A SPIRITUAL SUPERMAN

Friday after Passion Sunday

Few people would believe it, but I like to fast. Unfortunately, I like it for the wrong reasons. I feel more healthy when I fast and—even more important to me—when I don’t think about food for a few days, I turn those “hunter-gatherer” instincts to more interesting uses—writing or reading or book-buying!

Lent has been hard for me the past several years, since my accident, because I’ve been forbidden to fast at all. I have to eat and am supposed to do it several times a day. That makes Lent more of a struggle for me.

I’m gonna tell you a secret, something not many people know. Twice, in 1979 and 1980, I kept an almost complete Lenten fast. Except for water and juice, I didn’t eat anything from the Shrove Tuesday Pancakes until the Easter Day ham. It was exhilarating. After about four days of thinking “this isn’t going to work for this and that reason,” my hunger pangs—and their attendant stomach noises—almost completely disappeared. I felt a “freedom” from “material things” it was hard for me to define. All I knew was that it was very spiritual. How many other people could do this?

I didn’t tell anybody, not even my confessor. The Forty Days sped by: I prayed more and felt great. I was some kind of spiritual dynamo, I tell you. Then, on Wednesday evening of Holy Week, while I was reciting the Tenebrae Psalms, it hit me. Easter’s coming. The Fast is ending. I’d have to eat again. I’d have to break my fast (I, I, I, me, me, my—is there a pattern here you see? I didn’t), I didn’t want to. I didn’t want Lent to end.

It did anyway, and a few hours after the Easter Vigil I broke my fast.

After Whitsunday, when the cycle of Friday abstinence was restored, I found it all a bit banal. Where’s the challenge in not eating meat once a week? Gradually, though, I got back into the cycle of Feasts and Fasts, while harboring the notion in the back of my mind that I’d really have to come up with something special next Lent to top my ascetic feats of the year previous.

But as the next Lent approached, I couldn’t think of anything. Well, okay, I did pretty darn well last year. This year should be a breeze.

But it wasn’t. I remembered the temptations of the first few days and thought I’d steeled myself against them, but they came on particularly strong. They weren’t just food oriented, either. Sexual thoughts also presented themselves with a distressing frequency—last year I’d been almost completely free of them. What was going on? By the middle of the second week, every day was a struggle. Food seemed everywhere, offered by attractive women. My prayers, so easy the year before, were little more than grunts, whines and my quickly rattled off daily prayers. “My words flew up, but my thoughts remained below.” How many days longer? I didn’t mark off the days on my Ordo Kalendar with a pencil, but Lord knows I looked at the thing a dozen times a day, recalculating when Easter would arrive.

When Passion Week arrived, I went to offer my confession. I was one confused and disappointed fellow as I knelt in the box. God wasn’t giving me the rewards I’d earned.

The Lord has always been especially gracious to me in my confessors. From the first one, they’ve been men of discernment, wisdom and wit, with just a touch of the Egyptian taskmaster thrown in. As I went through my Lenten list of woes, I heard a gentle chuckle. He cut in softly “Will you make it through your first Lent, you think?”

“What?”

“Last Lent wasn’t one you shared with Jesus or anybody else. It was your little spiritual fantasy. Your Lents before have been focused on your keeping rules, your getting through the season unblemished, Lent has been another thing you’ve accomplished. This year, the Lord is giving you a chance to be with Him for Lent: to be hungry and tired and feel the temptations He felt. You haven’t figured that out yet, but I hope you can see it now.”

This year, as for the past several, I still miss sharing the rigors of the Lenten Fast—yes, there are other ways I keep it so I don’t pass out dramatically in public—but I’ve found this great consolation. The Lord has had to soften—lighten—lessen—the rules for me, because I’m not up to it. I’m not a spiritual superman. I’m one of many, trudging imperfectly along the road to Calvary. I’m happy of the companionship.