lent,” published on an Orthodox Anglican website to “The Joy of Filboid Studge,” written last year for Beliefnet and “Hot Dog, It’s Lent,” found on her website (www.frederica.com) and many others, Frederica Mathewes-Green unfolds Lent’s mysteries and thrills.

In “Journey,” she writes of Lent slowly arriving “like a cello line subtly weaving itself into our lives” and compares the discipline of fasting to “lifting weights or jogging.” It develops our “muscle of self-control.”

With tenderness and gratitude, she tells of the cornerstone of Lent, the Forgiveness Vespers with its Rite of Forgiveness through which all church members ask for forgiveness from and offer forgiveness to each other. She shares prayer of Ephrem the Syrian, a Lenten refrain:

“O Lord and Master of my life, take from me the spirit of sloth, faint-heartedness, lust of power, and idle talk. But give rather the spirit of chastity, humility, patience, and love to Thy servant. Yea O Lord and King, grant me to see my own sins and not to judge my brother: for Thou are blessed unto ages and ages. Amen.”

In “The Joy of Filboid Studge,” as in “Hot Dog, It’s Lent” (“Well, not hot dog, exactly. Not hamburger either, or fried chicken, or filet-o-fish; not even a milkshake. And that’s no baloney … ), she shares Lenten experiences with dashes of humor and wit.

Take the story of her “Virtue Cookie.” Oatmeal. A bit of water. A bit of flour. Salt. Brown sugar. A pat of margarine. A sprinkle of semi-sweet (dairy-free) chocolate chips. No meat. No fish. No dairy or alcohol. No oil.

“Technically,” she writes, “the dish contained no forbidden items. What nibbled at my conscience is that it was a treat.”

She has glimpsed her heart and mind and soul after the Lenten roller has crested its first big dip. There, one’s view is heightened, broadened, sharpened. And there’s no turning back.

We don’t fast for God, she learns from her experience. “We do it for ourselves,” she writes.

When we keep the letter of the fast but transgress its spirit, it’s not God who loses. It’s us.