red robot

What's the significance of Lent in Catholicism? My co-worker, who's Catholic, is giving up shopping, for 40 days, he says, to sacrifice like Jesus did by wandering in the desert for 40 days and 40 nights. Is that right? Did Jesus wander the desert for 40 days and 40 nights? It sounds like he's mixing stories.

Gemma Therese

Yes, just prior to his public ministry, Jesus fasted for 40 days and 40 nights in the desert. This is when he was tempted by Satan.

Gemma Therese

red robot

Thank you for your reply. What are you and other Catholics here giving up for Lent (this concept fascinates me for some reason)? Why don't you make this sacrifice all year long?

Sarpedon

A most astute question, redbot! I look forward to the reply as well.

Gemma Therese

Lent is a time of reflection, and a call to greater holiness. It is less about "giving things up" and more about evaluating and deepening one's relationship with God. Various penances or "giving things up" act as vehicles for this end. Many Catholics, in addition to making sacrifices during this time, also say more prayers or attend daily Mass.

About making this sacrifice all year long. We are called to holiness every day, but there are times we need to sit back and reflect on our life and God's place in it. Even the strictest of cloistered communuites, who spend their entire lives in penance, prayer, and contemplation, observe Lent and make additional sacrifices.

In all honesty, I haven't thought about what I'm doing for Lent this year. I may make an effort to be especially warm and kind to those people in my life who really, really irritate me.

Gemma Therese

sullster

This is a toss-up physiological question. If a person fasted in a desert for 40 days, (of course that would include the nights), is there a near certainty that this person would have died from starvation and exposure?

Obviously a person who would do such a thing, would be considered mentally ill. Today, such a person would be hospitalised in a psychiatric unit, that is if he survived. I dare say that even in the remote part of the Roman Empire where this story came from, the average person would consider someone doing this to be a strange and weird person.

That such things are still believed to be true and that people would mimic it in a most minimalistic manner, such as giving up candy for 40 days, is most weird and irrational.

Sarpedon

Abstaining from food, water, and sleep has been known to produce hallucinations. This is probably why the devil tempted him at the end of all the fasting, rather than at the beginning.

I doubt he would have actually have refrained from water and food all that time. The point is that he engaged in ascetic activities for that amount of time.

Proxima Centauri

There's terrible slavery and torture involved in the growing of the cocoa which we in the developed world enjoy eating. I've given up eating chocolate and cocoa unless I'm sure it hasn't been produced in such ways. Here's links showing why I don't want the wrong type of chocolate.
Mali's children in chocolate slavery, by BBC's Humphrey Hawksley in Mali.
Slavery Free Chocolate, By Brooke Shelby Biggs.
Is There Slavery In Your Chocolate? By John Robbins.
La Siembra Co-op, home of Cocoa Camino.
The fairly traded cocoa and chocolate tastes so good its not a sacrifice to eat it. And I feel good about eating it. I don't have to feel guilty.
I haven't only given up cruelly produced cocoa and chocolate for lent. If its worth giving something up for lent its worth giving it up for the rest of the year as well.
You try giving up unfairly traded chocolate as well, Gemma Therese. Don't just keep telling us you are better than we are. Try really doing something a bit good.

Gemma Therese

Thanks, B. Shack, for ruining a perfectly good thread.

Gemma Therese

Speechless

Oh, the irony. Does anyone have a count of how many 'perfectly good' threads Gemma has attempted to ruin?